How An Expert Skier Invented High-Performance Skis No One Else Was Making

Advertisement

DPS Skis founder Stephan Drake with engineer Peter Turner

DPS Skis

DPS Skis owner Stephan Drake.

This post is sponsored by Capital One Spark.

High-level skiers are always looking for the perfect slope, the right conditions, the best equipment. Stephan Drake took things a step further: When he couldn't get the skis he wanted, he decided to make them himself.

Drake spent years seeking out the best slopes in South America and Europe before starting his own business to create high-performance skis for serious skiers. His ambitious goal: to design and produce the first pure carbon-fiber sandwich skis, a technology that took him years to develop and perfect.

Launched in 2005, DPS Skis - located at the base of the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake City - now employs 50 designers, engineers, photographers, skiers, and sales reps from all over the world.

We interviewed Drake as part of our Fast Track Q&A series, in which we're asking various small business owners the same 11 questions about their professional and personal inspirations. He shared with us the reasons he started DPS Skis, the story of his ill-advised stint as a bouncer in Venezuela, and the lengths his employees will go to give customers what they want. Read more in the series »

Interview conducted by Business Insider Studios and lightly edited for clarity and length.

BI Studios: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Stephan Drake: I really wanted to be a skier from a pretty young age. I knew that I had an affinity for the sport, and I'd go out to visit my grandfather in Colorado and ski, then go back to NYC, and I'd spend the other 50 weeks in the city dreaming about being back there. By the time I was 8, my mom had already gotten me a subscription to Powder Magazine.

How did you get the idea for your business?

DPS was started based on a decade of global travel, through living a really passionate lifestyle, following the sport, and living it in its most authentic form. I was traveling season to season, going after that perfect run and that perfect turn, and going to some pretty exotic places. The idea really came from that pursuit, which is really all-encompassing and the fact that there was a void in the market.

The existing, established brands weren't building the equipment that we wanted to be riding on, and moreover, culturally, they weren't representing the dedication and lifestyle that certain people, the small group of people that you would see on different continents over and over, really had for the sport in its purest embodiment.

How did you pick the name for your business?

DPS stands for "Drake Powderworks." The idea was that the brand would have something personal to it and that skis are reflections of our vision of the sport. Since Drake is my last name, the skis had a stamp of personal craftsmanship, and then we decided to brand it as DPS.

What is the biggest risk you've taken in your career?

Naively, it really was just trying to build carbon fiber skis in China. It was a risk that we took not fully understanding at the time, but looking back that was kind of crazy and wild. We put all our chips on the table and felt so passionately about the concept and the design that I spent six to eight months a year there for five years, living on the edge on a shoestring budget, trying to develop this new ski technology.

What's the strangest request you've ever gotten from a customer?

The strangest requests we've gotten have involved custom topsheets, where we've had some weird requests for odd and slightly licentious stuff to be put on skis.

We've also had customers who will call us up and ask us to meet them and deliver skis at an airport or a mountain, and sometimes we've been able to accommodate those and go on cool little adventures to meet up with customers in the strangest places. I personally haven't been on any of those missions, but I've met our customers in far-flung continents or pretty off-the-beaten-path places in South America or Europe. Mike Cannon, our sales manager, has hand-delivered skis for guys all around the Wasatch area [in Salt Lake City].

What is your greatest talent (professional or otherwise)?

I would say that I do have a talent for skiing itself, as well as a unique ability to translate what I feel on the snow and in the equipment into the [ski] designs.

What's the first job you ever had?

Stephan Drake

DPS Skis

DPS Skis' headquarters in Salt Lake City.

My first real job was working as a dishwasher in a restaurant in Argentina, and it was a great gig. It was tiring, but I would come in every day at 4 p.m. and wash dishes, do food prep, and leave around 11:30 at night or so. Then I'd get up and ski all day the next day. I'd put my ski stuff in the locker and go right to work. It allowed me to spend a season down in Argentina.

What's the weirdest job you've ever had?

I was assigned to be a bouncer at a Venezuelan night club for a few days against my wishes. I'm not your typical bouncer. I was just a gringo, fresh off the boat, in this wild little outpost fishing village in Venezuela. I was just this 21-year-old American kid. If a group of five drunk Venezuelan guys wanted to come in without paying cover, I wasn't going to tell them not to.

Which entrepreneur or business personality do you most admire?

It's really fun to watch a guy like Elon Musk at Tesla and SpaceX combine innovation and passion with really neat ideas that are transforming the way we think about life and charging towards the better future within business. That's pretty inspiring.

Also, Yvon Chouinard at Patagonia. The company he's built and the ethics behind that business and the way he's gone about doing it - with a deference to lifestyle and cultural values that are intrinsic to the sports the company is built on - are also really inspiring. It's definitely influenced my own path in a big way.

If you had a superpower, what would it be?

It's pretty cliché, but flying would be not only fun, but practical. I think it would be very cool to be able to fly to the top of peaks and be able to ski down them. It would logistically be a lot easier and less tiring than what I go through currently. Another superpower would be instant self-healing powers of a Wolverine-type character because my body is pretty beat up after 36 years of abuse and hard skiing.

What advice would you give to an aspiring small business owner?

The advice I would give is to cultivate the ability to persevere, get tough, and mentally prepare yourself to weather storms, because there will be many. I think that's what separates those who survive and those who don't. A lot of people turn back when faced with adversity. If you believe in your vision strongly enough, perseverance is the number one thing that can get you from point A to B and beyond.

Find out more about Sponsor Posts.