GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—When Matt Cudmore first clicked into skis he’d built and headed downhill, it was a revelatory moment.
“It turns out it was the funnest ski I’ve ever been on,” Cudmore said. “I decided to make more.”
The 32-year-old Glenwood Springs resident looks to be on to something. Combining a lifetime’s experience as a skier with skills in carpentry, mechanics and design, he began hand-building and selling skis at a pace of a several dozen a year. He’s earning kudos for the product he’s turning out under the brand name of Meier Skis, which comes from his wife Rosanna’s maiden name, Meier-Grolman.
Tom Jankovsky, the longtime manager of Sunlight Mountain Resort outside Glenwood Springs and a Garfield County commissioner, tried out Cudmore’s skis and immediately ordered a pair that Cudmore is building for him.
“I like it better than the ski I’ve been on for three years,” Jankovsky said of Cudmore’s product. “… It’s a really good ski. I told him his research and development is fabulous.”
Meier Skis was one of nine finalists for the 2011 SI Snowsport Entrepreneur Award, given out by Something Independent, an initiative promoting Colorado entrepreneurism.
Cudmore, who moved to Glenwood Springs about seven years ago, came to know what he wanted in a ski while growing up in northern Idaho, where he spent all kinds of time schussing down slopes.
He used to dream about owning a ski shop. Then his dreams began taking a slightly different turn when he studied to become a private pilot and airplane mechanic.
“When we were doing composites in flight school, the mechanics program, I kept thinking about how I could build skis or snowboards or whatever with it,” Cudmore said.
But he didn’t act on his thoughts until, encouraged by a neighbor, he began about three and a half years ago to look into what was involved in ski-building and gave it a shot.
That first pair wasn’t pretty, he said, but he still shows them off proudly, and they’re still one of his favorite pairs. He said his brother, who weighs 260 pounds, has used them to drop into couloirs on the steeps of Silverton Mountain, and they were up to the task.
“These things rip,” Cudmore said as he cradled them in his hands.
Cudmore said building a first pair of skis is a major undertaking, involving finding materials, designing the skis, getting a ski press, etc. Going through all of that and ending up with a pair that so satisfied him made it easier to start cranking out more that involve similar designs. Cudmore said the skis he makes are big and wide and fun for powder skiing, but versatile enough to be a “do-everything ski.”
Another key part of the design is the skis are made of a wood core, much of which generally is left visible beneath their transparent top layers. That shows off the wood, from sources such as aspen harvested from Grand Mesa and sold by Delta Timber Co., and from trees stained blue from beetle kill in Colorado forests.
“Everybody really loves the wood. I love the look of these because it’s different,” Cudmore said.
He added, “I think the wood skis are a lot stronger. They have really good dampening characteristics.”
They’re also strong enough he doesn’t use metal inserts. That makes them lighter, which appeals to people looking for alpine touring planks used for ascending mountains using climbing skins rather than just carving turns down them.
Jankovsky’s brother, Rob, manages the Sunlight Ski and Bike store in Glenwood Springs, which has begun carrying Meier skis. Rob Jankovsky said customers are responding well to the product.
“It’s just a beautiful ski. It’s one of the first skis they walk to on the wall, and you see people looking at the ski every day because it’s pretty unique,” he said.
He said Cudmore also is tapping into a strong interest in locally made products.
“I really think that consumers are paying more attention to buying local and taking more pride in where they buy their stuff from,” Cudmore said. “I kind of see the trend moving that way.”
Cudmore is mostly a one-man show for now, getting some help from family and friends on aspects such as graphics and the business side of things. And the ski-building is still just a side gig to his day job as a drafter-designer with the Schmueser Gordon Meyer engineering firm.
But he now dares to dream of a day when he might have a location in town where he’s creating some jobs, where customers can come in and select the wood they want for their skis, and people can watch skis being built. It would be a place that’s part of the community, perhaps involved with a ski team and sponsoring racers.
Perhaps, too, the company would delve into construction of longboards (Cudmore already has been doing a little of that) and snowboards. A snowboarder, too, he said a lot of people are asking him to build splitboards, which can be used like skis to climb terrain, and then joined together to become a snowboard for the downhill.
Jankovsky, who has been pushing hard for job creation as a county commissioner, said of Cudmore’s endeavor, “It fits with our community, and it fits with the mountain environment. But I’m just proud of what he’s done so far. I’m proud of him because he’s really come up with a great product.”
