After a decade in downtown Golden, Icelantic Skis has relocated its main lodge.
The Colorado company moved all operations to 15744 W. 6th Ave., near the Interstate 70 and 6th Avenue intersection. Now powderhounds can pick up demos, buy skis and get tunes all in one place after years of a storefront at 1300 Washington St.
“That retail area (in the previous downtown Golden spot) was awesome for brand awareness, but no one was walking in there and accidentally walking out with an $800 pair of skis,” said John Douthit, Icelantic’s director of operations. “We’d get a lot of ‘What do you guys have to do with Iceland?’ And they’d walk out with maybe a candle or a $30 T-shirt.”
Icelantic has had a presence in the new building since a year-and-a-half ago, after buying Denver Sports Lab, a ski repair and maintenance shop operating in 2,000 square feet. That spot, which was rebranded to Golden Ski Tunes, still runs, and Douthit said condensing things means less confusion for customers.
The new building also has office space for Icelantic’s 10 full-time employees, but the majority of them are remote, including owners Ben Anderson, Jon Mueller and Travis Parr. Douthit also said the business has three seasonal employees to help with tunes during winter.
At the new shop, Icelantic is dialing back the shirts and other soft goods previously sold in downtown Golden.
“Those were great for branding and good for brand awareness, but we make our money off of skis,” he said. “So letap make sure we invest in our customers and the customer experience and make it easier for them to buy from us.”
Icelantic also recently launched a new website to give customers more navigable information about the types of skis Icelantic offers and how to best use them on the mountain.
That fits into a company-wide goal of boosting its direct-to-consumer business, which currently makes up around 30% of sales.
“We have wild fluctuations on annual volume sales because itap so weather-dependent, but we aim for more of a 50-50 revenue split” between the two channels, Douthit said. “Thatap a fluctuating plan at times too.”
So far this year, wholesale has been up. That traffic has primarily come from two new skis, called the Torrent and Tempest. Those are narrower and more performance-based skis compared to the freeride bestsellers Maiden and Nomad. Having the East Coast get pummeled by snow last season helped, since the new lines perform better in non-western conditions.
All of Icelantic’s skis are manufactured in Denver at local snowboard maker Never Summer’s factory.
“The brand was built on the back of wholesale, so we’re really tight with them,” he said. “The industry went up during COVID and then down out of COVID, and with that wholesale has fallen off.
“We grew a little bit after but since then we’ve been steady Eddie,” he continued. “The direct-to-consumer side is definitely something we want to grow because there’s a lot of margin loss with a middleman. But we don’t want to cap wholesale at the same time.”
Former Icelantic CEO and founder Annelise Loevlie told BusinessDen earlier this year that Icelantic sold 6,500 pairs of skis in 2025. She left the business in the spring after a combination of family circumstances and feeling like her “job was done” with the company, she said this week.
Douthit said sales should top the 2025 figure this year, given the new models and a super El Niño promising wetter winter weather.
“Last year was tough, and we felt that as much as anyone,” he said. “People are excited about the snow this year, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Read more from our partner, .
