1. Have a Purpose: Now more than ever, consumers are conscientious about where they spend their dollar. Magnus believes that it’s critical for a brand to have a purpose in today’s social and environmental landscapes.
2. Build a Positive Team: Starting a business is hard and you will have setbacks and challenges along the way. Magus advises surrounding yourself with passionate, like-minded people who will offer support.
3. Be Authentic: Magnus places a strong emphasis on authenticity and cultivating a brand voice that comes across as organic to customers.
4. Experience is Knowledge: While you may not know everything about finance, workflow efficiency, and structure when starting a company, Magnus feels that there is much to be learned from past experiences that can be recontextualized and used to move a business forward.
5. Focus on Community: A marker of all successful brands is connection with customers. Magnus advocates building a dynamic, supportive community that grabs the attention of your target consumers.
After 10 years skiing professionally, Magnus Granér and some friends pooled together what money they had and decided to start a ski brand. Building an E-Commerce ski equipment company from the ground up meant they would have to do things their own way. Learn how Magnus grew 1000skis from a small start-up to a pioneer for sustainability while giving a voice to the freestyle ski community.
Meet Magnus Granér, Co-Founder of 1000skis!
Based in Stockholm, Sweden, 1000skis was founded in 2021 by professional skiers who envisioned a purpose-driven brand committed to sustainability and building community. Selling direct-to-consumer, 1000skis offers high-performance equipment for park, mountain, and powder skiing, designed and produced using 100% renewable energy and locally sourced materials.
Magnus had dreams of becoming a professional skiing since childhood. Still young, he met and bonded with a group of skiers who shared his passion for free skiing, a style that encompasses jumping, powder, and mountain. “We formed a crew, The Bunch. We started getting recognition and people liked our ski films,” Magnus recalls. “We started getting sponsors and then all of a sudden, we were professional skiers.” Years of working with brands revealed that while the industry was robust, it lacked products designed for how Magnus and friends approached the sport. Drawing from experience, they saw an opportunity “to take this into our own hands, start our own brand, and see where that takes us.” In 2021, they founded 1000skis.
With an office location in Stockholm, Sweden, 1000skis is run by a remote team of 10 members (all professional or avid skiers). Magnus is quick to point out that the company is direct-to-consumer, which is not common in the ski equipment industry. “When people buy skis, they want to be able to flex them and try them out in a demo, if possible” and he goes on “the majority of skis are sold through retailers.” Despite getting offers from both online and brick-and-mortar retail giants, 1000skis stayed true to its original vision of a direct-to-consumer model. “We had a longer plan,” Magnus reveals “to make the online experience as good as possible. You feel comfortable buying skis because of our product videos and customer support.”
1000skis prioritizes customer experience, making people feel they can trust a new, independent company. Customers are valued and described as risk-takers (not just on the mountain) because they are willing to ride on equipment from a new-to-the-market brand. In addition to product videos, focus is put on good customer service and providing useful information on the website.
How Customer Support Has Evolved at 1000skis
As a lean, bootstrapped company, 1000skis understood the importance of customer service, but didn’t have a streamlined approach in the beginning. “We started out throwing that ball between all of the co-founders,” Magnus admits. Now, customer support is headed by a dedicated member, Levi, a former intern who has 10 years’ experience working in ski repairs and maintenance. Introducing Gorgias to their strategies was also a game changer, Magnus says. The tool is used to handle CS on the website and across all social media platforms with Instagram DM and email being the primary communication channels.
Realizing 1000skis is a growing company with a lot of potential in this area, Magnus says, “we have a grand vision and want to use 3-D demonstrations and VR to improve the customer experience and make it as smooth as possible. Right now, we’re taking it step-by-step.”
Asked about 1000skis growth journey, Magnus answers, “we started scraping together whatever funding we could find and buying as many skis as we could afford.” After selling that inventory, they used the money towards a second production (double the amount this time). Keeping this same sales/doubling production momentum, they reached a point where they could hire additional staff and formulate a marketing budget.
“It’s super cool, because we started out as a couple of friends, professional skiers most of us, and had to figure things out along the way,” Magnus says going on to note “and now that we are over that hump, we are trying to be a more purpose-driven brand.” In addition to offering a sustainable, high-quality, product, 1000skis aims to be a “positive force” in the free skiing community, which receives little support from the corporate brand names.
How Customer Retention Fits Within 1000skis Growth Model
1000skis makes a high-quality product designed to perform at optimum level for three years - the standard period that mountain skis are replaced. While it’s too early to factor customer retention, Magnus is optimistic they will have returning buyers based on reviews and feedback. “There’s a lot of people excited and hyped about the product,” he adds.
Peak Season for Ski Equipment
Parallel to when people buy new equipment for the upcoming ski seasons, 1000skis’ peak period is November – December followed by October and January. As Head of Marketing and Sustainability, Magnus says “it’s all hands-on deck” adding “I focus heavily on marketing during the fall.” While sustainability is a year-round priority, winter, spring, summer are when 1000skis dials in on its purpose-driven strategies and brand messaging.
Formed by professional skiers who travel the world for their sport, 1000skis’ team has witnessed firsthand the effects of global warming. “Here in Sweden, the glaciers are over 30% smaller than they were in the 80s,” Magnus states. “It’s undeniable that we need to prioritize sustainability from our perspective.” Building from the ground up has allowed 1000skis to be conscientious about strategies and operations, while long established companies find it hard to pivot within fixed business structures. All of 1000skis’ products are produced in Sweden using 100% renewable energy and Tier 2 materials sourced from Europe (which reduces transportation emissions).
Offering only red skis wasn’t just a marketing ploy to attract attention and establish brand identity. “We don’t want to trigger fast fashion type of behavior,” Magnus says about the decision to forego dropping new graphics each season. The objective is to balance sales with inventory, dissuade compulsive consumerism, and reduce waste.
A key factor in the company’s success is an organic approach to marketing on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Eschewing paid ads for a brand voice allows 1000skis to reach its target customers and foster community. “We’ve been able to support skiers and actual content creators more, who can sell our product in an authentic way. It’s naturally engaging and doesn’t come across an AD,” Magnus says.
Magnus believes that when starting an E-Commerce business, especially one that’s bootstrapped, it’s important to surround yourself with positive, passionate, and driven people. “If possible, do it as a team. To be able to share your thoughts during times of doubt and challenges is nice.” 1000skis launched with 6 founders with even shares of the company. Speaking from experience, he says, “Everyone is feeling as invested, and you can demand the same level of work.”
What excites you most about E-Commerce? It’s an easy way to get your product to people. Someone can be sitting comfortably on their couch, order a product, and have it arrive at their door.
Can’t live without tool? The reasons for our success are social media and organic marketing. That’s where we have invested most of our time – we figured out how to make engaging content that people like. For the last couple of years, we posted on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok on a regular basis.
Key hiring trait? We are still such a small company. Currently, we are hiring people we know, have a connection with, or have come through as interns. Because of laws and policies in Sweden, it’s very hard to fire someone so you must get the right people. After a background check, we talk a lot with a potential hire because there is the possibility that we are living and working together in a house. So, to some extent, it’s like looking for a friend who you can trust and is reliable.
Recent book or podcast? I recently read ‘Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman’ by Yvon Chouinard who founded Patagonia. I found it super inspiring – Patagonia is an incredibly successful company that I really look up to. Any company that follows their ethos and is purpose-driven, I look up to.
#1 challenge as a leader? In our case, coming into this as professional skiers, it was efficiency and managing budgets and finance within the structure of the company. We were experienced when it came to marketing and product development but had challenges in those other areas. We’re just going to keep doing our thing and get our product out there and do it as sustainably as possible.
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