Conception et fabrication

WE STARTED FACTION IN VERBIER, SWITZERLAND. A BUNCH OF AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN, ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SKI BUMS WHO SPENT THE FIRST WINTER TESTING, LEARNING ABOUT MATERIALS AND REFINING SHAPES IN ONE OF THE BIGGEST WINTER PLAYGROUNDS (AND APRES-SKI PARTY SCENES) IN EUROPE. OVER TEN YEARS LATER WE STILL LIVE IN VERBIER, AND WE STILL DESIGN AND TEST ALL OUR PRODUCTS HERE.

Our design team based in Verbier have four core guiding values when we sit down and start talking about new products: Performance, Durability, Versatility and Value. We started Faction as ski bums – the things we made needed to be affordable, they had to last 100+ day seasons, survive without servicing and be thrown in the cupboard for the summer. But more than anything, they had to increase our stoke factor. They had to be fun. We wanted skiing to be easier so we could ski faster for longer.

As we’ve grown, we’ve realised that ‘fun’ means different things to different people. For some it’s playing in the trees in the morning and lapping the park in the afternoon. For some it’s throwing 3’s off a 30-footer on the World Tour. For some it’s spending the day touring out to that first descent they’ve been eyeing up for years. Our lineup has grown accordingly, but those same founding philosophies still ring true - intelligent design and careful material choice can help make better skis and better accessories to help you enjoy your time in the mountains. And always long lasting, affordable and most importantly, fun. 

For the first couple of years of Faction we made our skis in a tiny factory just south of Evian in France. In our first production year we ran the skis across the border to our home in Verbier, Switzerland on Christmas Eve in the back of a station wagon covered by a blanket… 40 pairs fresh off the press. 

As we’ve grown, our ski production has moved to bigger facilities and is now split between two family-run factories in Poland and the Czech Republic. Whilst all design, engineering development and material specifications are produced in Verbier, the generations of experience our factories have help us refine our ideas and create better quality products that last longer than we could make ourselves. 

Our factories help us source materials from all over Europe – base, sidewall and topsheet materials from Austria, woods from Eastern Europe, fibreglass and carbon from Germany, our hybrid cores from Denmark. All our woods are FSC certified, and we work together to come up with ways to better use materials with less waste and to reduce our environmental footprint.