bigwig interview
BIG WIG INTERVIEW
U N I O N ’ S M A R T I N O F U M AGA L L I
Martino Fumagalli is CEO and General Manager of Union Binding Co. Arguably the best recognized and respected binding company in the world and with a fresh new HQ, we catch up with Martino to discuss the effects of the business, how they’re tackling sell-through and how they’re tackling the D2C challenge faced by all snowboard brands and retailers in 2021. Please tell us about your background and what led you to your position within Union Binding Co. My name is Martino Fumagalli and I’m the Ceo/General Manager of Union and have always been based in Italy. My background goes pretty far back. I started working on snowboard products and bindings back in 1992, I was a founder of another binding brand (Drake, before selling to Northwave) back in the ice age of snowboarding. In 2004 we saw an opportunity to start something more focused on the product, and less about traditional marketing. Union was born, and we have always strived to have a genuine approach to the product, the production and really every aspect of the brand. That’s how we started out, and that’s how it will always be. Today we maintain direct control and direct ownership of one production facility in Italy and one production company and facility in China. What have been the top three pieces of binding technology the company has introduced? 1. Binding Base Bushing system, which we hold patents on. 2. Baseplate / Heelcup connection. We invented this male / female connection, which has huge performance and durability advantages, not to mention a clean design. 3. Forged Carbon. 44
Carry over is a good strategy if everybody participates at the same level, but if one big shop or country starts to dump carry over product, the whole plan is ruined. Hopefully our customers will be happy to see no carry-over stuff from us. How are your splitboarding clips and bindings working out? Obviously, we saw solid growth this year on all our Expedition Products. The actual split binding (now called “Explorer”) works very well and we will continue to increase our presence and product in this category. We started providing clips to many board brands at the moment, they are simple, and they work very well. Moving forward, the Expedition category has grown quite a bit, and we offer just about everything you’ll need to have a great backcountry experience. Please tell us about your new office/factory facility. We designed our new facility with basically the same process that we design product. All the ideas, the layout and aesthetics came from the binding design team. We even built 3D renderings and a scaled prototype. The bottom line; this is a building designed with binding process in mind. We are very proud and happy with the result, the
