DNA C h r i s R o s s i

Herb was the type of guy that was incredibly open to ideas, but you had to grab his attention quickly “I felt like you had about 60 seconds to get your point across,” Chris Rossi fondly recalls “If you could demonstrate that you had conviction in your ideas, he would hear you out.”

When it was decided that Herb O’Brien was to sell HO Skis to start Radar, he needed a point person to lead his pro team, and Chris Rossi was eager to take that spot. “The opportunity to get into this company on the ground floor, to work with both Andy Mapple and Herb O'Brien was a no-brainer for me,” Chris recalls “Our work on the previous HO shape was going in a direction I was excited about, so to keep this core group intact, and add Andy to the equation was a dream come true We were so small initially, just a tight-knit group of skiers and thinkers, backed by Herb’s vision and drive "

"It immediately set the tone; we were the Skiers’ Company ” Rossi would quickly move into the role of lead designer with his 2010 creation, the Strada “When Herb gave me the reigns to create the Strada, I had so much to learn,” Chris admits He knew what he wanted the ski to do, but he needed to learn the mathematics involved in combining the different aspects of his design work “I had done design work with Goode in the past, and moving forward through the MPD, into the Strada, I had a concrete idea of what I was looking for ” Engineering roadblocks were quickly analyzed and circumvented through thousands of hours of computer-aided trial and error “In my mind, I just needed to make the impossible, possible Seemed simple enough ” From his initial Strada to the current Vapor shape, Chris Rossi has consistently produced some of the most heralded shapes and designs in the industry

"Even at the later stages of his life, he was always trying to learn from those around him,” Matt recalls “He was such an empowering mentor, there was no way I was going to consider working for someone else ” Spending as much time in the boat as anyone in the industry, Matt’s mission within the company echoes Herb’s longstanding mantra: design and build better products, at any cost, period