Making-Off: Your interactive ski guide

Well, have you already stopped searching online for the perfect ski?

Just like you, I started searching for a new ski on the internet. Not to buy a new ski, but to find out how you feel when you want to buy a ski online. My name is Marie, 22 years old, ski instructor and I'm part of the team behind www.snow-how.de.

If you are looking for a new partner for the slopes on the internet, you will find endless amount of information. There are long, marketing-optimized texts from ski manufacturers, some of them written in technical Chinese, which even I can not understand completely! Almost all of them are provided with many technical details. Still other texts refer to product categories such as slalom and race carvers. But nobody really asked about your needs and requirements. The focus is on the ski. But isn't that the wrong approach? Shouldn't the focus be on the skier?

Who told you which ski suits to YOU?

When a seller advises you in the shop, he does not explain all the ski models first. Instead, he will find out in a short conversation what is your skiing style and what a ski has to be to guarantee you maximum fun on the slopes. The seller, if he is good, is your guide to the right product.
I would like to offer you this in our online shop. But how can I advise you if you are not standing in front of me?

With this project I started into the summer - no, we do not do summer-sleep at SNOW-HOW! ;-) The idea was to integrate a virtual sales conversation to show you, based on your answers, the skis that fit to you the best - tailored to your individual needs. Just like I would advise you if you were standing in front of me. After many meetings with my colleagues and my experience from my own conversations with customers, I know that every customer is different. But some questions are always asked and lead towards to your new ski.

The way to the interactive ski guide

First of all, I have developed a clear idea of how such a virtual ski guide should look like. Because I had an exact image in mind, I thought that the implementation and integration of an interactive ski guide would not be that difficult. Wrong thought! Several diagrams followed, fully painted whiteboards, wasted college blocks and little nervous breakdowns. My ideas simply couldn't be pressed on a DIN A4 sheet of paper without a massive loss of quality in the result. When my desk became too small, I realized that it was much more difficult than I thought.

Know-how and expertise combined with online technology

The challenge was to combine our know-how and expertise with the necessary online technology. We had to outwit the technology. It was difficult to decide whether we could map the intuitive sales advice, which is made up of expert knowledge about skis, experience, many test kilometres and instinct, into a calculation process?

All or nothing! I am only satisfied when I have developed a ski guide that focuses on the needs of the customer and not on the technical details of the skis. But, finally, after 3 months of work, many test runs and setbacks and improvements, the time has come!

The result: Our new ski guide!

Your task? Start our ski guide now! :-)

Just answer the questions with the field that suits you the best. Depending on how you answer, you will receive a recommendation from us in the end of the quiz. If you see yourself in this recommendation, there are some skis for you under the text field. There you can filter your top results by different ski lengths, gender and other "hard" facts. If you don't see yourself in this recommendation, please restart the guide and think about your answers again.

I wish you a lot of fun and hope I could have helped you!

See you on the slopes!
Marie! :-)

HERE YOU CAN START :-)