Salomon (sporting goods manufacturer)

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Salomon SA

logo
legal form Société Anonyme (public limited company)
founding 1947
Seat Annecy , FranceFranceFrance 
Number of employees approx. 2800 worldwide
Website www.salomon.com

Cross-country ski boot and binding

The Salomon SA is a French sporting goods manufacturer especially for winter sports , of the Finnish company group Amer Sports is one.

history

Salomon was founded in 1947 as a family company by François Salomon (* 1897, called Pepé), his wife Jeanne and his son Georges Salomon in the south-eastern French city of Annecy . At first, ski boards were made in a small workshop, and later ski bindings as well . In the mid-1960s, Georges Salomon invented ski bindings with automatic release, also known as safety bindings. In 1971 Salomon launched the binding models 505 Équipe and 502 on the German market. In 1972 Salomon sold over a million bindings worldwide, which corresponds to a converted turnover of around ten million euros. With that, Salomon was at the top of the world.

In 1980 the first Salomon ski boot, the CX90 Équipe, came onto the market . In the early 1980s the company went public on the Lyon Stock Exchange . The company has also been involved in summer sports since 1984. The golf outfitter TaylorMade was taken over and the production of hiking shoes started in 1992. At the beginning of the 1990s there was a crisis on the ski market, but Salomon launched its first own ski in 1990, for which a new factory was opened in Rumilly .

After 50 years of existence, the German Adidas AG bought the company in 1997 for 2.4 billion DM and renamed Adidas-Salomon AG . In the course of this, Georges Salomon retired from management. Due to a lack of success in winter sports, Salomon was sold to the Finnish company Amer Sports for only 485 million euros at the end of 2005 , but the TaylorMade brand remained with Adidas. Jobs were successively cut, in 2008 the factory was closed and the production of Salomon skis in France stopped.

The co-founder of the company, Georges Salomon, died on October 5th, 2010 at the age of 85.

Salomon produces special ski bindings for the Graubünden ski manufacturer Zai , which are 350 grams lighter than the usual Salomon bindings.

Brands

The following brands belong or have belonged to Salomon in the past:

  • TaylorMade (1984, golf equipment; now part of Adidas)
  • Mavic (1994, bicycle accessories)
  • Bonfire Snowboarding Company (1995, snowboard clothing)
  • Cliche (Skateboard Brand)
  • Arc'teryx (technical outdoor clothing) January 15, 2002 until sold to Amer Sports in late 2005

Web links

Commons : Salomon  - collection of images, videos and audio files