How athletes helped develop the s/lab shift binding

Watch the video and read the below for the backstory of how Salomon freeski athletes and product designers collaborated to develop the S/LAB Shift binding over nearly a decade. (Click the CC box in the YouTube player for subtitles.)

When Salomon’s team of freeski athletes first sat down with product developers nearly a decade ago to speak about creating what would become the S/LAB Shift binding, it was clear that completing the project would be a monumental task. The collective goal was to create something that had never been seen before in order to meet the evolving needs of Salomon’s freeski athletes as they pushed the sport in new directions. According to ski-touring superman Greg Hill, the team wanted a binding that toured like a “pin” binding, but that skied with the responsiveness and safety of a more traditional alpine binding. The early days of development were frustrating, but fruitful. Salomon’s binding R&D team built prototypes, which the athletes then tested rigorously and often handed back broken…because when you give a prototype ski binding to skiers like Chris Rubens, Cody Townsend, Tony Lamiche, Stan Rey, Alexi Godbout, Fabien Maierhofer and Greg Hill, they don’t take it easy. Failures only strengthened the resolve of the design team, who would build new prototypes to be tested repeatedly under the most extreme conditions. And on and on the process went. Only in the last several years did the S/LAB Shift begin to look like the product it is today. The result is the first ever, truly compromise-free solution for skiers looking to blend the freedom and touring efficiency of a pin binding with the power and transmission of a Salomon alpine binding. With MultiNorm Certification (MNC), Shift is the only hybrid binding that is compatible with all norm boots on the market (from traditional alpine boots to touring boots). The Shift is also TUV-certified, delivering the safety a skier needs regardless of the type of ski boot he/she uses.

Watch the video below for a detailed look at Salomon’s rich history of developing ski bindings, which began decades ago, and see how the Shift incorporates what we learned from years of research.