Crispi past, present and future?

[wabene]

Full fledged Crispi Bobo checking in! Crispi boots are so well made and just fit me right. The Svartisen and Bre have been well documented on this forum and the Futura Pro XP has been shown in a photo, but not reviewed here. I just came across a photo of the Explor Pro while actually considering breaking my self imposed 23-24 season moratorium on new gear with the temptress, Crispi Bre. I like how, at least for now, Crispi still is hand making the classic and durable Norwegian welted boot. I'm all in on 75mm, Explore just doesn't grab me, but if it did, these 2 Crispi boots would be my choice.

Bre, Svartisen, Explor Pro

Futura Pro XP

[Capercaillie]

The future I would like to see is a T4-style two buckle plastic boot with replaceable bolt-on Xplore and low tech toe pieces (not a new idea - Salomon had bolt-on tech toes for some of their AT boots) and a bolt-on duck butt (why not?).

Crispi needs to expand their ski boot distribution in North America (AFAIK TelemarkDown is the only distributor today).

[Manney]

No financial incentive for Crispi to do this. More money to be made selling two pairs of boots to the same customer. Sad bit true.

Agree on distribution issues.

The way retail is going in America these days with shrinkage, it will all be online ordering soon. Probably more money to be made… manufacturers charge MSRP instead of wholesale. The increased revenue more than cover customer shipping and returns/exchanges.

[spopepro]

Something that feels a little strange is how little direct presence some of the euro brands keep here in the states. ScarpaUSA is a completely independent company, so like crispi if the sole distributer decides they don’t want to buy something from the mothership we will never see it. Unless ordering direct from Europe of course.

Notable to me was Blue Ice, who in the early days I thought I’d never find their stuff here in the states being very euro… but they went ahead and made their own USA office, hired their own sales crew on this side and fortunately for me (us?) all their stuff, including replacement parts, are easy to find. Wish it happened more often, as distributer roulette is not a good game.

[wabene]

I agree with this ^^. There are products made by companies like Crispi that I've wanted for years and tried to get US and European distributors to get for me to no avail. What I don't understand is why I can't just order directly from Crispi. Box em up and ship em out, can't be that hard. It's dawned on me that with such a small market for some of this stuff, they probably aren't making the specific item at present and don't have any of said item in stock.

[Capercaillie]

I was catching up on telehiro's videos to get stoked about the upcoming season, and it turns out he has been skiing the new Crispi boots since May:





Both new models with specifications and full set of photographs are on the Japanese distributor's website (but not on crispi.it yet!!):

https://www.miyakosports.co.jp/brand/crispi/

The "Explore Pro" is listed as the "Futura BC" and the "Futura Pro XP" as the "Futura CXP."

The Explore Pro/Futura BC has a $440 USD MSRP and the Futura Pro XP $625 USD MSRP.

[wabene]

[CwmRaider]

@Capercaillie thanks for the post. Those prices in Japan are comparable to the boot equivalents in other binding norms; ie Svartisens and Stetinds. Which have been on the high side but still competitive with the better BC Alfa boots, but usually more expensive than Alpina etc.
As usual Telehiro makes it look easy.

[wabene]

Telehiro is the man on light gear. His videos are must see. I've got a friend who got those M62's to shuffle up and down rivers. I've gotta send him this clip to show him the possibilities, lol.

[CIMA]

Telehiro is a professional telemark-ski instructor and had participated a couple of World Cup races when he was young in the era of old-style (leather boots and long-narrow skis) telemark. His philosophy for telemark skiing is quite different from conventional split-squat telemark like the ones often discussed in this forum.
After watching his videos, some may fantasize about skiing like him soon on light gear such as NNN-BC, but very few of his students (including me) have reached his level in fact.
If skiers have some experience in XC ski or old-style telemark, they may not find NNN-BC so difficult. However, if they know Alpine and modern telemark (plastic boots and fat skis) only, they may tread a long winding road.