Atomic

Atomic traces to 1955, when Alois Rohrmoser, a trained wheelwright from the Austrian Alps, began hand-carving race skis in his own workshop, turning out around 40 pairs a year. Production scaled quickly: about 2,000 pairs by 1957 and 5,000 by 1960. In 1968, Olga Pall won Olympic downhill gold at Grenoble on Atomic skis, an early marker of the brand's racing credibility. In 1971 the company built a second, larger factory in Altenmarkt im Pongau, in Austria's Pongau Valley, and that plant remains the center of Atomic's ski production today, a few kilometers from Rohrmoser's original workshop. By 1989 Atomic had become a one-stop supplier of skis, bindings, boots and poles. The 1990s brought financial strain, and in 1994 the Finnish sporting-goods group Amer Sports (which also owns Salomon, Arc'teryx and Wilson) acquired Atomic; insolvency proceedings that followed were resolved by 2006. Today Atomic makes roughly 400,000 pairs of skis a year, alongside boots, bindings, helmets, poles, goggles and apparel, still manufactured in the Alps. The brand has remained a fixture on the Alpine Ski World Cup circuit - it was the top-winning brand of the 2022/23 season, with 31 race victories and 6 discipline globes - and has equipped skiers including Mikaela Shiffrin and Hermann Maier.