The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Revolutionizing Skiing: E-Ski Mountaineering with Nicola Colombo and E-Skimo at CES Show 2025

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Revolutionizing Skiing: E-Ski Mountaineering with Nicola Colombo and E-Skimo at CES Show 2025 E-skimo.swiss About the Guest(s): Nicola Colombo is the CEO of E-Skimo, a Swiss company at the forefront of innovation in the ski industry. With a rich background in the software industry and several successful ventures under his belt, Colombo recently shifted his focus to tangible products with E-Skimo. Under his leadership, the company has developed a groundbreaking electric assisted ski mountaineering device that is set to revolutionize the way people experience skiing. He is an avid skier and outdoor enthusiast eager to expand the accessibility of skiing and outdoor sports through technological advancements. Episode Summary: In this exciting episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss explores the revolutionary field of electric ski mountaineering with Nicola Colombo, CEO of the Swiss company E-Skimo. The episode dives into the innovative realm of technology-assisted skiing, focusing on E-Skimo’s latest product—an electronic ski solution designed to make uphill climbs and traverses effortless, while maintaining a thrilling downhill experience. Inspired by the success of e-bikes, this innovation brings advanced sensor technology and sleek design together to enhance the skier's journey up to four times faster than traditional methods. Throughout the episode, Colombo shares the inspiration behind E-Skimo, pointing out the growing demand for more accessible outdoor winter sports and the environmental considerations that drive the design process. Aside from improving ski transport, the device offers data-driven insights that can enhance skiing skills via personalized feedback. This amalgamation of technology promises to transform skiing experiences fundamentally, providing accessibility to previously unused snowcapped areas and bringing a new dimension to ski enthusiasts worldwide. Key Takeaways: Revolutionary Ski Technology: Introducing the world’s first electric-assisted solution for ease in ski mountaineering, allowing skiers to climb slopes with less effort and enjoy seamless downhill rides. Inspiration from E-Bikes: Similar to the e-bike's rise in popularity, Colombo envisions this technology broadening skiing's appeal by reducing physical barriers. Data-Driven Ski Improvement: The E-Skimo device offers skiers personalized data to improve skill, providing a virtual instructor-like experience. A Vision for Accessibility: By reducing dependence on ski lifts and costly infrastructure, E-Skimo aims to open up skiing to more natural, unobstructed environments. Product Launch and Future Plans: Set to be retail-ready by next winter, E-Skimo plans to expand collaborations with other ski brands to distribute this cutting-edge technology. Notable Quotes: "Why not bring the same technology that made e-bikes so popular into the ski industry?" "It’s not a personal ski lift, it’s an assistance that reduces the effort so you can go farther and higher up." "The idea was sparked when I took some friends skiing and realized the uphill barrier was too heavy." "We believe our product will help promote a more wellness-oriented lifestyle by making skiing more accessible." "Imagine having a virtual instructor helping you ski better; that’s the experience we want to offer."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the Iron Lady sings that makes it official. Welcome to the show. As always, for 16 years, over 22 hundred episodes, we bring you the Chris Voss Show. If you haven't gone to listen to all of them, go back and spend the next 16 years doing that.

It probably won't take you that long. You know, they were short. Anyway, guys, we certainly appreciate you guys coming by. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisv Fortress Christmas, Christmas, one of the TikTokity, and all those crazy places in the interwebs. Today, we're covering CES 2025. That's the Consumer Electronics Show. Recently had our good friend who is the CEO of CTA and CES on the show, Gary Shapiro. Be sure to check out that and all the other interviews we've been doing from the wonderful booths there at CES Show.

We'll be doing this all week, probably all month, actually, it looks like. So today we're going to be interviewing Nicola Colombo. He works with eSkimo. Did I get that pronounced right, Nicola? You get it right, which is basically an acronym for electric ski mountaineering. Electric ski mountaineering has finally come to the ski slopes. They have a groundbreaking new product

called Eskimo. It's a Swiss company e-outdoor that's supposed to redefine the future of skiing with the world's first electric assisted solution for effortless uphill climbs and flat surface transverses.

Inspired by the success of electronic mobility, similar to e-bikes and other battery-powered devices, they combine advanced sensor technology and seamless design, allowing skiers to enjoy ascents up to four times faster and uncompromised downhill experiences. It's probably good because here in Utah, the local ski resort helper assistant folks that work there, they want to strike.

All right, perfect. So everyone needs help getting up the mountain now because no one's running the lift. Anyway, welcome to the show. How are you, Nicola? I'm doing very well. I just arrived in Vegas since a couple of days, been already packed with events.

You've gone from snow country to desert. Absolutely. But in order not to miss too much there's no this morning we went to the ice ring and we did some product demo over there so at least the cold temperature was the same as switzerland so give us your dot coms or dot swiss i guess it is and where people can find out other places on the internet you want them to look you up yeah on, on e-schemo.swiss. It's our website, and the same is on Instagram. We have an Instagram page where you can find a few videos, a few cool videos on our product in use.

e-schemo.com. So that's Eskimo with a dash in the middle there. Yeah. So give us a 30,000 overview, in your words, of what you guys are doing over there. In essence, the ski industry is made of different techniques. There is who loves to go only downhill, which is the alpine ski, who loves to go both uphill and downhill, which is the ski touring or ski mountaineering. But the physical demand, the barrier to approach this ski touring technique is very high, you know, because you have to go uphill, you need to carry the ski, you need to basically slide up and carry the ski. So the idea came observing what happened on the e-bike industry where, you know, since the advent of motorized bikes, the people that are able to enjoy the trails, it's really increased a lot.

So we said, why not bring in the same technology, a similar technology or a similar concept to the ski industry? Something that gives you an assistance, not really, it's not a personal ski lift. It's just an assistance that reduces the effort so that you can go farther and higher up and then enjoy more the descent. So you can get a little extra traction or gearing maybe? Is that the right words? Correct. It's a sort of belt that rotates around the ski. It's fully sensorized, so it provides a very smooth and natural movement.

When you start moving your leg, it's actually following you, reducing the weight when you go uphill. Oh, wow. And I'm watching it on the video on instagram it's pretty cool you know i guess if you you ski down to an area and then you've got an incline you've got to come over if it's not too far yeah you can utilize the ski for that and then it looks like is that a snowboard that i see there as well for now we have we developed the first version for ski because it represents also the majority of users of the mountain, but definitely it's an application that may also be, let's say, transponded also in the snowboard industry.

Yeah, you got to have all that. I need that when I just walk around, something to be a personal escalator for me. The ones they have at the airport, they're just flat, and they just take you where you need to go i need that when i walk through starbucks this morning i was i was chatting with a with a guy at the ice ring he was he just flew in from new york and he said you know we don't know there was in new york the other day it came out would have been a great help yeah that's true that's true i think you'd use it up there i think florida got some snow or jersey one of the two

i think it was jersey how did you develop this product what was the proponent behind it tell us about how you guys sat around and were like hey we should do this yeah i mean the idea was sparked from i was already doing ski touring and and sunday i brought some friends you know that are a little bit let's say lazier than me i convinced them to try but then after out the way they said it's it's too heavy i mean too too effort you know then i realized you know even if it's something they they are good skiers they know they like to enjoy the outdoor but the physical demand was too high so then on the way back i thought but why not doing something that can make this this sport more accessible and also and also the other reason why we want to

do this because for example in switzerland there's more than 90 percent of the mountain surface snow-capped which is unused and because if you know it's only concentrated in big ski resorts there are beautiful towns beautiful small villages around the alps that and I guess the same also here in North America that you can actually enjoy for skiing but you know if there's no big infrastructure big resorts cable car you know chairlift then there's not much activity you can do on the snow other than maybe snowshoes so this is a way to make the winter environment more accessible in a way that people can also move more, which is also to enjoy more wellness activities. Oh, wow.

That's crazy, man. And so, were you guys advent skiers before? What was your history? Yeah, personally, yes, I'm definitely an outdoor lover. I'm a skier. I'm doing many different sports. But from a business standpoint, I come from the software industry. I've been doing several ventures.

And recently I did another exit after the last exit three years ago. Then I said, you know, I want to do something which is a little bit more tangible. I want to create a product that I can feel and touch rather than just some code. So that's how I decided to invest on this company. And I bootstrapped it for the last couple of years. And just last month, we got some external investors that backed up us. Awesome sauce. I mean, this is pretty cool where people can utilize this. And it's an electronic motor, so I guess it's kind of like rechargeable.

Yeah. And it's safer for the environment than a gas motor, I imagine. I use a gas motor on my skis. I have one of those. I have an outboard motor on my skis. No, I'm just kidding. I mean, that would be another invention.

Yeah, but, you know, the environmentalists hate me because I'm polluting the environment with my lawnmower skis. You know, and then plus you got to do that ripcord thing with the lawnmower, you know. But, you know, you're mentioning something that actually was given a patent, a patent from 1964. There was a guy, I think, from Ohio that kind of transformed a lawnmower into a sort of personal ski lift. It was very bulky, like 500 pounds. It didn't work out back then, but probably now with the technology we have, we've been able to do something that is very compact, very lightweight, and can really serve the purpose. How did you pull it off?

Is it just technology that makes it lightweight? How did you get that thinned out so that it doesn't... If you're in some real powder, you just don't sink up to your neck. Yeah, yeah. I mean, certainly we've been working through a lot of challenges, also for the environment where you need to use all these electronics now you know extremely low temperature water ice moisture everything and also there's you know we we think about the snow as one element of the nature but no it's actually can really vary in many forms you know it's compact snow ice is no melting snow so each of those has totally different properties of traction and therefore we had to we got help from the you know the software

side to improve the traction to sense how the ski is moving and therefore make decision on how to deliver the the power to the to the skier so that you can get the most natural feeling when you use it. Nice. Now, can you use it with a remote control, or do you have to gear it to the... It's actually an integrated device into the ski that you can quickly detach it, put it in the backpack for the downhill. But when you go uphill, its activation is fully automated.

It's made by sensor based on the movement of each ski because it's like a step. So when you move one leg forward, there is one ski which is standing still and the other goes forward. So they always work in alternation. And to move, to activate one or the other key, basically we use sensors. There is an algorithm that detects the steepness,

detects the velocity, the location, detects the angle on six axes. And this basically allows the algorithm to make decisions and provide this to deliver the power in the most effective way possible. Also because you can imagine that if you don't have control over how the power is delivered, you might lose balance, you might slip down. So this was one of the biggest challenges technically to overcome. Yeah, because you'd slide back down the hill, right? Yeah. If you didn't get the grip.

It looks pretty cool. And so it's detachable. And you imagine you have to buy the ski from you guys, right? Does it have to be a special mounted ski that does this? Yes, it's a special design ski that can host the hardware and the software, let's say. But we don't want to go on the market exclusively only with our own brand we also want to sell it OEM to other ski

brands we are already we are already in a conversation with a few key ski players that are very interested in you know selling their own brand powered by iskimo oh I got to love it. What more have we talked about as to what's on the eSkimo? Sorry, sorry, can you repeat that? What more? Is there anything else we haven't featured or talked about that people should know about the eSkimo? I think one more feature that's worth mentioning

is that we basically embedded into the ski all these sensors that generate data about the location of the ski, how it's moving, how it's increasing. Those are used for the activation on the uphill. But we also get this data that can serve the purpose of offering new experiences to skiers on the downhill. The way we can use the data is also to provide a sort of virtual assistance after you perform your downhill or also your uphill the software can tell you you know if your weight your moves if you can improve by moving in a different way so it's like having a virtual assistant or virtual

instructor that can help you correct and ski better i probably need that i tried to ski once and it was bad my bum was like broken and hurt that's when i didn't blow out a hip doing it i fell so much on my first day you know if you're gonna learn to ski folks do it when you're young because them kids they just pick it right up but absolutely that's a little top heavy fat people it's a little hard yeah especially when you don't got good knees you know yeah you can start with gentle slopes with our with our product you can just start climbing gentle slopes and therefore also descending something that is gentle almost like a cross

country kind of style and that's obviously reduce the the technicalities and the skills required. The steeper you go, obviously, the more technique you need. Ah, you know what I need? I need skis that just go ski for me while I sit by the fireplace and pick up the ski bunnies. All right, so you are a kind of virtual reality guy, you know? Yeah, they're like, hey, did you ski today? Yeah, I had my remote skier go ski for me. reality guy you know yeah i'm uh i'm uh i'm uh they're like hey did you ski today yeah i had i had my remote skier go ski for me but you know that way i could will it help me impress the

girls when i ski better or something maybe i don't know it's getting can i pick up some ski bunnies with this at the at the back of the chalet but i i tell you you know really the having an opportunity to spend a few hours moving in the outdoor in the snow cap environment is an extremely pleasant activity you know it's really regenerating your you know your body and and and i think you know we really believe that offering an opportunity to to to generate more more spaces and more places where you can enjoy this with our product. That's a good way

to promote a more wellness lifestyle. And, you know, right now, going skiing means, you know, going in the car, maybe parking in a very crowded place, finding a big queue to get up on the chair the on the chairlift so there's a lot of

things that now people start to hate about skiing you know so maybe with this new experience we hope to also bring back a lot of people that maybe know how to ski but they are now not going that far that that that often because and nevertheless also the cost of the tickets. It's a couple of hundred dollars a day. Oh, yeah. Jeez, it's a lot to freeze your ass off. I came from California, so I grew up on the beach in Santa Monica. So when I moved up to Utah, they were like,

hey, you want to go ski? And I'm like, I have to pay to freeze my ass off? No. And they're like, there are ski bunnies back at the Chalet. And I'm like, yes. By the way, I heard there's also some heated, you know, pants and underwear. Oh, that's true. They have all that.

So in case, that might help. I'm wearing heated pants now. It's winter here. It's cold as hell. Even in the house. You know what would be cool is if you guys could take these next level and they could have, they could be like Teslas where they have driving GPS in them. You know?

That way you don't end up like Sonny Bono skiing into a tree. Too soon. Self-skiing. You know, it's going to be the upgrade. I can see that future. Auto-skiing mode. We ask for paying a little more and we activate it. Self-skiing skis.

So you end up like Sonny Bono playing into a tree so you don't so you end up like sunny bono planting into a tree i don't know she was the skinniest share the tree was anyway that's a that's a 70s joke folks anyway guys so give us your final pitch out to people where can they find out more about you guys where are you guys at the big eureka park there at the cs show yes. Yes. Okay. So we're going to be here until the end of the CES in the Venetian Convention Center, Hall G, stand 31033. We are part of the Swiss Tech Pavilion in the Eureka area. In fact, we are a Swiss-based company. Our main headquarter is in San Bernardino in Switzerland.

San Bernardino in Switzerland? It's another San Bernardino, but in Switzerland. Yes, it is. Wow. And yeah, and follow us on our Instagram page, Schemo, and also on our website. Also, if anyone is interested in testing out on our website, you can actually drop your email. And we are planning for some test days in in europe and in us in the coming months so that would be a good opportunity if someone wants to experience this

innovation how soon before someone can put their hands on one is it we are we are actually working to be on retails by next winter so for the next season meaning 20 October, November next year. Eskimo, power your ascent. The first electrical-assisted e-ski mountaineering device. Wow. Technology is changing everything. Now if you could add AI to it so it can help me ski near the ski bunnies so that I can run into them by accident and then get their phone number. Yeah, we got your feature request down. We'll see if we'll do the self-skiing one.

Thank you for coming by the show. We really appreciate it. This has been fun. Thank you, Grace. It was a pleasure. And check them all out, folks. Go to Eureka Park. Go to the Venetian, I believe. They're in lost wages, as we like to call it here. And enjoy all of CES. Watch for continued CES coverage throughout the month and see some of the great companies that are displaying there and some of the innovation techniques and stuff like that. Thanks for tuning in.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have a sound effect.