There’s a notable sentence on the Schneestern website about how ‘in a freestyling world, ...[they’ve] allowed no margin for error’ – in terms of the engineering, the craftsmanship and the sport. The employees, it appears, are living proof of this. And Scheumann, one of the company’s two managing directors, models this approach as well. When the trained carpenter and engineer founded the company in 1999 he had already had a career as a professional freeskier. ‘At the time there were no elaborate snow parks like the ones I would have wanted,’ he recalls. ‘So I set out to design and build the first snow park in the region here. That got the snowball rolling, so to speak.’ He says demand grew enormously in the years that followed.
Faster. Higher. Further.
Schneestern in the Allgäu region of Bavaria builds spectacular pump tracks and skate and snow parks – often in the most far-flung places. All employees have craftsmanship in their blood and a passion for cool construction projects. With a backflip to top it off!
Schneestern GmbH & Co. KG
Production Manager Martin Hänsel, Managing Director Dirk Scheumann and Johannes Meier.
Schneestern was founded in 1999. The first snow parks the company built were nearby, but very soon the company’s expertise was in demand worldwide – even at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Of the company’s more than 70 employees, about one third work at the headquarters in Durach. All of the others are constantly on the job.
For a brief moment, you find yourself holding your breath as you watch Michael Riekeberg in his work clothes, five metres high, sailing through the air upside down on – or rather under – his bike. The boss watches calmly from the office window. ‘Michi’s good at that,’ Dirk Scheumann says assuredly. ‘He knows exactly what he’s doing!’ After his spectacular backflip over the wooden ramp he himself helped build, Riekeberg executes the perfect landing and coasts away with a broad grin.
On-site work requires maximum mobility
As winter sport is, by its very nature, a seasonal business, Schneestern gradually expanded its range of extreme sports (or ‘action sports’ as the company calls them) for which they cater. The booming skating, wakeboarding and biking sectors (Skate, Wake and Bike) were added, all sports which are actually similar to snowboarding and skiing when it comes to the construction of the ramps, jumps and obstacles. ‘We design and prepare all projects here in Durach where we’re based. We build the smaller components in our factory hall, and execute the bigger project elements on site,’ explains designer and production manager Martin Hänsel. And on site, the Schneestern teams often work under extreme conditions and in places with no infrastructure whatsoever. That’s why it is all the more important for them to be able to work independently and be mobile. ‘The enormous progress in the development of cordless tools over the past years is and has truly been extremely valuable for us,’ Scheumann adds.
‘The enormous progress in the development of cordless tools over the past years is and has truly been extremely valuable for us.’
Dirk Scheumann, Managing Director of Schneestern
When the guys at Schneestern are in action, that doesn’t necessarily always mean that whatever they’re working on is for adrenaline junkies only. Schneestern’s customers increasingly include municipalities, and users of the skate and bike parks also include recreational skaters and bikers, and families with children. The highly accessible facilities they build for these users are not as fantastical as the more extreme projects, but are just as thrilling. After all, action sport should be fun – for everyone! Above all, the fun must be safe, stresses Scheumann: ‘We’ve been applying our expertise for 20 years for that purpose – that’s why we go to the office, the workshop, the mountain or the construction site every day.’ With craftsmanship in their blood and a passion for action sport.
SCHNEESTERN IN ACTION
‘Schneestern’ means ‘snow star’ in German – a name that alludes to the company’s roots in winter sport. The construction of snow parks makes up around two thirds of the company’s turnover today. The share of skate and bike parks has grown over the years and continues to rise. A small proportion of sales is attributable to the construction of wakeboard obstacles.
