About Us: Free the Powder's Mission
Our mission is to produce premium quality, warmer, tougher ski gloves at affordable prices. Our primary motivators are:
1) Make warmer gloves. My wife and I were motivated to start Free the Powder Gloves to help solve my lifetime problem of cold hands caused by poor circulation and backcountry activities that require a high level of dexterity.
2) Outdoor gear, particularly ski gear, is just too expensive. The out-sourcing of ski industry manufacturing to Asia over the past 20+ years should have birthed a significant market segment of affordable products – as it has in most other industries. Kudos to those few equipment manufacturers who are able to successfully manufacture here in the U.S. But we take issue with overseas manufacturing that does not pass operational cost savings on to the consumer. The markup on most foreign-produced ski gear is horrendous. It certainly appears that product pricing is primarily based upon what a small percentage of high-end customers are willing to pay. Free the Powder prices our gloves not based on the “market,” or necessarily our costs, but what we would want to pay if we were shopping for ski gloves for ourselves.
3) It is unreasonable that so much ski gear is purchased on discount, sale, or clearance from retail price. Like everything else, there should be quality ski gear available at prices that a majority of the public would accept at the retail price. We are weary of all of the games of finding deals. Fair pricing should be the norm every day of the year.
4) Consumers should not have to pay high prices for gear that performs well, and is built to last.
5) Cut out the marketing hype.
6) Honesty and a core commitment to customer service.
We founded Free the Powder to offer products of the quality and price that we ourselves had searched for, but could seemingly never find.
Thank you for buying our gloves and mittens,
Chase & Shannon Stewart
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