THE STORY OF THE ORIGINAL 3-PIECE BOOT DESIGN

Throughout the early 70’s a smart guy by the name of Eric Giese had worked for NASA in the days of early space suits for the first landings on the moon. The big problem in space suits is they had cooling, heating and electric lines running throughout the suit and as the astronauts did space walks

there was a big problem with them kinking and getting crimped with their knees and ankles flexing. The solution was articulating hinges which had ribs to allow flex in the ankles, knees and elbows to preserve the shape of the suit around the joint. Today you see this on everything from water pipes to flexible drinking straws.

In 1978/79 living in Aspen, Eric applied this concept to skiing. He independently developed some very unique boot design concepts that included a floating ribbed tongue instead of an overlap. His goal was to enable the boot to flex without bulging/distorting in the lower

Eric Giese today in his Comfort Products office in Aspen

The torso of a U.S. spacesuit, x-rayed. Notice the ribbed joints (Mark Avino and Roland H. Cunningham, Smithsonian Institution)

The Original 3 Piece Boots X Ray / Photo: Sole Labs, Chamonix

shell. This was the largest single problem of the day, especially since ski boots at the time had no ankle hinge. The ankle is of course a critical area of fit where any distortion would immediately causes a loss of

control. This is how the ribs of the original Raichle Flexon tongue were conceived.

Eric then approached the US distributor of Raichle and presented his concept with a rough prototype. The US distributor saw the potential of the design and brought Eric and his boot to Raichle’s world headquarters in Switzerland. They had a large meeting including people from the US distribution, and the President of Raichle Switzerland, Heinz Herzog and many others in the company. They debated whether they should go ahead

with the project. The Swiss felt it was too radical, too different looking, knowing they were a conservative company.

Finally in a last ditch effort, Eric put one of their existing boots on one foot and his prototype on the other and jumped up on the conference room table. He flexed them both and their boot bulged out, looking horrible. He then said something to the effect of, “Guys, you need to decide what you want, do you want this or this?!” The decision was obvious and the original 3 piece boot was born. In 1979, ten years after the first moonwalk, the first 3-Piece boot prototype was built by Raichle. After many different prototypes it was brought to market during the winter of ‘80/’81. This flexibility with direct force path function concept, was later named the Flexon Concept and ultimately this first boot was named the Flexon 5, and later the Flexon Comp.

Olympic me skier Nelson Carmichael (skis on FT today) / photo Brian Robb

One of the first pro ski racers and freestylers to compete in the boot was Billy Shaw on a prototype in ‘79/’80 and hot dog freestyle skier Peter Ouellette.

The boots quickly caught on and became one of the top boots of choice by Olympic racers and freestylers. Later the legendary Bill Johnson won a gold medal in the downhill at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. Nelson Carmichael who dominated mogul comps throughout the late 80’s also was getting on podiums in the boots. The Raichle boots at the time had been manufactured in an old World War II style factory on the border of Germany. In 1983, Raichle built a new modern factory on other side of town in Switzerland. As the new factory got up and running, the president of Raichle who privately owned the company suddenly sold it to a man that came into the

picture out of nowhere named Peter Werhan. Peter was actually the grandson of Konrad Adenauer, the chancellor of Germany. Prior to this, he had married a Swiss woman named Beatris and lived in Switzerland. Peter and his family loved skiing, which made his new acquisition the perfect blend of work and play. Peter lived the sport of skiing and was very charismatic and enthusiastically ran the company well. Sales grew at an alarming rate worldwide to the point of barely being able to keep up with production. The boot was on the podiums of Olympic and World Cup race and freestyle competitions internationally with no other boot able to match its performance due

to the strong patents Raichle held. Olympic downhill gold medalist Bill Johnson (skis on FT today) / photo Brian Robb

In the late 80’s, only a few years into running the business, Peter along with his secretary were driving home from the factory and died in an unfortunate car accident. Peter’s wife immediately inherited the company and took over running it. It was never the same after that and by 1996 the business was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was then that Raichle was purchased by a Swiss banker Dr. Grosnick who was in the business of buying companies in distress and Kneissl skis shortly after. As successful as the boot was, because the Flexon boot molds & design went unchanged for so many years, it was natural human instinct to try to end the boot and create a newer, latest and

greatest version. They knew the 3-Piece concept worked and created other volume versions and lower priced versions but none ever delivered the performance of the original. What they didn’t realize is that they already had, quite literally the greatest

These boots were a driving force of skiing culture/ photo Mark Shapiro

boot ever and no matter how many new and changed versions they made, the skiers would always came back asking for the original. In 1999 Dr. Grosnick insisted that the Kneissl brand offer a boot and made the rash decision of re-naming all Raichle boots to Kneissl branded boots. The company didn’t do as well as anticipated and was sold a year and a half later to the parent company of Roces. From there the molds were bought and sold and passed around without much being done with them. All the while it maintained a stronger core following of skiers addicted to its performance. These pro athletes had built their careers on this boot as well as thousands of skiers like you that also couldn’t give them up. Everyone was suddenly forced to search for parts and boots on eBay and scrounged ski swaps to keep them on their

feet including skiing legend Seth Morrison.

We’re boot fitters, and we know better than anyone that something had to be done. We took it upon ourselves to go back and search out the original molds and bring it back to life not in some new and distorted form, but in the original construction and design that had been proven over the past 30 years to be the most popular 3-Piece design in the world. We purchased the

Skiing Legend Seth Morrison showing his eBay / Garage Sale Collection of 3 Piece Boots

original molds tested every feature, kept what worked, then added some of today’s most advanced technology to make them work even better, never stopping until we were skiing them again. We hope you enjoy these boots as much as we enjoy bringing them back to life every winter. The revolution in 3 piece boot design started here, and will now continue from here . . . For the good of skiing.

Special thanks to all of the original pioneers of this 3-Piece boot design, and the people, brands, shops, companies and skiers that kept it alive even when it was no longer available. If you’ve got an interesting piece of this boot’s history, please send it and we’ll consider including it. Enjoy! FULL TILT BOOTS

2010 Olympic Aerials Podium, Gold, Silver, Bronze in Full Tilt / photo Paul Bennett/FT

5 medals for Full Tilt at the 2012 X Games / photo ESPN Freeskiing