About

Two people, one grinder

We opened in a garage on Höttinger Au in November 2016 with a second-hand machine and a hand-written price list taped to the door.

The short version

How this started

Markus spent eleven winters in the workshop of a large rental chain in the Ötztal. He liked the work and disliked almost everything else about it: the sixty-ski-a-day quota, the grinder that nobody was allowed to re-dress, the customers who were sold a full service because the till said so.

Lena was one of those customers. She brought in a pair of touring skis in 2015, got them back worse than she left them, and complained loudly enough that Markus came out from behind the machine to argue. They spent the following summer arguing about ski bases in a much friendlier way, and in November 2016 they rented a garage.

The garage is still the workshop. It has a better grinder now, a proper extractor, and a coffee machine that Lena maintains more carefully than anything else in the building. What has not changed is the number of skis we do in a day, which is around twelve — enough to eat, not enough to rush.

And yes, the domain. We registered ilovesnow.site in 2016 because the name we actually wanted was taken and this one cost four euros. We kept meaning to change it. Ten winters later it is on the van, on the stamps and on the receipt book, so it is staying.

We are not trying to grow. There is no second branch, no online shop, and no plan for either. If we ever hire a third person it will be because one of us wants a week off in February, which after ten years still hasn't happened.

Who you'll meet

The whole staff list

Portrait of a skier in goggles in front of a mountain

Markus

Workshop, grinding, bindings

Certified binding technician since 2009. Will happily talk for twenty minutes about base structure if you make the mistake of asking. Skis on a pair of 2014 touring skis he refuses to replace.

Lena

Rental, boot fitting, everything else

Does the boot punching, the fleet, the accounts and the arguing with suppliers. Spent two seasons as a rental manager in Sölden, which is where the deposit rules come from.

Fritz

Workshop dog, non-executive

Sleeps under the wax bench, which is the warmest spot in the building. Will greet you. Does not perform any part of the service, whatever Markus tells you.

How we work

A few rules we actually keep

We tell you when a service isn't worth doing, and don't charge for the look
Nothing is sent out to a third party — if we can't do it here, we say so
Wax is applied hot and scraped cold, which is why we need two days
Every mounted binding leaves with a printed release test sheet
Rental gear is checked between rentals, not once in October
If we damage something of yours, we replace it. It has happened twice.

Come by

Bits of paper

The boring credentials

Markus holds the Austrian binding-technician certification and re-sits it every three years, as required. The workshop carries the manufacturer service approvals needed to mount and test the binding systems we work with, and the release tester is calibrated each September before the season starts — the certificate is on the wall next to the till if you want to look at it.

Registered as a sole-trader workshop in Innsbruck, Tirol. Full business details are on your invoice; if you need them beforehand for a company booking, just ask by email and we'll send them across.