14 replies to this topic

[SkiBachelor]

I recently just read an article out of SAM magazine about how lift manufactures have been merging and battling each other competitively in the past few decades. However, I thought it was kind of funny to read about Poma of America battling Poma of Europe. In the mid 1990s or so, I guess that Poma of Europe wasn't doing so hot and their lifts were expensive. But over here in North America, Poma was booming and many French resorts were buying lifts from Poma of America and having them shipped to their resorts in France because they were cheaper. This kind of made Poma of Europe mad and I think they stopped Poma of America from doing that. I wish that they went more into detail about it though.

Does anyone else know anything more about this? I know we have some European members on this forum.

[vancouverguy]

Very interesting. I've never heard of anything like that before.

[KZ]

I find that very funny. So the same lifts were shipped across to europe?
Poma of Europe must have really sucked if they went through all that trouble.

[SkiBachelor]

Yea, I remember seeing a picture from the alpinforum which I think JB posted and there in one of the pictures was an Omega terminal from around 95. I thought that maybe that it was from Poma of Europe, but the other Poma HSQs looked different.

[SkiBachelor]

Alright I just found a picture from a france resort with a Poma of America terminal.

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•  pomaeurope.jpg (119.5K)
  Number of downloads: 47

[SkiBachelor]

Here is what a Poma of Europe terminal looked like.

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•  pomaeurope2.jpg (52.77K)
  Number of downloads: 41

[liftmech]

That doesn't look much different from the Flyer, except for the single terminal pylon (which I like). They still have the no-head-clearance accel/decel tunnels and a slightly taller roof over the bullwheel. That says to me that Pomagalski S.A. has not changed their design very much since they started making detachables, which would explain why P.O.A. was more successful in selling their own designs in Europe...

[floridaskier]

How expensive could Poma Europe's lifts possibly be that they would go to all the trouble of buying from Poma of America?

[Kelly]

It's an interesting piece on Poma. Readers might want to know that SAM is a trade magazine and there is a little more behind the story they were unable to divulge.
Poma USA's sudden emergence on the market in the late 80s and early 90s is from subsidies given to Poma by the French government to increase France's export market and the local French economy.
YAN and Riblet did complain long and loud about this practice, unfortunately lobbyists that worked for the US wheat industry were pretty busy at this time. Ultimately Riblet was unable to compete in the ski lift market and this was a large step to their going out of business.
As you could imagine, Poma France was well aware of this situation and in fact took full advantage of it. As in selling lifts to French and other local countries and suggesting wink-wink that they might look to Poma USA for a better price. Selling the lifts in the US and shipping them back to Europe was only done on "the books".
Poma USA's strong market share through the mid 90's was also bolstered by replacement lifts due to YAN's problems.
Poma USA's current lower market share is strongly based on higher maintenance costs, lower reliability, and pulled subsidies by their government.

Ryan B

[SkiBachelor]

Sorry for going off topic, but how was Lift Engineering able to sell lifts over in Europe, if Riblet wasn't able to? I've found some Yans over in Europe, mostly at French resorts. However, Book a former user, found a Riblet double installed at an Austrlian ski area.

[Kelly]

Also Argentina and Japan
Riblets current year product was no comparison to YAN's current year product.
Yan not only is an intuitive engineer but could be a pretty sharp salesman.
Riblets owner sold a lot of his lifts on an initial lower purchase price, rather than lets go skiing and then have a few beers and talk about deferred maintenance costs.
And of course Yan was able to sell in Europe because he came from Europe.

Ryan B

[liftmech]

When we rebuilt C-2 at Baker, Riblet was far and away the cheapest way to go, by about 30 percent under Poma and Dopelmayr. Part of that, of course, was that Poma and Doppelmayr wouldn't buy the old tower tubes while Riblet would, meaning we didn't have to dig and pour eleven tower footings. Always a good thing in my book.

[Dr Frankenstein]

I think there is a Poma if America HSQ in the 3 vallées.

[SkiBachelor]

Yea that's where the picture I posted above is from. I think it's at Val Thornes.

[Dr Frankenstein]

Exactly, I'm sure I found another pic!