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Jean Pierre Baralo: Taking it to the next generation

There are Snoweaters. And then there are Snoweaters. Multi-linguist, passionate glisseur , innovative tech guy and event organizer par excellence: the man they call JiPé has been in love with sliding on skis since he was just a little guy.
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J.P. Baralo

There are Snoweaters. And then there are Snoweaters. Multi-linguist, passionate glisseur , innovative tech guy and event organizer par excellence: the man they call JiPé has been in love with sliding on skis since he was just a little guy. But unlike so many others in the business, it wasn't his parents who gave Frenchman JP Baralo his skiing start.

"I remember two things from my early youth," recounts the inveterate storyteller. "One was watching the Americans walk on the moon in 1969. And the other was watching Jean-Claude Killy win his three gold medals at the Grenoble Olympics in 1968." He stops speaking. Smiles. "I was only five years old when that happened. But it was on that day that I knew I wanted to become a skier..."

The '68 Games, says Baralo, changed everything in his country. "For skiers, it was all the new technology highlighted at the Olympics. The ascendance of plastics and fibreglass and other high-tech materials was revolutionary. Suddenly with the new gear, skiing was so much more accessible. Just about anybody could learn to carve a turn..."

Still, skiing didn't happen for the young Baralo right away. "At first it was all about sledding," he says. "We'd pick a steep road and get a big jerry can full of warm water. When we had shovelled the turns into passable banks, we'd ice them down. The next day the course would be ready to go." It was snow-sliding at its most elemental. And the kids loved it. "We had nothing," explains JiPé. "No helmets, no infrastructure, no adults around to tell us what to do. We'd get on the sleds and push off. First one down wins."

For a while, sledding ruled. But in 1971 his life changed forever, That was the year the local city council decided to send Baralo and his schoolmates for a month of "Classes des Neiges" at the Tarentaise resort of La Plagne. He was eight years old. "It was a month on snow in the mountains," he says. "It was like a dream come true. And it cost my parents less than $100 for the whole trip! It was magical."

For JiPé, it was a revelation. "We all came home totally different from that trip." Another broad smile. "I knew I was always meant to be a skier. But this was the moment I started making the dream come true."

For the next few years, the young skier would take the city bus from Grenoble to the Olympic skiing site of Chamrouse as often as he could. "A lift pass cost three or four dollars in those years," he recounts. "So it was pretty affordable. You'd leave your pack and gear and stuff in the bus. Stealing was virtually unheard of back then."

As for food, Baralo wasn't particular. "I'd buy a bit of cheese and a bottle of water," he says. "Didn't really matter what I ate. All that counted for me was skiing."

He laughs. "I remember once, I got sick as a dog. I puked all the way up the mountain. But people thought I was just carsick." A long pause. "I had the flu as it turns out. Still, I skied the whole day. Got home that night and stayed in bed for two weeks!"

Still a teen, Baralo decided to move to the Oisans resort of Les 2 Alpes to further fuel his passion. "I was already living on my own, independent of my parents," he says. But everyday life wasn't always easy to manage. "Most days, I'd take the bus down to Grenoble to attend class. Either that or I'd hitchhike... unless of course, it snowed."

It wasn't long before the young ski addict was working at the local ski school. "I started teaching when I was 16. Nobody took me seriously because I was so young. So on the very first run, I'd take my class down one of the toughest slopes on the mountain - Le Diable (The Devil), 1,000 vertical metres of west-facing, bump-infested skiing." A grin spreads slowly across his face. "After that, they all took me very seriously."

For Baralo, skiing was all about the mountain experience. "It didn't matter whether I was racing slalom," he explains, "or teaching people how to carve a turn, or exploring out-of-bounds terrain. I was totally obsessed." The smile turns into a chuckle. "To me, that was normal. I couldn't imagine doing it any other way."

Always hyper organized, JiPé eventually made his way into Grenoble University. "I had a reputation as a very dependable guy," he says. "In my first year there I somehow wangled myself a job as store manager for the Grenoble University Ski Club." The club in those days counted 20,000 members - it was the biggest of its kind in the world. "We sold up to 700 pairs of skis a year," he tells me with another grin. "We were one of the biggest retailers in the country."

But Baralo is nothing if not ambitious. By the second year, it wasn't just a matter of managing the store. Now the young entrepreneur-in-training was also managing the club's transportation needs. "We had 20 buses going off to different ski hills four times a week," he explains. "For the royal sum of $15, members of the club would get transport, ski lift tickets and lessons. It was an incredible deal..."

By now, Baralo was working 45 hours a week. But it didn't matter. "For the first time in my life, I was making a real living from skiing," he says. "And I was only 18!"

But what about school? As usual, JiPé had it all figured out. "In September and October I'd build relationships with some of the girls I shared classes with." I know what's coming next: it's classic Baralo. "You got it," he says. "I'd trade skiing lessons for their study notes." He erupts in a gale of laughter. "That way, when winter ended and I'd come back to class, I wouldn't be all that far behind my classmates. It worked out perfectly - I kept my grades up while still working full-time for the club."

Not surprisingly, his ascension through the ranks of the ski industry was lightning fast. First a local ski shop hired him to work nights. Then he got a job with Sidas/Comformable building foot beds and fitting boots. That's when his big break came. "I'd always dreamed of working with a big company like Salomon," he tells me with just the hint of a gleam in his eye. "So when they came around the shop to recruit me, at first I didn't believe it was really happening."

But it was. "Overnight, Salomon doubled my salary. Suddenly I had my dream job." It was 1989. JiPé was all of 25 years old and travelling the world representing one of the most innovative companies of that time. "It was great fun," he says. "I got to go to North America for the first time. Got to see how a big company made things work. It felt in those first years like I was learning all the time."

A restless soul who is always looking over the horizon for "the next big thing," Baralo would stay with Salomon for the next decade. And he served the Annecy-based outfit well. From product information manager to global PR manager to consumer communications manager, JiPé made things happen. I first met him in Val D'Isere at the 1992 Olympics. Enthusiastic, outgoing and always full of positive energy, the young company man struck me as someone on the rise. I was sure he was going to go far.

By 1999, however, Baralo had seen the writing on the wall. "I still wanted to keep working with Salomon," he explains. "But things were changing so fast in the company that I didn't believe there was room for me there full-time anymore. That's when I decided to start my own consulting firm." Soon, companies like Cébé and Eider and Atomic had joined Salomon on his client list. He helped Salomon launch the groundbreaking 1080 (Mike Douglas's pet project), started a Freeride Team for Atomic and coached/managed a bevy of X-Games gold medal winners in SkierX (including Denis Rey, Enak Gavaggio and Zach and Reggie Crist).

In the summer of 2007, Baralo approached another client, The North Face, with a new idea. "I'd gotten involved in the emerging freestyle/freeride market and the thing that struck me immediately was how hard it was for talented kids to get noticed by sponsors. There was no development infrastructure - no coaches, no club programs, not much of anything. Essentially, you were on your own..."

Inspired in part by the popularity of reality shows like American Idol, Baralo proposed to The North Face that they organize a Europe-wide ski contest for kids 18 and under. "My idea was to challenge kids on two fronts - freestyle and freeride. That was the hook. We would identify top all-round prospects, not just specialists."

And so was born The North Face Ski Challenge. Now in its third year, the contest has definitely lived up to its billing. For example, the first winner, AJ Kempppainen of Finland, went on to capture the prestigious US Open title a year later. Another NFSC champion, Sweden's Tom-Oliver Hedvall is now a featured star with the Free Radicals film group. "It's never easy to get an event like this - unique, youth-focused - off the ground," admits JiPé. "But I'm really excited about the progress we've made."

A sly grin slips over his features. "Now if we could only get the North Americans on board, we'd be off to the races..."