Salewa 29

Salewa is a company founded in Munich in 1935, specialising in the production of leather and fabric articles, as well as being the first to produce backpacks with frames made of steel tubes and ski poles made from the wood of hazelnut trees. In the winter of 1952, thanks to the growing demand for ski poles, Salewa entered the sports market.

Their assertion in the mountaineering sector happened in 1955 with the Andean expedition on the Cordillera Blanca sponsored by Salewa. Ice equipment, ice axes and crampons became part of Salewa's range of mountaineering products. In 1962, a fully adjustable lightweight crampon was conceived and manufactured and Salewa affirmed its supremacy for the first time in the field of mountain and outdoor equipment. 1978 marked a great change: the range of products was expanded with the production of functional clothing. In 1979, Salewa grouped all its products under one single logo: branded with the Salewa eagle, godmother of the unparalleled quality of their products.

After the birth of Salewa in Austria in 1982, an international structure and a dense distribution network of products was created throughout Europe, in the United States, in Japan and even in New Zealand. The Italian importer Heiner Oberrauch of the Oberalp group acquired the Salewa brand, leading it to success.

With the start of the new millennium, the Salewa brand entered a new dimension, as shown by the creation of its own group of athletes and the Salewa alpineXtrem international team, in addition to the constant development and improvement of its main products.

In the winter of 2009-2010, the brand launched a line of clothing, with the aim of establishing itself in the world markets: alpineXtrem Pro, designed by and for professionals, for extreme, daily and professional use in the mountains.

In 2011 Pomoca, the leading Swiss manufacturer of ski skins, joined the Salewa group of brands at the beginning of the year, reinforcing their role as market leader in cross-country skiing. The merger of these two traditional companies and family management was a clear sign that the concepts of security, trust and reliability in the mountain would continue to be reinforced in the future.

In 2012 Wild Country became a part of the Group, meaning the South-Tyrolean company specialising in mountain sports and the leading British manufacturer of rock climbing equipment sealed a new synergy of expertise in this discipline. The name Salewa has been synonymous with alpine specialisation for more than 75 years. The acquisition of Wild Country allows the mountain sports brand to incorporate the deep expertise of the British company in the world of climbing, in addition to its many years of experience in mountain sports.