by Rob Freeman
INNOVATIVE independent ski makers Faction claims to be the world’s fastest-growing ski brand, with 30,000 pairs being sold across 35 countries this year.
They are hand-made in Austria, and testing is carried out in Verbier – but it all started just 12 years ago when a self-confessed rag-tag bunch of Australian, Canadian, English and American ski bums set out to design tough, durable skis that would survive ‘without being serviced and could be thrown in the closet for the summer’ and, most of all, be fun to ski – in ski bum parlance, ‘would have a high stoke factor’.