Ski Wear by Goldwin

The company was formed in December 1951 by Tosaku Nishida who founded a knitting and clothing company "Tsuzawa Knit Manufactory" in his native Japan. By the late 50's were manufacturing basic ski gear such as socks and ski sweaters. In 1963, a year before Japan hosted the International Games in Tokyo, "Tsuzawa Knit Manufactory" changed it's name to the slightly more catchy "Goldwin", the hope being that the country's sportsmen and women would wear it's gear, be victorious in their events and become "gold winners", hence the name. It certainly seemed to work, out of 16 home gold's, 12 were won by athletes decked out by Goldwin. Mid 60's produced windproof sweater named, "Perfect Sweater". 1968 Develops woven skiwear. By the 1970s GOLDWIN had become one of the largest manufacturers of sporting apparel in Japan. and were being used in competitive ski racing in the country's leading resorts such as Sapporo. Mids 1970s was expanding abroad, exhibiting at the ISPO for the first time. In the last 40 years GOLDWIN has sponsored many sporting events and sportsmen. As well as manufacturing it's own clothing GOLDWIN has introduced many famous foreign brands by license to the country, and has had close ties to the likes of Ellesse, The North Face, Helly Hansen, Fischer to name but a few. The company has grown in size to such an extents that it is now listed on the primary Japanese stock market exchange. 1990s and since turn of century has seen Goldwin work closely to develop products specifically designed for particular skiing events and techniques such as ski-cross, moguls, carving, free-riding Sponsors Junior races for the 1st time. Along with the like of Spyder, Colmar etc, Goldwin is a brand that is fully committed to ski-racing as well as recreational skiing. It's been the official supplier to not only the Japanese alpine team, but also a long association with the Swedes, dating right back to Ingemar Stenmark in the late 1980s.

In our eyes, Goldwin produce ski jackets that give a bit of a nod and wink back to the olden days, with multi-colours, panels and stripes. Not in a corny, or cheesy 80s way, but a more modern version of this style, what many old-skool skiers like to think of as proper-looking ski attire. A bit like the jackets you often see on ski instructors. Quite similar in style to Colmar, which is possibly why it's so popular in Italy.

Ever since it's early days back in the 1950s and 1960s, Goldwin has placed a strong emphasis on using high quality materials and striving for technological advances in both materials and product design. The company has a big technical centre based in Toyama, and with a high investment in researching and developing it's clothing (specialising particularly in advancing thermal technology, windproof and stretch materials), Goldwin continues to get great feedback from it's customers.

All this dedication and development gives it a great name amongst serious skiers, which has a knock on effect that lesser skiers want it to make them look serious by association !

With Goldwin jackets and pants being so hard to come across in the UK it's hard to give you an exact price, but you are basically looking at around 300 pounds for pants and around 400 pounds for a jacket. This ties in with the sort of prices you'd pay in Europe, where we've seen a lot of their jackets around the 400-500 Euros mark. When some of Goldwin's stuff has magically appeared at TK Maxx (albeit the previous season's gear) it's been half these sort of prices.

Goldwin clothing is available at the following Ski and Snow-sports Shops:

• TK Maxx

• Official Goldwin Website: www.goldwin-sports.com

• Latest Goldwin Gear: Latest Goldwin Ski Clothing Collection

• If you like Goldwin then check out: Ski Wear Brands of Japan