Why Red Bull Got Into the Ski Business, And Teamed Up with an Austrian Racing Legend to Do It

VAN DEER-Red Bull Sports skis. (Photo: Kleinmond-Georg Lindacher)

Plenty of skiers are gear-obsessed, but Marcel Hirscher is in a league of his own. Over the course of his 15-year racing career, the legendary Austrian skier and founder of VAN DEER-Red Bull Sports would drive his coaches and teammates crazy with constant chatter about tech specs and modifications. Maybe not the guy you want to challenge in gear trivia, but definitely the guy you want designing your skis.

Which is why he’s the first person to convince Red Bull to co-own a ski brand.

Born in Salzburg and raised in the Austrian Alps, Hischer made his World Cup debut in March 2007 and found himself catapulted into the limelight. In 2008, he bagged his first World Cup podium, and in 2009, his first win. Over the next 10 years, he became the winningest Austrian ski racer of all time, turning heads with masterful racing strategy and unparalleled technique. Credit those skills to his uncompromising perfectionism, a characteristic that drove him to 67 World Cup wins, two Olympic gold medals, and eight consecutive overall World Cup titles. And when he retired from ski racing in 2019, it’s what drove him to start manufacturing his own skis.

Hirscher has always been a tinkerer by nature, maddeningly meticulous and chronically detail-oriented. Red Bull already knew that after a decade of working with him as a sponsor and supporter. So, when Hirscher said he was launching his own company in 2021, their ears perked up.

Hischer called his brand VAN DEER, a name that plays up his half-Dutch heritage and winks at the fact that hirsch is German for “deer.” The goal was to give the brand some racing pedigree without directly naming it after a pro. After all, Hirscher never set out to make skis just for the elite.

Hirscher’s overarching philosophy is that all skiers are equal. It doesn’t matter if you’re a bunny-hill newbie, a weekend warrior, or a champion racer. Everyone can benefit from a ski that fits, and everyone can access the sublime sense of flow and rhythm that only skiing can offer.

“Nothing feels quite like a perfectly carved turn,” Hirscher says. “When a ski truly fits its skier, you feel it through a certain naturalness of movement.” He’s honed his sensitivity to that feeling through decades of racing. Now, he’s applying that fine-tuned sensibility to ski design.

“For a ski racer, skiing is a constant search for hundredths of a second, where even a tiny change in edge angle or flex can make a huge difference,” says Hirscher. “The real challenge is transferring that knowledge from the racecourse to everyday skiers in a way that makes them better.” That process requires converting raw data and physics into the unquantifiable feeling of human movement. That’s the alchemy Hirscher lives for.

He spent the first months of his new project immersed in the all-consuming process of design. Then Red Bull stopped by. After such a longstanding partnership, maybe it’s no wonder that Hirscher and Red Bull had developed a strikingly similar vision for the future of alpine skiing. Regardless, a collab was an easy yes. Red Bull got a peek at what Hirscher was doing, liked what they saw, and came on as a partner in 2022. The result: VAN DEER-Red Bull Sports.

Since then, the Alps-based brand has become a beacon of Austrian heritage. The skis are sleek, classic, and no-nonsense. Their craftsmanship is decidedly traditional, but the high-tech materials and rigorous testing are as modern as it gets. The skis get put through their paces on mountains all over the world, including on World Cup courses where they’ve already earned gold medals and dozens of podium finishes. Hirscher even wore them himself when he returned to racing for the 2024/25 season.

Better yet, the athletes who ride those skis deliver their feedback to VAN DEER-Red Bull Sports, a tight-knit partnership that continues to drive the pace of innovation. Two of those skis, the FREERIDE SERIES, which is exactly what it sounds like, and the H-POWER SERIES, which is designed for all-day skiing in any terrain, bring Hirscher’s profound knowledge and racing heritage to skiers across a wide range of skill levels. The new launches are also designed to complement the brand’s four existing lines: the PRO SERIES, RACE SERIES, JUNIOR PRO SERIES, and TOURING SERIES.

“My mission is to make the feeling I have while skiing accessible to others,” Hirscher says. “With us, there is no racing privilege when it comes to material quality, we build skis with World Cup quality, adapted for free skiing.”

Because while World Cup racing will always have a special place in Hirscher’s heart, his primary mission is to help up-and-coming skiers accelerate their mastery of the sport he loves. The goal isn’t only to help that new generation win more medals. It’s to help them fall in love with skiing, with each drop, each pole-plant, each turn, exactly in the same way he did.

At VAN DEER-Red Bull Sports , founded in the Austrian Alps by ski legend Marcel Hirscher, we do things differently. We believe in the power of “new” and a no-compromise approach to skiing and equipment. Together with Red Bull, we combine racing expertise with innovation to create world-class skis for a new generation.