After 14 hemisphere-hopping winters in a row Alex Herbert fell in love with the Canterbury club fields and made Lyttelton, New Zealand his home.

He started a repair workshop, the Ski & Board Surgery, in central Christchurch in 1999 and it quickly became the city’s busiest workshop.

When fat skis appeared in the late 1990s, Alex wanted them bad, but they were scarce. Eventually, he took matters into his own hands and decided to make them himself.Taking his knowledge from 14 years at the tuning bench, Alex set to work.The first step was to take his favourite pair of skis and cut them into 86 pieces to see what was inside.

The first press was made from two pieces of rolled steel sandwiched together with car jacks. Though the start was rough, the aim had always been to make the highest quality skis possible. Alex was convinced skis could be better, stronger, more durable. He wasn’t willing to put his name to them unless they were the best ski he could imagine.

And so he experimented until he got it right. The first ski was good, ski-able and strong. The hard part wasn’t making a ski… it was making a great ski. That took three more years.

Kingswood Skis hit the market in June 2005 but the search for perfection continues. In 2007, the topsheets were improved, new shapes added and old ones tweaked.

Alex runs the company with his wife Kris. Alex hangs out in his big ski factory, rides his skateboard from one end to the other and makes all the skis. Kris does pretty much everything else. Kris says it's her job to take Alex's ideas about ski making and their combined ideas about life in general and translate that into running a business. Alex says he's lucky to have her.