Part 1: Roces Interview

Part 1: The Roces Interview

Roces USA's president talks about where the inline skate company has been and where it's headed

Robert: Could you tell me something about the history of Roces?

Keith: Roces was founded back in 1953 in Montebelluna, Italy, by the Cavasin family. Montebelluna is a small town in the foothills of the Italian Alps and is home to a number of companies that make hiking shoes, ski boots and inline skates. Nordica is in town, Rollerblade is in town, Salomon has a plant there, Tecnica is there. The list really goes on and on. It's a curiosity. ... Montebelluna is kind of a gravitational center for the footwear business.

Roces is a family-owned business. It is not owned by a big conglomerate or sporting goods firm or by public stock holders. It's a fairly small company.

In the early years, the company was making leather footwear: hiking boots and ski boots made of leather. In the late '60s, there was a transition away from leather for ski boots to plastic-molded footwear. Roces made the transition and was producing Alpine ski boots and ice skates made of plastic, principally for consumption in Italy and the Central European market.

Roces' didn't have a lot of exports at the time. It was a European brand and that's where they did their business.

In the '80s, the second-generation owners of Roces, Vasco Cavasin, was walking through the ski show in Las Vegas. He noticed an exhibitor with a small 10-by-10 booth with just a folding table and a couple of chairs. It was Scott Olson with his new invention, the Rollerblade.

The owner stopped at the table and looked at the skate and struck up a conversation. He essentially said, "Geez, this is an interesting looking skate you have here. What is it?" And Scott said, "It's a dry land training device for skiers and hockey players so they can keep their legs and muscles in shape during the summer months." To which our guy replied. "Well, you know we make a plastic ice skate that would be a good match for your frame."

And the kismet goes on. Scott says, "Funny you should say that because I have not been happy with the boots I have been using."

So our guy sends over a few pairs of sample boots, and Scott mounts his frames to them. The next thing you know Roces is producing boots and liners with the Rollerblade name on them and sending them to Minnesota.

So for the first six or eight years of Rollerblade's existence, the skates were literally Roces boots and liners that were being sent to Minnesota and mounted up with the Rollerblade frame.

At the tail end of that cooperation, the two companies had gone from producing a dozen pair of skates to literally hundreds of thousands of skates. It was quite a success story.

Robert: What ended that relationship between Rollerblade and Roces?

Keith: Nordica's purchase of Rollerblade (in 1991). ... Nordica is in the same town as Roces and in more or less the same business. And from one day to the next, the production of the Rollerblade boots and liners went from the Roces factory down the street to the Nordica factory.

Robert: That must have been difficult for Roces.

Keith: It was not an easy time. But that was when Roces had to make a decision about what to do. Either they were going to forget about inline skates entirely, or produce skates for somebody else, or take the bold step of trying to produce a skate line with their own brand on it. ... Obviously, they decided to produce their own skates.

Discuss:

Talk About this Article ...