The Nordic Ski Apparel Mission:
To grow and strengthen the cross-country skiing community by providing athletes with products that allow them to display their love and pride for the sport.
About the Founder, Owner, and sole member of Nordic Ski Apparel - Hance Dorsch:
Image Above: Me (Hance Dorsch) posing on top of the Space Needle in a Nordic Ski Apparel sweatshirt
I grew up in a cross country skiing family, meaning that I learned how to cross country ski just after I learned how to walk. While the sport was not a competitive endeavor for me at a young age, I have plenty of fond memories including ski lessons in Anchorage Alaska, and ski excursions with my family
I got my first taste of racing when I moved to Seattle, with a local team called Momentum Northwest, a group I would call family for 3 years during high school. During my time with the team, I truly fell in love with the sport, competing in many races across the Pacific Northwest (and winning a few too!)
I am currently a sophomore in the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah and is majoring in business administration and finance. In addition to my love of XC skiing, I enjoy weightlifting, investing, watching Formula 1, and spending time with friends and family.
I am also the proud owner of @Nordic_Ski_Memes on Instagram and is the co-host of the Nordic Ski Podcast on Spotify.
Why Choose Nordic Ski Apparel?
I started Nordic Ski Apparel back in the winter of 2021 because I came to a very important realization about my lifelong sport.
Cross country skiers are the most proud athletes on the planet
When you ask a XC skier "do you ski," they go out of their way to make sure you know that they don't just ski down hills, they ski up them too. For the amount of pride my community possesed, I realized a second thing.
Nobody made casual XC ski themed clothing that allowed XC skiers to display their pride to the world
I knew that it was up to me to change that. When you buy products from Nordic Ski Apparel, you not only get a fun/quality accessory or item of clothing, you get something that displays your love of your sport for everyone to see.
In addition, Nordic Ski Apparel donates 1% of all revenue to Stripe's Carbon Removal Initiative, which helps remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The environment is the cornerstone of the sport, and making sure it stays healthy is an important value to me. I hope to raise this number to 5% over the coming years.
Image above: The original Nordic Ski Apparel clothing design
Story of the Company:
The idea for Nordic Ski Apparel was realized in an entry level entrepreneurship class I took in my freshman year in college. This class helped me to realize that companies existed for reasons beyond making money. The exist to create value for their customers and the communites they serve. With this knowledge, I looked towards my own communities for inspiritation. Within a month, on November 2nd, 2021, Nordic Ski Apparel became an unofficial company (later becoming an LLC in early January of 2022).
Nordic Ski Apparel faced a primary challenge in the early stages of its existence. After obtaining my logo and first sweatshirt design, I had to figure out how I would go about printing these on my sweatshirts, and how I would deliver them to customers. Jon Soriano, a fellow UofU entrepreneur, introduced me to a company called prinftul. Printful helps small businesses do print on demand (POD) clothing, and also takes care of shipping products to customers. Getting set up with printful allowed me to make a prototype, and get closer to delivering a finished good to market. It is still the method of production and delivery used by Nordic Ski Apparel to this day.
Nordic Ski Apparel gained traction on Instagram with the help of my page @nordic_ski_memes. The following I grew on this page helped me to effectively launch my company on the first day of 2022, with one design and one product, a sweatshirt offered in a few different colors. I sold a sweatshirt to my first non-family member within the first 10 minutes of launch. The feeling I had was one that I will never forget.
Now approaching its one year anniversary as a company, Nordic Ski Apparel has sold just under 100 products to athletes across the US and Canada. and now offers more than a dozen different products, including non-apparel options such as mugs and stickers. This product line is expected to double by the end of the winter, with new types of products and new designs being released throughout the November 2022 and March 2023.