Established in 2019, Bear Paw Manufacturing (BPM) is a family-owned and operated custom ski manufacturer located in Chippewa Falls, WI. Founder Steve Brilla was driven by the desire to create a ski not only manufactured in the Midwest, but tested and created especially with the Midwest skier in mind. The company’s goal is to create a completely custom-designed ski for an individual, using locally sourced wood, and the best composites and components available.
Skiing has been an important part of Steve and his wife Dana’s life since they began dating. Naturally, they began teaching their children to ski with the family at a young age. The name “Bear Paw” comes from their daughter’s favorite run at Christie Mountain, their local hill. Steve was also a ski patroller there for several years.
Steve has always enjoyed tinkering in the garage and making things, especially if they are unique. One night at Christie Mountain, Steve was taking a break from his patrol shift and was chatting about skis with a seasoned patroller, Bob Moe. Bob brought up the idea that since Steve liked to make things so much, why didn’t he just build his own skis? After some research, Steve decided that he needed to try this.
Over the past few years Steve has put countless hours of research into materials, made upgrades to his manufacturing equipment, and tweaked various prototype models to get the the point BPM skis are at today. Steve built BPM’s ski press out of his own personal design, and started to collect odd woodworking tools that would be needed along the way. The first pair of skis were 100% handmade, using paper stencils and a hand router. As Steve tweaked the process each pair became more and more refined, and continued to ski better and better.
The Original BPM Ski Shop
In 2019, Steve knew that in order to make BPM succeed, the process needed to become more automated and more accurate to make things repeatable. He started to build a large CNC router capable of accurately making skis. Now all the BPM skis that were originally made by hand are in CAD format and made via CNC process, giving consistent quality to each pair of skis. In May 2020, we purchased our base grinder, edge grinder, a sublimation printer, and developed a sublimation press to create our graphics. All of the equipment was put on wheels so it could be easily moved around, and the ski building was all done in Steve & Dana’s attached garage. These were the steps to creating a 100% made-in-house product, and we never looked back since.
Current BPM Ski Shop
In 2023, BPM expanded and built a dedicated building for building skis. All operations currently have their own space, along with dust collection, and the graphics components have been moved to a dust free environment. This drastically increased our throughput and increased the quality and repeatability of our ski-making process. The facility is climate controlled year-round, which also helps control dimensional issues as well as making summertime build workshop easier to bear when its hot out!
BPM is excited to offer our skis up for demos, so please contact us to set up a time to try them out. We look forward to seeing you all out there skiing in the Midwest!