Community Highlights: Meet Ivar Lycke of Skiguard USA

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Ivar Lycke.

Hi Ivar, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I moved from Norway to Colorado in 2011 to go to CU Boulder and enjoy the great outdoors. It didn’t take too long before I realized my car would need more cargo capacity to haul gear up and down the mountains every weekend, so I started looking for alternatives for rooftop cargo boxes.

Back in Norway, my family had always had Skiguard roof boxes on our BMW wagons as these provided plenty of cargo space were well-designed, and didn’t ruin the great looks and performance of the cars. Naturally, I looked for an equivalent product, but without luck. Fast forward a few years, and with the help of a friend and business partner, our first shipment of 44 handmade Skiguard roof boxes arrived in Boulder.

For the first several years, we ran our small business from our college apartment in Boulder and rented storage units to “warehouse” the products. Since then, the business has grown and become more established with an office/warehouse/showroom in Lafayette as well as retailers scattered around the country. We are continuing to develop and improve our online presence as well as building up our distribution and sales network while still focusing on the B2C market segment.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In the first few years, we grew slowly but steadily. The numbers were small, but percentage-wise, we did really well. Keeping costs low, we were able to make some money and have fun running the business while going to school and spending the majority of our time in the mountains.

In more recent years, and after wrapping up our college careers, we have put more time and money into building the business, which will result in strong growth in 2020. When the pandemic hit and everything shut down in the spring of 2020, we saw trouble on the horizon. Sales plummeted for us and for our colleagues in Europe, resulting in our factory having to scale down production and temporarily furlough workers.

As we all know, things changed quickly in the second half of 2020, and we, like many others, saw unbelievable damage to our products. 2020 ended up being a good year! 2021 and 2022 were also good years for us, but with higher raw material costs, labor costs, shipping, and import duties, our margins took a hard hit. We were able to cut some other costs and kept our customers and retailers happy by not jacking prices too high.

2023 saw a more cautious market, and we noticed quickly that the mid-segment of the market started to hold packs on purchases or opt for lower-cost solutions, which meant fewer customized boxes and more “off-the-shelf” universal fit options. The high-end market continued strong, and we saw nice growth in that market segment.

2024 looks like it will continue on the same trajectory as 2023, with more and more consumers considering where and on what they spend their money. It will be a challenging year to grow the business, but we are determined to ride it out and continue to provide the best solutions and service for existing and new customers!

I appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Skiguard USA?
Skiguard is spearheading the development and design of functional rooftop cargo boxes. Our roof boxes are known to be aerodynamic, long-lasting, and, of course, great-looking. We have manufactured ski and cargo boxes in Norway since 1987, and we are proud to offer these to the North American market through our American HQ in Lafayette, Colorado.

Our products are unique in that they are handmade in fiberglass for ultimate strength, stiffness, and quality. With a superior design and low-profile fitment, we offer a rooftop cargo box that not only outlasts the competition’s products by a decade but also provides vastly better aerodynamics, reduced wind noise, and hugely improved aesthetics without compromising on cargo capacity!

We are car and outdoor enthusiasts, which helps our team to provide advice on best-fit alternatives, custom or not, for a wide range of cars and customer requirements. Our key focus is always making sure our customer ends up with a solution that looks great and also solves all their cargo-carrying needs.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the COVID-19 crisis?
Several! But, the two key lessons would be to stay agile in order to adjust to new/different market trends while keeping an eye on the longer term; the initial downturn with subsequent boom was hard to predict.

However, one of the main mistakes made in our industry was assuming that the consumer spending trend would continue to be on goods even after things started opening up for spending on services and travel.

Contact Info:

• Website: skiguard.com
• Instagram: @SkiguardUSA
• Facebook: @SkiguardUSA
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@skiguardusa