Footloose has built it's award-winning reputation on service. Founded by local skiers in 1981 as a personal bootfitting service, the shop has grown from there - always innovating and expanding, but staying true to our core mission: getting you on the best possible gear, and insuring that it fits and functions to the highest standard. 
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Footloose Sports is the premiere ski and bike shop in the ski resort town of Mammoth, California, and one of the most respected service-oriented sports shops in the United States. 
For over 31 years we have been as passionate about bootfitting, ski-service, and dialing our customers in with the right gear as we are about skiing and biking. We now sell skis, bindings and other merchandise on our online store - but this is a real shop, not an online warehouse. We try to provide the same service online as we do in our Mammoth store - footloosesports.com has tons of useful information about the products we sell, a forum for gear-related issues, and Mammoth conditions updates so you can get the scoop before you visit. Although we specialize in ski boots and custom bootfitting, we don't sell ski boots online- it would be a disservice to our customers. We really need to see you and your feet to make sure we're getting you in the right boot, and most new boots will need some kind of modification for proper fit. We're always happy to take phone orders (U.S. 760-934-2400) between 8am and 8pm U.S. Pacific time. We Guarantee Our Work. Footloose has built it's award-winning reputation on service. Founded by local skiers in 1981 as a personal bootfitting service, the shop has grown from there- always innovating and expanding, but staying true to our core mission: getting you on the best possible gear, and insuring that it fits and functions to the highest standard. Footloose was one of the first ski shops to sell and fabricate custom Superfeet orthotics, and our bootfitters have more experience with orthotic footbeds than any sports shop in the country. Period. We were the first shop in the United States to use the now industry-standard Wintersteiger stonegrinders in our ski repair shop. When the U.S. Ski Team's in Mammoth, they come to Footloose for race tunes and boot work. We pioneered a now industry-standard "Try Before You Buy" ski and boot demo program in the early 80's. With our wide selection and experienced staff of skiing lifers, this is the place to buy new gear when you want it done right. Today Footloose has grown into the biggest sports shop in Mammoth, with world-class ski-repair, bootfitting, bike repair and retail operations and up to 70 employees- the real heart of our service work. Our repair shop is more than fancy machines and Swedish files- it's ski technicians with decades of experience like Dennis and Ken Cramer. Our bootfitting service is more than hydraulic expanders and obscure grinding tools, it's master bootfitter Corty Lawrence and his decades of hand-on and on-snow experience. Footloose History Footloose as it now stands opened its doors in 1981. The store grew from a small one-room shop with just enough room for three orthotic benches and maybe a half dozen people. Sven Coomer, a designer of ski boots (including benchmark models like the Nordica Gran Prix and Raichle Flexon) and one of the founders of Superfeet founded the shop. Sven's concept was to transform the ideas learned from his years as a ski boot designer into tangible, accessible solutions for skiers' endless litany of boot related maladies. The vehicle with which he intended to elevate Bootfitting, at the time an archaic, black art, was the fledgling science of Biomechanics. From biomechanics and the background Sven acquired in designing ski boots came the formation, with Chris Smith and Dennis Brown, of Superfeet. Superfeet Superfeet's underlying mandate is to provide both relief from and preventative, accessible solutions to maladies incurred through sports, solutions that wouldn't require medical professionals and weeks of time or necessitate astronomical expense. The first product introduced to the market was the Superfeet "Insta-Ski-Thotic", what we now know as the "Kork"- a heat-moldable custom footbed for ski boots that aligns and supports your feet. Once the Kork was established as a viable product we found that many of the principles applied to other athletic endeavors as well as skiing. The Superfeet line of products expanded to include footbeds for running, skating, cycling, indeed for all walks of life. Footloose became the foster family and the largest single proponent of Superfeet product. To this day we maintain a close relationship with the company, and Superfeet product development is still based on sound, proven biomechanical principles. This coincides with what Sven actively advocated when he dragged the ski industry into the latter half of the twentieth century. All this converged at Footloose. Ski Boots Footloose has become synonymous with Boot fitting, orthotics and service. Over the years we have successfully provided service to thousands of customers. We continuously expand our wealth of knowledge through our clientele, Superfeet and our own R 'n' D crew. The nucleus of Footloose is the boot room. It is from here that all else has evolved. The boot Department is where the magic is performed. This has grown from a humble three orthotic benches in a hole-in-the-wall shop, to its current landmark stature in the town and the sports industry. What we do in this still relatively small cubicle in the store sets us apart to this day. The first Ski Boot Demo program was instituted here. "Try Before You Buy" became the Footloose byline. People come to Mammoth from all points of the compass to benefit from the skills developed and evolved in our boot room. Other practitioners of the trade send us the more difficult and complex fitting problems. Customers walk (occasionally limp) into Footloose every season determined that if they can't get fit here, they will give up skiing. Many become our most ardent supporters. This confidence is derived from dedication to providing the best service to our public, advancing ideas founded on sound principles refined through day-to-day practice and commitment to the continuation of excellence. Skis As the store evolved, our enthusiasm for the sport blossomed and demands grew we realized that ski boot and skier were only two components of a system. A third, after very little consideration, became obvious...skis. With the dawning of this realization came a revelation. Footloose should offer a wide selection of Demo skis to our customers. In line with what had already been instituted in the boot department, this became an immediate success. Footloose now offers one of the largest ski demo programs in the country. We stock a comprehensive ski line, and encourage our clientele to "Try before you buy". This brought about a ski service department par excellence. We were first to bring ski-tuning technology heretofore used at the factory level to the retailer in the trenches. Footloose was the original American importer of the new industry-standard Wintersteiger stonegrinders- the key to precision ski tuning. This extensive hands-on experience, coupled with a deep commitment to skiing, has brought the ski department to a higher level of expertise. Our service has become renowned throughout the industry and the skiing public. The scope of knowledge at Footloose is enhanced by the fact that we are all avid, nay, rabid skiers, passionate about the sport. Our staff is made up of people who have made skiing and mountain sports their lives- we base their service work on real-world experience. The Footloose R & D crew will have tried the products displayed on our wall in all conditions, on all terrain, in real time on Mammoth Mountain. You want to know what works and how something performs, we can tell you. We are unfettered by commercial constraints in offering honest and objective opinions on equipment. We'll steer you in the right direction. We are skiers. We feel an obligation to maintain our expertise and to extend our non-skiing activities into sports that complement skiing. Mountain Bikes What could be more natural in Mammoth than Mountain Biking? Wheel skiing! A vast majority of the Footloose staff is almost as passionate about mountain biking as they are about skiing. The balance, the fitness, the strength and the adrenaline thing so complement skiing, that well, we had to do something during the summer months to keep us off the streets, though not necessarily out of trouble. Our bike shop started modestly, as did the store, with a few mountain bike rentals. As the sport grew, and our enthusiasm with it, it became apparent that this was something that would become a life-long fixation. Wishing to get involved in the sport and provide service to like-minded riders, we opened a full-fledged bike department featuring a first-class service center, bike sales, clothing and accessories. Now we carrying high-end road and mountain bikes from companies like Santa Cruz and Specialized, and we've attracted a great core of passionate bike techs that love what they do. Over the last couple of seasons, many of our employees have gravitated to the new heavy-duty full-suspension mountain bikes, and the shop has followed. In addition to covering the road and cross-country categories, we carry dozens of freeride and downhill bikes from Intense, Santa Cruz, Specialized and Norco, and our staff is getting painfully familiar with using these awesome new toys. The last two years have been phenomenally successful l - with the additions of Santa Cruz Bicycles, Norco Bikes and Intense Cycles, our bike shop has come into it's own. You can expect the same higher- level service and selection that we've established in our winter incarnation. We hope our site is useful for you - please send any questions to footloose@footloosesports.com or feel free to call us at (U.S.) 760-934-2400. |
