Shortage of snow wipes out traditional German toboggan maker
One of Germany’s last traditional manufacturers of wooden toboggans is ceasing production after more than a century in the business, blaming global warming and the resulting dearth of snowy winters.
Based in Schwebheim, a village in the north of Bavaria, the Ress family used to sell more than 60,000 sledges in a good year. Now it is barely 6,000. Michael Ress, the current owner, has been forced to admit defeat.
“It hurts. It really hurts,” Ress, 70, told the local public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk. “It was my life. I’ve inherited it from my forefathers as far back as the eighth generation.”
The company produces the Mountain tobogganas well as the typical Davos
RESS
The Ress family started as cartwrights, producing coaches and wagons for the route from Frankfurt to Vienna from the end of the 17th century.
Two hundred years later they moved into sledges instead, making them with beechwood from the dense forests across the border in Thuringia.
The trade remained profitable for a long time — even in the 1990s there were more than 30 German companies in the sector.
Snowfall is in decline across Europe, with the Alps recently receiving a third less than a century ago, according to Eurac
LEONHARD SIMON/GETTY IMAGES
Today there are thought to be only three others. The Ress family did what they could to keep the business alive, including an ill-fated foray into “summer toboggans” on wheels.
It also enjoyed a brief resurgence during the pandemic, when a combination of lockdowns and an unusually cold winter temporarily revived demand.
Now, however, Ress is retiring and his son Johannes is pivoting the company to produce saddles and upholstery instead.
“I’ve often tried to find a way of continuing my father’s work so that I can keep on making the toboggans, but I just don’t see a future in it any longer,” Johannes Ress said. “Since there are virtually no winters here any more, no more snow, it’s just not worth it any more.”
The chief problem is climate change. Another factor is Germany’s birth rate, which has since 2021 resumed its long-term decline after a short-lived revival in the 2010s.
Michael Ress said the rise of internet commerce had also made life more difficult.
“Through the online business, through the whole thing, the whole behaviour of the consumers has completely shifted,” he said. “They put in their orders only when it is really snowing outdoors and that is exactly the point at which we and the distributors have fewer units at our disposal.