Sterbenz helped launch WNDR Alpine after nearly 20 years running 4FRNT Skis, a first mover in the independent ski movement. He founded 4FRNT in the Lake Tahoe area in 2002 and later moved the company to Utah.

Pep Fujas, pro skier and vice president of marketing and product development for WNDR Alpine held a yellow disc in his hand as he sat in their Salt Lake City offices. “The skis are great, but this is the kind of stuff that gets me really excited,” he said.

“Performance needs to come before impact,” says Matthias Foessel, CEO of Beyond Surface Technologies. “A lot of companies get this wrong. If our fabrics don’t perform we won’t stay alive as a business, let alone succeed in reducing the industry’s carbon footprint. It’s the only business model that works.”

The DIC-Checkerspot partnership is focused on commercializing new and improved products and relevant manufacturing processes areas, including adhesives, coatings, printing inks, and lubricants.

Algae are being tapped as a new resource to make fibres, finishes and dyes for the textile industry. Algae bloom can provide cellulose or proteins, and in microalgae form, the species can produce non-petrochemical oils.

Matt Sterbenz believes his company, WNDR Alpine, may have just made the best ski ever. It happens to be built with algae.

This winter, you can carve the fresh powder of the backcountry on a pair of high-performance, eco-friendly skis designed by world-famous athletes and made from a material produced by microscopic algae. Yes, algae.

The skis, made by a rather unconventional Bay Area biotech company, are a new addition to the long list of products currently being made from chemicals and compounds produced by specially engineered microbes – a field known as biomanufacturing.

We spoke with Scott Franklin, Co-Founder and CSO at Checkerspot. Checkerspot is a synthetic biology company biomanufacturing high quality renewable materials for consumer goods. Scott’s deep technical expertise coupled with his diverse experiences commercializing bio-based products has led him to believe that marketing is often overlooked as a critical factor to a biotech company’s success.