The history of Head

In 1939, Howard Head began working as a riveter for aircraft manufacturer Glenn L. Martin Company before landing a job as an engineer.

Head worked at Martin during the war years, where he was notorious for his penchant for poker games and parties. In 1946, still employed by the company, his penchant for socializing led him to try skiing on a trip to Stowe, Vermont. It was an event that marked a turning point in his life.

Although embarrassed by his attempts on the slopes, he fell in love with the sport and was determined to hone his technique. Like many other beginners, he blamed the equipment for his poor performance. However, unlike most other skiers, Head had the technical knowledge to back up his arguments. Back then, skis were long, heavy and unwieldy; they were also made of hickory wood, a material that easily lost its shape and caused unstable handling.

Instead of simply dedicating himself to mastering the traditional ski, Head boasted that he could make a better, lighter and more efficient ski using metal and airplane construction techniques.

Head bought a band saw for 250 dollars and began designing and building skis in his spare time. His concept was not to simply build a metal ski, as others had tried and failed.

Rather, he took his cue from the aircraft industry's metal sandwich construction method developed during World War II, when chemists developed flexible, waterproof adhesives to bond aluminum and plywood.

In 1947, Head launched his "Honeycomb" ski project. The name comes from the fact that he envisioned a ski that consisted of two layers of aluminum bonded to plywood sidewalls surrounding a core of honeycomb plastic.

In 1968, HEAD established a tennis division within the company and a year later introduced the first metal tennis racket at the U.S. Open.

In 1969, Howard Head sold his company to AMF and retired shortly afterwards.

From then on, he concentrated on his tennis game, which had hardly improved even with a metal racket and numerous lessons. He then developed the first oversized metal tennis racket, revolutionizing a second sport.

Johan Eliasch, who is an avid skier and knew the HEAD brand well, took control of HEAD Sports in 1995. Eliasch acted quickly to continue HTM's success story. With a stronger focus on the product lines, he directed the company's attention to three areas: Winter Sports, Tennis and Diving.

A fourth area, the license business, was added later. As a result of these changes, the company posted a profit in 1997 for the first time in years. In 1997, HTM introduced the first tennis racket made of titanium and graphite, which was very popular. The company then developed the first computer-controlled tennis racket called HEAD Intelligence, which used sensors to adjust the required force and suppress around half of all vibrations, thereby eliminating the cause of tennis elbow.

The new hourglass-shaped skis, designed for sharp turns, also found a good sales market in skiing.