It was early 2005 when I bought a MiniDV Sony Handycam to start shooting. A funny coincidence was that at the exact same time, YouTube was being created in California. The iPhone didn’t exist and online video was not a thing yet. Together with Nicolas Vuignier, we got hooked on creating video episodes about our days in the mountains and started releasing them on a blog we created in 2006. We immediatly met our audience and started raking in tens of thousands of views per video. Every new episode was eagerly anticipated by a generation of young freeskiers identifying themselves with the feeling we were mediating. A core brand was born.
“We created over 100 video episodes in 4 years. No rules, no budget. We were basically Vlogging before the genre even existed.”
Over the years and as the notoriety grew, commercial propositions and brand-collaboration offers started to come our way. However, we decided to remain independent and refused to let sponsors or external parties influence the content we were creating. This creative independance meant we kept things fun, simple and authentic. The brand grew stronger and we started larger projects. in 2010 and 2011, we released two full movies (Mixtape 2010 and OMG) that were featured in multiple international action sports film festival. We created merchandising which we sold through our online shop, generating revenue to expand our activities without compromising our brand.
“Allowing yourself complete freedom to create any content you want about a subject you’re passioned about is the best way to get into content creation.”
As exciting and successful as running these projects was, I decided to step back from these activities in 2012 to pursue ambitions outside of the action sports world.
