Vertical Playground

At the end of the last millennium, three guys were sitting in a student flat in Oppdal wondering what to do with the 40,000 Norwegian kroner each of them had borrowed from the State Loan Fund. The father of one of them imported steel from Eastern Europe and had room in his trailers for sports equipment of the Czech type; cheap, sturdy, and designed by people with plenty of experience in extreme sports and minimal interest in fancy design.

Twenty years later, the idea of the three guys has become one of Oppdal's most important businesses, with a turnover of around 150 million Norwegian kroner and over 30 employees.