Sharp-eyed viewers of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics may have spotted a small reminder of the Green Mountains on the world stage: athletes sporting Skida, the Vermont winter wear brand known for its whimsical patterned hats and accessories.
Alpine racer Paula Moltzan of Waitsfield was among the Skida ambassadors, showing off her strawberry-patterned neck warmer on the slopes. “Talk to any skier around the U.S., and they’ll know Skida,” she said. “It’s everywhere.”
Skida has come a long way since 2008, when Corinne Prevot, then a high school junior, started sewing hats in her dorm room at Burke Mountain Academy. Today, her company is a multimillion-dollar mainstay of Vermont winter fashion, one of a cohort of apparel makers, including Burton, Turtle Fur and Darn Tough, that have maintained their local roots as they have become nationally known outdoor brands. While Vermont remains Skida’s primary market — roughly a quarter of its sales happen here — its products can be found in 350 stores across the country, including some locations of iconic chains such as REI and L.L.Bean.
The brand’s sales have grown fivefold in the past decade, Prevot said, and the number of hats Skida sells each year tops six figures. (She declined to share revenue numbers.) The company has grown from a two-woman operation — Prevot and her mom, Margie — to 23 full-time employees. Skida’s offerings have expanded beyond its signature beanies to include headbands, scrunchies, balaclavas, scarves, gaiters, gloves, bike shorts and dog bandanas.
“I’m living beyond what I ever dreamed.” Corinne Prevot
Accessorizing with Skida has become a hallmark of the so-called “granola girl” aesthetic, designed to appeal to the environmentally conscious, outdoorsy, laid-back customer, who probably has a dog. To such customers, the Skida brand promises not just functionality but sustainability, made-in-Vermont craftsmanship and social responsibility. And its apparel isn’t just for the slopes anymore; you’re as likely to spot a Skida hat on Church Street as on the mountains.
Prevot, 33, is a former Middlebury College Nordic ski racer and an embodiment of her brand — young, athletic, happiest outdoors. She often serves as a model herself on the Skida website. She travels the world skiing and mountain biking — and is currently nursing a shoulder injured in a spring bike accident. Sixteen years after selling her first hat, Prevot still gets butterflies when she sees someone wearing Skida on the street.
“It’s been an incredible journey,” she said. “I feel like I’m living beyond what I ever dreamed.”
Queen of Hats
On a recent Tuesday morning, Prevot sat at her desk and fiddled with a miniature clay snowman, revealing the “YAY” tattooed on the inside of her middle finger as she worked.
“Frick, his little arm fell off!” she muttered, setting the piece aside.
She explained that she’d crafted the little guy since her biking accident forced her to rest — a challenge for someone who counts on outdoor exercise to recharge.
“And now I do Claymation,” Prevot said sarcastically. “I think I need to go spend more time in nature, or else I’m gonna make a whole clay world.”
In her purple Patagonia fleece and black Garmin watch, Prevot seemed more ready for mountain adventures than to be stuck behind a desk. Friends describe her as a daredevil, unafraid to send it off any cliff. That sense of adventure was on display in a 2021 vermontvacation.com video of Prevot and elite mountain biker Ella McAndrew riding through northern and central Vermont.
“Take it with as much speed as you want,” McAndrew tells Prevot.
“To the fucking moon!” Prevot fires back, as the clip cuts to a shot of her flying through the air on her bike.
Yet for all her thrill seeking, Prevot is intimately aware of its dangers. Her 26-year-old cousin Adèle died while climbing in the French Alps in August 2022. The loss was compounded by a painful family history: Adèle’s mom — Prevot’s aunt — died in an avalanche in Switzerland in 2003.
In the face of these tragedies, some people might have stepped away from high-risk pursuits. Prevot did not.
“In a risky position, I can get really nervous, because I know what the consequences can be,” she said. “I’ve looked inward to be like, I understand the risk, but I still want to do this because I love it.”
Prevot’s love of mountain sports isn’t just a personal pursuit — it’s at the heart of Skida’s small but profitable niche in the $35 billion worldwide outdoor apparel industry. These days, successful outdoors companies don’t just sell products; they sell stories, according to Kelly Ault, executive director of the Vermont Outdoor Business Alliance.
She believes that’s Skida’s secret sauce.
“[Prevot] continues, to this day, to really be rooted and anchored in that sense of place and identity,” Ault said. “There’s a special magic to what Skida represents.”
While Skida can be for everyone — its offerings include a small men’s section and collections for kids and babies — the brand’s core “granola girl” customer fits a certain profile. According to Prevot, data show that she’s a college-educated, 30-year-old woman living in Denver, balancing a full-time job with a love for weekend hiking adventures.
Those customers also want to feel that their purchases align with their values, reflected in Skida’s long list of philanthropic ventures. Those include the Skida [+1] program, through which the company donates one hat to a cancer patient for each one sold online with a promotional code. It has donated about 6,000 hats so far. Proceeds from the leafy green Elmore print support the conservation of Vermont State Parks. A portion of sales from the orange-and-pink Fulbaari print — “flower garden” in Nepali — benefits subsistence farming communities in Nepal.
Skida customers find themselves reflected on Skida’s website, where the company does close to 64 percent of its sales. (This year, Skida also began selling its apparel on Amazon, which Prevot said accounts for a smaller percentage of its business.) A tab called “Stories” features blog posts that fit with the typical Skida girl’s active lifestyle, such as “The Ski Movies We’re Psyched to See this Fall” and “Climbing Volcanoes 101.”
Skida’s ever-evolving patterns also set it apart and create eye-catching retail displays. Andy Kingston, co-owner of the Alpine Shop in South Burlington, observed that while other Vermont-based brands such as Turtle Fur have adopted similar colorful designs, Skida’s apparel has a particular way of standing out on a shelf. Browsing a display feels a little like peering through a kaleidoscope.
“When you put all the Skida patterns together, they’re all colorful, and they’re all unique,” he said. “So when you have them together in the store, it really pops.”
Skida makes eight different types of hats, but each one comes in seemingly endless patterns. While managing a wide selection of prints comes with challenges — Skida must make smart decisions about what to keep in stock — the variety helps appeal to a wide range of customers. The best-selling Alpine hat ($38), for example, comes in 38 prints, from the red Maine Character hat with lobsters to the white Crowded Slopes pattern dotted with skiers. Designed with cross-country skiing in mind, the hat stays put even with intense exercise. The cozy fleece lining and snug fit make wearing the hat feel like wrapping your head in a tight embrace.
Prevot would prefer the company to grow by expanding the number of small independent stores that carry her products, rather than by appearing in big-box retailers. That’s because she is mindful of maintaining Skida’s community-oriented feel. At REI in Williston, for example, Skida appears as part of a display featuring several Vermont-based brands.
“I don’t suspect that you would see Skida at, like, Dick’s Sporting Goods,” she said.
She draws inspiration from Burton, the snowboard company that she said demonstrates how it’s possible to be an industry leader while staying anchored in Vermont. Success, she said, means building a company that thrives for the next 20 years and beyond. Given its current trajectory, she feels confident Skida is well positioned to last.
“Sure, anyone can create fun designs and make hats. The opportunity is there,” Prevot said. “[But] I think it would be incredibly difficult to replicate Skida as a complete package.”
Beanie Baby
Prevot grew up on a hobby farm in rural York County, Pa. She learned practical skills at an early age, shearing the family’s sheep and working at their farmstand with her two younger brothers after school.
Vermont always felt like a second home. The family regularly made the nine-hour drive to visit Prevot’s grandmother in Lyndonville. At 2, Prevot learned to ski on the J-bar at Burke Mountain. She was hooked. Back in Pennsylvania, the kids used their steep driveway for practice, and the family often skied at the nearby Roundtop Mountain Resort.
Skiing runs in Prevot’s blood. Her mother, Margie, was a competitive Nordic skier at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. Her father, Roger, attended Burke Mountain Academy, the elite prep school in the Northeast Kingdom that trains competitive skiers, and later skied on the Alpine team at Williams.
Sewing, too, was a constant in Prevot’s childhood. She watched her mom spin wool and make clothes, and soon she was eager to try herself. At about age 5, Prevot decided her bedroom needed curtains. At the local fabric store, she loaded a cart with eight different colors. Amused, her mom asked which one she wanted for the curtains.
“All of them!” Prevot replied, explaining her vision for a mismatched, striped design. Margie bought all the fabrics. Sure enough, Prevot’s colorful vision came to life.
“Corinne’s very much a self-starter,” Margie said in a recent phone interview. “You could give her a sewing machine, show her the basics, and she’s off on her own.”
In eighth grade, Prevot followed her father’s path and enrolled at Burke Mountain Academy to begin racing competitively. In her junior year, she switched from Alpine to Nordic skiing. The sport’s aerobic demands quickly exposed a flaw in her gear: Her fleece hats were too warm.
Unable to find the breathable, stylish hat she was looking for, Prevot decided to make one herself. She bought some stretchy Lycra fabric at a craft store in Lyndonville and sewed a batch of hats that resembled swim caps.
Prevot and some of her teammates wore the homemade hats to a race in Rumford, Maine. The colorful patterns with polka dots and stripes caught the attention of girls from Stratton Mountain School, who asked where they could buy them. Prevot made up a price: $20.
She didn’t know it yet, but she had just sold the first Skida beanies.
Not the ‘Same Old Hat’
After that race, Prevot was ready to go into business, at least in a small way, and she needed a name for her enterprise.
She began googling the words for goddesses of snow and mountains in various languages. Many were already trademarked. She liked Skida, the Swedish word for “ski,” but the Southern Kentucky Industrial Development Association had already claimed the internet domain for skida.org.
“I was like, All right, I think that’s OK,” Prevot recalled thinking. “I’ll deal with that.” (Until the Kentucky association went defunct some years later, she used skidasport.com and shopskida.com.)
“People were intrigued by the fun designs and would come up and ask at races, ‘Where did you get the hat?'” Caitlin Bernstein
She used money she had saved from babysitting jobs and a summer gig at a golf course to buy more fabric. By the next weekend, she had made another batch of hats. She took them to a race at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe and sold them out of a shoebox from the back of the Burke van. At other meets, she began setting up shop at the Burke tent. She would hang her hats from a clothesline and hand out business cards with her email so people could place orders. Soon, parents and spectators were buying hats, too.
Skiers rocking the hats during races proved to be the ultimate form of free advertising.
“People were intrigued by the fun designs and would come up and ask at races, ‘Where did you get the hat?'” said Caitlin Bernstein, Prevot’s former teammate and longtime friend. “It was cool to be able to say, ‘Oh, Corinne made them and is making more of them.’ That was an appeal, too: They were made by somebody locally that they knew.”
Kate Newick, a former assistant coach for the Burke Nordic team, recalled that the multicolor hats allowed athletes to add a touch of personality to an otherwise drab ski uniform.
“Everyone’s been wearing the same old hat for years in the Nordic world. And up pops this totally unique company that you’re like, Oh, my gosh, I’m gonna wear flowers on my head instead of navy, blue and white. Sign me up,” said Newick, who now works as a Skida salesperson. “It was the first unique thing in the Nordic world in ages.”
As word of Skida spread, Prevot’s math teacher offered to drive her to East Burke Sports, an outdoors store where her husband worked as a bike mechanic. There, Prevot pitched a deal: She would sell the hats to the store for $15 each, and they could retail them for $20.
When the store owners explained the standard markup — buying hats for $15 and selling for $30 — it was a “rude awakening,” Prevot later recalled.
Meanwhile, parents of Burke classmates connected her with ski shops in New England. She launched a blog, where customers could comment on their preferred hat prints. Then they could mail Prevot a check to place an order.
As college applications loomed during her senior year, Prevot realized she needed help to keep up with all the sewing. She’d made a dragon-print hat for one of Burke’s maintenance workers, who mentioned that his wife was a skilled sewist. Soon, she and a friend began sewing for Prevot — the start of Skida’s Vermont-based manufacturing network, with sewists working from homes across the Northeast Kingdom.
By the time Prevot graduated from Burke and headed to Middlebury College, Skida had made its first $8,000.
The Midd Market
At Middlebury, Prevot was often on the verge of falling asleep in class. She was competing on the school’s Division I Nordic ski team, maintaining a busy social life, double-majoring in sociology and geography — and managing Skida on the side.
She excelled on the ski team, winning the 5K freestyle race at a junior national championship in 2010. But she struggled with exams, although she never failed a class. For the first time in her life, her academic performance was being evaluated numerically. Neither her Montessori elementary school nor Burke had given students letter grades.
“When I got to Middlebury, I remember just being so scared of tests and grades,” Prevot said. “That was definitely a shock and an adjustment period. I think it went well, and I was able to graduate … but I don’t think I really slept.” To help out, her mom took on tasks such as cutting fabric and shipping out Skida orders.
The summer before Prevot’s junior year, she received a call from an editor at Forbes magazine. It was planning a story on student entrepreneurs, and someone at Middlebury had recommended Prevot and Skida.
“I remember thinking, Holy smokes,” Prevot said.
As part of the feature, the nine student entrepreneurs would be flown to Austin, Texas, to meet with Michael Dell, the billionaire founder of Dell computers, who started his company in a University of Texas dorm room.
Prevot called her dad, a partner at the private equity firm Kohlberg & Company, for advice about what to say to Forbes and Dell. He encouraged her to highlight the fact that she hadn’t raised outside capital and was reinvesting all of her revenue in the company.
“He helped me put words to what we were doing,” Prevot said. “My mom and I were laughing, because he’d be like, ‘How many hats have you guys made?’ And we’d say, ‘A lot.’ I didn’t know yet how to talk about the business.”
For someone who didn’t focus on numbers, Prevot’s metrics were pretty darn good. That $8,000 in revenue she’d made in high school? Now, she was doing $100,000 in sales each year. Roughly $42,000 of that was profit.
At the roundtable in Austin, 20-year-old Prevot, dressed in a gray knit cardigan and polka-dot blouse, stood out among a crowd of men in button-down shirts. The entrepreneurs included a recent graduate of California Polytechnic State University who repaired cracked iPhones and a senior at Brigham Young University who made potting soil from recycled food waste. The only other woman in attendance was a sophomore at Stanford University who was balancing her course load with a job as an associate at a San Francisco venture capital firm.
Prevot said the trip taught her to speak about Skida in business terms and intensified her determination to turn her passion into a full-time job.
“That event really kicked my ass into gear,” she said.
Afterward, Prevot told her parents she was thinking of dropping out of college. Dell had done it — why couldn’t she? Her parents urged her to stick it out at Middlebury, and ultimately she agreed.
Looking back, Prevot is glad she stayed, because those years would prove important to Skida. She spent four months of her junior year in Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley, learning about the cashmere industry. The experience culminated in a 44-page paper — “Pulling the Cash From Cashmere: Reviving Nepal’s Pashmina” — which she based on factory tours and interviews with local experts.
When Prevot returned from Nepal, she decided to stop skiing competitively and focus on Skida. As graduation neared, she didn’t bother applying for jobs. She already had one: Skida CEO.
A Snowballing Business
The summer after she graduated from Middlebury, Prevot attended the Tuck Bridge Business Program at Dartmouth College. During the three-week crash course, she and other students researched the strategy behind the high-end athleisure chain Lululemon.
Then she returned to Vermont and leased a 750-square-foot room for Skida in the Maltex Building on Pine Street in Burlington. Her commercial real estate agent, Yves Bradley, recently described the space as “essentially a box with a small HVAC closet” and noted that a marble could have rolled across the uneven floor.
Bradley remembers being surprised that such a young person was leasing the commercial space.
“I was so impressed,” Bradley said. “I remember saying to her, ‘When I was your age, I didn’t even have a clue about anything … You have so much focus and so much drive.'”
With increased confidence in her business instincts, Prevot started taking a salary. That year, she hired her first employee, Caitlin Mitchell — a friend from high school ski racing — to manage wholesale accounts. Not long after, she hired a second, Sarah Micioni, to oversee e-commerce. Two years after Prevot graduated, Skida had outgrown its tiny office and moved to its current retail location on Kilburn Street.
The young CEO set her sights on new products and markets. She returned to Nepal, this time with a business proposal in hand. Skida soon launched a collection of cashmere hats, produced by the people she had met as a student.
Meanwhile, Skida’s reach continued to grow, gaining national — and even global — attention. When a number of U.S. athletes hit the slopes in Skida gear at the Beijing Olympics, they caught the eye of U.S. Ski & Snowboard, the national governing body for Olympic and Paralympic skiing and snowboarding. The association told Prevot that they would need to license Skida in order for the company to outfit their athletes. That led to a partnership and co-branded U.S. Ski & Snowboard and Skida collections.
“Our guerilla marketing days were over,” Prevot joked.
Several Olympic athletes now have their own Skida collections, including Alpine skiers Ryan Cochran-Siegle and Paula Moltzan, cross-country skier Julia Kern, freestyle skier Hannah Soar, and snowboarder Bea Kim. Moltzan’s sixth custom print, Farmer’s Market, features mountains, strawberries and flowers, a pattern she said was inspired by the essence of a Vermont summer.
But with growth came new challenges for a company that had always prided itself on its Vermont bona fides. As the brand’s offerings expanded, so did the complexity of its manufacturing needs. For instance, the flat-brim hat introduced in 2019 required more sophisticated construction than a simple straight stitch. Skida turned to a factory in New Jersey. This October, Skida introduced a collection of liner gloves made in China — a fact that does not appear in the firm’s marketing. The tag on the gloves reads “Designed in Vermont.”
Prevot explained that manufacturing outside Vermont allows Skida to incorporate advanced technical features, such as the touch screen compatibility of the gloves, which she couldn’t find locally. Skida’s mitten, produced in collaboration with Vermont Glove, is made in Randolph.
Prevot added that while she admires companies such as Darn Tough for keeping their manufacturing in Vermont, the Northfield company only has one product: socks.
“Where Skida is different is that we’re exploring other product categories, [so] we’ve needed to tap into different construction and manufacturing resources to be able to bring those products to life,” she said.
At the same time, she added, Skida remains committed to maintaining a local presence. Today, two-thirds of Skida products are made in Vermont. Home-based seamstresses continue to craft Skida products in the Northeast Kingdom. Fourbital Factory, a small-batch manufacturer in Burlington’s South End, produced two styles of Skida’s ribbed beanies this year. Vermonters also handle Skida’s custom orders at an in-house production studio, part of the 10,000 square feet of office space that Skida occupies on both sides of Kilburn Street.
University of Vermont senior Katja Astrauskas works part time at the Skida studio, sewing labels on custom orders for organizations that want their logo on Skida products. On a recent Friday morning, Astrauskas was working on headbands for Snowmass, a Colorado ski resort. The sewing gig was a dream job for the 21-year-old, a longtime Skida customer and competitive Nordic skier.
Growing up, Astrauskas admired Olympians such as Jessie Diggins, the most decorated American cross-country skier of all time. Now, thanks to Skida’s partnership with U.S. Ski & Snowboard, she’s helping craft apparel for those same athletes.
“I was like, Oh, my gosh. I got to see Jessie Diggins’ headband,” she said. “Everyone I know, especially in the Nordic ski world, is like, ‘That’s the coolest job ever.'”
Looking Ahead
Prevot, who lives in Burlington’s Lakeside neighborhood with her longtime boyfriend, Patrick Dodge, isn’t slowing down. During one recent week, she directed a photo shoot in Burlington, visited a Skida warehouse in New Jersey and represented the brand at the Snowbound Expo in Boston.
In the near term, Prevot said she plans to continue expanding Skida’s offerings, including a new collection of fuzzy vests set to launch this December. She also has an idea for a warm pant, the winter complement to the company’s lightweight summer Viska Pant.
Long term, she wants Skida to become an internationally recognized brand, tapping markets from Japan to Scandinavia. With that in mind, Prevot spends much of the year traveling to ski towns around the world. The company has sent representatives to international trade shows and has been scouting stores in Canada, where it aims to secure a larger retail footprint.
Eventually, Prevot hopes to collaborate with artists worldwide, creating Skida prints tailored to local styles. She dreams of opening a pop-up shop in Chamonix, the French mountain town she views as a prime destination for outdoor enthusiasts.
Despite these ambitions, Prevot remains committed to slow, organic growth. To date, Skida has not sought any outside investment. Prevot likens building the business to nurturing a fire — adding too big a log too soon could smother the flames.
“We’re really conscientious about what types of initiatives we’re going to invest in,” Prevot said. “For me, success is the brand continuing to live on.”
Prevot often reflects on why some businesses endure while others fade away. She acknowledged that luck plays a role — and that she’s had her fair share.
“There’s definitely some higher-power magic happening here,” Prevot said of Skida’s success.
“Walmart started as a small, family-run general store,” she continued. “Think about all the general stores that have existed in any small town, and that’s just the one that has survived and grown long enough to become what it is now, right?”
When Prevot thinks about Skida’s origins, she seems struck by a mix of nostalgia and disbelief. On her office windowsill, she keeps a photo of herself and two teammates wearing the very first hats she sewed in high school. Back then, she didn’t yet have the name Skida.
“They were just hats,” she said with a laugh.
This weekend, Prevot will be at the Stifel Killington Cup, an annual race where the fastest women skiers in the world compete in front of tens of thousands of fans. Prevot will watch races, sit at a table with Moltzan — who will be signing autographs — and participate in a panel discussion called “HERoic Women in the Industry.”
It’s a bit of déjà vu, selling Skida at a ski race, but now on a much bigger stage.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Hats Off | Skida CEO Corinne Prevot started making colorful ski hats in high school. Now, her beanies are turning heads in Vermont and beyond.”
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2024.
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