Real Finnish wooden kicksleds are made in a small village in Southern Ostrobothnia with over a 70-year experience. One in ten of the kicksleds made is exported.
In 1928, Mr. Erkki Samuli Lahtinen, “Lahtis-Samppa”, managed to get the Finnish retail rights of the motorbike label “Indian”. From the parts of these bikes he built a machine to manufacture kicksleds. So began the industrial production of kicksleds in Finland.
“We date the start of the industrial production of kicksleds to 1933. Nowadays they are sold under the name Esla,” says Mr. Raimo Lahtinen, managing director of the E.S. Lahtinen Oy and a descendant of Lahtis-Samppa. So far over a million kicksleds have been made in the Koura village, which has 500 residents.
The last machine in use that was designed and made by Lahtis-Samppa, a bandsaw made of T-Ford parts, was replaced by a bought one a couple of years ago. “The older was better, but no one knew how to repair it anymore,” Lahtinen frets.
The sales reflect the winter
The weather affects the kicksled trade directly and last winter was an exceptionally bad one. Lasting snow fell in nearly two months later than usually in Koura in January and so far this winter promises no better.
The snow conditions are clearly reflected in the kicksled production. “We make the parts of the kicksleds year around, but assemble them only during the autumn based on the orders made by the wholesale firms,” Lahtinen explains.
“An early and snowy winter in Southern Finland would be good for sales. There are few people in Northern Finland and they all have kicksleds already,” he reflects.
The company makes some 20,000 kicksleds annually and they generate a quarter of the revenues. The rest comes from subcontracting and different kinds of mobility devices on wheels.
But as recently as in the beginning of the 1980’s 80 percent of the revenues came from kicksleds. At its highest, the annual production was 70,000 kicksleds. “Luckily we didn’t have these kinds of winters back then,” Lahtinen says. However, he believes, that the winters like the last one are exceptions and we will have snowy winters again.
Safety, quality and ecology are important
Lahtinen explains that the company buys the wood it uses, birch, as planks sawn to their own dimensions. Some 200 cubic meters of birch is used annually.
Only the best, knotless birch is good enough for kicksleds. The longest parts of the kicksled, the upright poles are sawn exactly on the grain from knotless timber.
“The poles must sustain a dead stop. If a pole splinters, it becomes an upright sword,” Lahtinen says. He says that the company could outsource the sawing if someone could do it. But others cannot.
The company pays attention to sustainability in various ways. They use only water-dilutable paints and varnishes. All the kicksled parts can be recycled.
“Red, blue and varnished. Other colours do not sell. Also the model has been kept pretty traditional. People are quite nostalgic about kicksleds,” Lahtinen says.
In 1974 a big change took place in the production. The kicksleds were made collapsible, mainly for transport purposes.
“That was opposed, too. The shopkeepers sold the kicksleds assembled so that the customer would not know it was a collapsible model.”
Accessories and special routes increase use
One can also buy sliding and snow runners, which improve carrying capacity and are installed under the kicksled runners. With snow runners one can kick away even on a trail made by a single run with a snow mobile.
In Finland the compulsory winter sanding of streets and cycle paths hampered everyday use of kicksleds for a long time. In 2005, a change in the legislation made it possible for a municipality to leave some streets or parts of them unsanded for kicksled users.
Lahtinen says that people do not know of this change and cannot therefore ask their municipality for kicksled routes. Still, the municipality of Pälkäne in Southern Finland has been a forerunner in this: even a special traffic sign has been develop there to inform people of kicksled routes.
A kicksled can also be accessorised with wheels. E.S. Lahtinen does not make wooden, kicksled-like wheelsleds anymore, only metal kickcycles.
If used and maintained correctly, an Esla-kicksled keeps for decades, Lahtinen promises. Of course, for sales it would be better, if the models were changed more often. He says that the kicksleds are really durable; he believes that someone, somewhere in Finland is still using a kicksled made in Koura in the 1950’s.
By Krista Kimmo
 E.S. Lahtinen Oy
A kicksledding guide (on the webpages of the Kicksled club Ketkupolkka)
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