Karl Wallach - Ski equipment importer

Karl Wallach, chairman of the importing firm Beconta, died August 1 in Cape Coral, Florida, at age 99.

Born and schooled in New York City, during World War II Wallach served as a navigation and communications officer in the U.S. Navy, in the Pacific Theatre. After the war he graduated Columbia University on the G.I. Bill. While working in the sporting goods department of Saks Fifth Avenue, he befriended Walter Blascoe, founder of the import firm Beconta. Wallach became an investor in Beconta, and joined the company in the spring of 1949.

The company imported track and field equipment, mainly from Scandinavia, plus a few skis and sweaters. Blascoe signed Nordica ski boots just in time to benefit when Zeno Colò won the FIS downhill championship at Aspen in 1950. Beconta soon achieved a 30-percent market share for Nordica in the United States, and later acquired distribution rights for Look bindings and then Völkl skis. When Blascoe retired in 1959, Wallach purchased Beconta with help from a new financial partner, his Scarsdale neighbor Jim Woolner. In 1961 they signed up Puma athletic shoes, beginning 15 years of growing success in and outside the ski trade.

Wallach, fluent in German, was Beconta’s hard-bargaining negotiator, contrasting with Woolner's warm, personable sales-and-marketing orientation. Wallach's uncompromising style in dealing with European suppliers may have been a factor in Nordica’s decision, in 1975, to drop the Beconta contract and set up a joint-venture distribution firm of its own in North America, in partnership with Rossignol.. Beconta picked up Dolomite boots, dropped Völkl and began to distribute Kästle skis. In 1978 the company lost its Puma contract, beginning years of struggle. Beconta closed its doors in 1986; Wallach and Woolner retired.

Wallach then lived in Aspen and Carbondale, Colorado, and finally in Cape Coral, Florida, with his son Edward and daughter-in-law Diana.

For more details, see “The Life and Times of Beconta,” Skiing History, November-December 2015.