Sounds to me like Augment has parted ways with their US distributor and haven’t got the time/resources to find a replacement. They will have also lost all sales to Russia due to sanctions.
The deal with Van Deer looks like a game changer for Augment. The initial production run of 1500 pairs sold out by the beginning of November, Dominic Tritscher Van Deer’s CEO said that they could have sold 10,000 pairs! In 2018 Augment made a total of 6000 pairs. At the moment the emphasis seems to be on increasing production, which will be challenging as the lead times for ski manufacturing equipment are currently very long.
Whilst ski manufactures are certainly experiencing supply chain issues, I also think Otto is being overly pessimistic. There are currently no reports of any layoffs at ski factories due to raw material shortages. Titanal comprises 80% recycled aluminum, production doesn’t seem to have been affected so far, but the price of aluminum has risen by around 45% due to increased energy costs. As far as I know there are only two companies that manufacture ski edges and both are located in Austria. There might well be issues with the supply of other materials such as natural rubber that is used for dampening and the exotic woods used in ski cores, but most materials are sourced locally.
Fischer have restarted ski production at their factory in Ukraine, in an interview given to Austrian TV on March 22 Franz Föttinger the CEO said:
"We are producing with the equipment that we have available on site. We have a bit of a limitation because some employees have been called up to the army, but we have been able to compensate for that for the most part. We are in operation and things are functioning surprisingly normally. Our Ukrainian colleagues are convinced that the war will not come to the far west, where we are. What this optimism is based on and whether it will really be like that is, of course, up in the air."
Production at Fischer ski's headquarters in Ried, has also been increased with additional shifts in order to be less dependent on the factory in Ukraine.
One thing that is certain is that the price of ski equipment will increase considerably, so if you need anything for next season it would be a good Idea to buy it now.