Frag Out! Magazine

The Salomon company was established in 1947 in France and for a long time was associated with manufacturing the ski equipment, mainly the skis and ski bindings. During the existence one added the next product lines and in the 1990's under the Salmon brand one begun to sell also mountain and trekking boots - as it can be seen, it is not a firm, which can boast a many years' tradition in developing the boots. Probably it results in the innovative attitude towards footwear crafting. With the increasing popularity of running models developed primarily for the runners and especially trail runners where solutions from the trekking and running shoes were smartly merged. The French-made footwear were also noticed by the members of the special forces in the different countries because they were as reliable as standard military boots, but significantly lighter – so, SOF operators begun to buy on their own such trekking boots as Salomon QUEST 4D GTX or Salomon XA PRO 3D, and soon the purchases were made by the entire teams or even units. As far as the civil colours were not very problematic (especially that shoes were available also in very subdued colours, and alternatively the reflective elements could be easily painted by the black magic marker), but in the case of certain users applying the hooks for lacing system excluded using boots in the tasks where using ropes and parachuting was not an option – the ropes could become entangled and led to a disaster or even death. On request of one of the companies closely cooperating with the US special forces, in 2013 Salomon introduced the popular XA PRO 3D model in the single black colour named Murdered Out edition – it was still the same lightweight trekking shoe, but in the subdued edition, without any colourful or reflective elements. The shoes were sold instantly so somebody started to think of creating the Salmon offer dedicated for the uniform services which could be a perfect complement to the Arc'teryx LEAF tactical series – the common part for these both brands is an owner - the Amer Sports corporation (besides Salomon and Arc'teryx it is also an owner of such brands as Atomic and Suunto). The economic potential of such an enterprise was also significant so it was decided to work on all previous "trekking portfolio" of the Salomon shoes and select the models which were most popular among SOF customers as a base, and then modify them according to the end user's needs. It took some time to develop a collection, but finally, just before the SHOT Show 2015 the Salomon FORCES brand was launched. Currently a SALOMON FORCES line up comprises of nine models, divided into three main groups: ASSAULT – the lightweight shoes for the highly dynamic direct action operations, MOUNTAIN – the mountain/trekking boots. EXTREME COLD WEATHER – intended for the use in extremely low temperatures. All of them are based on the models previously well-known from the trekking and trail Salomon lines – however we know that there are new designs in the pipeline, developed form the scratch for the FORCES series. www.fragoutmag.com

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