On 6/1/2000, Guiseppe “Sepl” Thaler and his sons Christian and Stefan founded the WINTERSTEIGER subsidiary in Italy for the sale of ski service machines and rental systems. The back story was that WINTERSTEIGER – and above all also the customers – was extremely dissatisfied with the previous sales partner.

The Thaler family’s business was already a sales partner of the companies Skid and Ski2, which had been taken over by WINTERSTEIGER. This connection resulted in the foundation of the joint venture between WINTERSTEIGER and the Thaler company.

Top Priority: Winning Back Customers.

Although Giuseppe Thaler was already well known as a representative for skis, bindings and ski service machines in the Trentino-South Tirol region, the first few years were very difficult because many customers had suffered bad experiences and first needed to be convinced of the service quality and reliability of WINTERSTEIGER again. WINTERSTEIGER Italia presented itself to everyone as a serious and efficient partner, and step by step and machine by machine it managed to turn things around.

In 2005 WINTERSTEIGER Italia added seed cultivation to its product range, and has been selling SERRA sawmills in Italy since 2020.