Elan (company)
Elan is a Slovenian company from Begunje, sports articles, mainly for ski sports, manufactures.
The company was founded in 1945 by the carpenter and ski jumpers Rudi Finžgar ( 1920-1995 ). First, it was mainly produced for the Yugoslav market; only as the brand used skis Elan in the 1970s, the Swedish skier Ingemar Stenmark, the company gained wider notoriety. The number of employees in Begunje doubled between 1970 (668 employees) and 1987 (1351 employees).
In 1990 the company was in debt and was taken over by its main creditor, Privredna Banka Zagreb. Since the late 1990s Elan is majority owned by several government- Slovenian investment fund manager is Primoz Finžgar, a son of the founder. The Glider production was moved in 1999 into a separate company called AMS Flight, which produces Begunje motor glider.
In 2004, the company had 1,100 employees in Begunje and produced annually around 550,000 pairs of skis. In addition, Elan had a factory in Fürnitz ( municipality Finkenstein am Faaker See, Carinthia, Austria ), the (partly for other brands) produced snowboards. Other subsidiaries make sail and motor boat builders.
On March 13, 2013 were, according to bankruptcy protection association KSV1870 the bankruptcy proceedings over the Austrian Elan daughter Elan sports goods production and Handelsgesellschaft mbH opened from Fürnitz (Carinthia ) at the Klagenfurt Regional Court. Had Kärntner Elan snowboard factory around 8.7 million euros of debt, with a fortune of 6.5 million euros. From bankruptcy 78 employees and 120 creditors were affected.