Meet a Creative: Dave Steiner

A key belief here at Hence is that while experience is essential in the creative game, it’s often undervalued. Outsiders don’t typically understand that to tell stories about real athletes doing real things, the storytellers need to have lived similar lives to hang culturally and physically.

That’s the producer, project lead, and visual arts specialist, Dave Steiner’s professional life story. 

Like many in the ski, bike, and outdoor industry, he started out as a pro athlete—in his case skiing for Oakley in front of the camera. But when an injury sidelined him, he applied for a unique position with the company. The job description was to execute Oakley’s product gear tests, develop product concepts, and provide detailed feedback to the R&D teams, before helping to refine the gear, and repeat with the next product. 

“After 17 years at Oakley,” says Dave. “They were restructuring and wanted me to relocate to continue to build the program I built, but do it out of HQ, in Orange County, and I’m rooted in Park City, so it was time to move on.” The high level position would have seen him taking teams of testers and production crews of 10 to 30 to hundreds of locations worldwide. But Dave is rooted in Park City and wanted to stay connected to mountains. 

“The Oakley years gave me an incredible background in global production travel,” says Dave. “I’ve been to Argentina 20 times, Whistler 50 times, and all over Europe. Without knowing it at first, I became a producer. I didn’t have an assistant. From concept to commercialization, I had to manage the entire process. To some people, taking a dozen athletes or a film crew to a foreign country for a production or an event is daunting, but I can put that together in 24 hours.” 

Those skills suited him well for his next project, building a production company to handle clients like Mammut, TRX, and iFIT. IFIT is a Utah based subsidiary of NordicTrack, which, when they connected with Dave, were just beginning to explore the idea of filming real athletes doing real exercise to accompany their cycling fitness equipment. “They asked me if I wanted to be an athlete or if I wanted to help produce the segments,” says Dave, “And I was like, well I can get you all the world class athletes you would ever want, but what you really need is a producer who knows fitness, production and cycling.” 

In the years since, including the Covid home fitness boom and bust, Dave and his team at Falcom Productions has shot 600 cycling fitness segments and counting. At the time this story was written, he’d just returned from 2 weeks in Mallorca with cycling legends like, Sir Bradley Wiggins, Jens Voight, Nico Roche, Coryn Labeki and Dani Rowe. 

Today, beyond the iFIT campaigns which he collaborates on with fellow Hence Expert Scott Markewitz, Dave is employing his skills on TV spot productions for ski companies and guided cycling operators across Europe.

Never stop training: Long ago, Dave learned from Oakley’s Greg Strokes that you can’t be an après ski beer drinker and do this type of work. You have to commit to the training, just like you are one of the athletes you’re documenting. “I’ve been training for three decades,” he says. “Thirty years of cycling, skiing, and moving through the mountains at a high level. I ride mountain and road bikes in the summer and ski tour and ride snowmobiles in the winter. To get ready for winter I’m doing ski touring specific training with weights so that when the snow hits I can be full on. 

“It’s an identity. That’s the critical piece that I think people might not understand. You aren’t just hiring a producer who can make a commercial, you are hiring someone who has built their identity in these sports. When Hincapie wants to put the screws to you, you have to hang on. Same with Chris Davenport on a glacier in Antarctica. “Can you get over that ridge and get a shot of me?” Yes, I can.

Dave has skied and biked on every continent—well, he only skied on Antarctica— and his skills as a producer for logistically complex projects is always in demand. You can connect with him via his Hence Roster profile.