ANDY HILL talks about the mountains the way that someone else might talk about falling in love. “When I went to the Alps for the first time, it just felt right,” says the former professional snowboarder. “I felt at home in the mountains. I even used to dream about them.” He learnt to ski as a child, returning every year. By the time he went to study mechanical engineering in Nottingham, his sporting interests had multiplied. “I helped to run the surfing and canoeing clubs and took up white-water rafting.”

On graduating, engineering seemed less appealing than when he started. “People don’t think of engineers as the ones who sent Man to the Moon. They imagine someone holding a spanner.”

Ironically, though, it was Hill’s handiness with spanners that got him his first job in the Alps, as a maintenance man in a French ski resort. Everyone he met was a snowboarder and he switched allegiances. “The snowboarding scene was just starting to build momentum,” he says, and he picked it up quickly. Hooked, the next winter he went to Austria to train as an instructor, teaching and renting out snowboards to be able to spend time on the slopes.

Hill and his friends started entering slalom competitions and races. They attracted the interest of sponsors – “we were getting quite good” – and soon he was competing professionally, representing Britain in the Nations Cup, the European leg of the World Series and coming third in the British Championships.

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The next year, in his fourth winter, he broke a wrist. Weeks later, a bad landing resulted in a compressed disc in his spine. The accident coincided with the end of the season – and the sense that it was time to call it quits.

“Younger, fitter boarders were taking over. I was 27 and had started late. These guys had been doing it since they were 12.” A nagging voice in his head told him to set something aside for the future. “It was a wonderful life but I was living hand to mouth. I had achieved something presentable and it was time to get out.”

Hill decided he would like to be involved in a business in its start-up phase. “I am not entrepreneurial but I felt I had the skills to help someone else who was.” He remembered a former snowboard rental client whose shaving products business, KMI, was just starting to take off.

So he wrote a letter entitled “A job for me” and, half in jest, sent it. He was invited for an interview and offered a job in sales brokerage. Fifteen years on, having worked in every part of the business from finance to product development, he is managing director.

He still uses his snowboarding experience in business situations, such as presenting to retailers. “You have to be mentally and physically prepared to deal with the pressure.” Snowboarding is no longer his career, but the passion endures. “I still go to the Alps every spare moment I can,” he says.

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