Level Gloves: From Snowboarding Roots to Swiss Engineering and Italian Style

Most glove brands begin with skiing and expand outward. Level Gloves took another route.

Founded in 1989 in Bormio, Italy, Level emerged just as snowboarding was beginning to gain traction in the Alps. The idea was simple: this new sport needed a glove designed specifically for the way snowboarders actually rode and fell. What started with two guys, an early prototype, and a small trade show setup would eventually grow into a glove specialist spanning snowboarding, ski racing, resort skiing, and a distinctive women’s collection. More than 35 years later, Level still builds around that specialization. The brand describes its approach with a phrase that neatly captures what makes it different: Swiss engineering and Italian style.

Level Gloves: Keep Chasing Winter

A Glove Built for a New Kind of Winter Sport

When Level entered the market, snowboarding was still relatively new in Europe. Founder Mauro Compagnoni saw an opportunity to rethink the traditional ski glove around the needs of snowboarders.

The early concept paired the longer cuff of a ski glove with features aimed at protection, including wrist protection, impact protection, Kevlar reinforcement, and reinforced fingertips. It wasn’t simply a ski glove marketed toward snowboarders. The product was being reconsidered around the demands of the sport itself.

Within a few years, the concept took off. Snowboarding became the foundation of Level’s identity for roughly its first decade, and the United States eventually became one of its most important markets as the sport grew. Level continued developing protective technology, and wrist protection remains an important part of the collection today.

That history is still visible in products using Level’s Biomex protection system. The system is designed to support the wrist in an anatomically strong position while addressing multiple forces that can cause injuries during falls.

For snowboarders, especially newer riders who spend plenty of time catching themselves with their hands, it’s an easy problem to understand. Level’s roots came from recognizing that problem and building a glove around it.

From Snowboarding to Ski Racing

Level’s next major chapter required the brand to cross what can be a surprisingly wide divide in winter sports: from snowboarding into skiing.

Around the mid-2000s, Davide Compagnoni, a former athlete with the Italian National Ski Team, became involved with Level. His experience and connections in ski racing helped the company establish its racing collection and expand its presence in the ski market.

The transition wasn’t necessarily an obvious one. Ski and snowboard culture may share the same mountains, but the products, consumers, and identities surrounding the two sports can be very different. Level managed to build credibility in both.

Today, racing has become one of the brand’s defining categories. The technology that made protection so important to Level’s early snowboard gloves also translated naturally into racing, where a glove begins to function as more than apparel.

As Andy Salini, Level’s U.S. brand manager and sales director, explained during our conversation, a racing glove is almost closer to a helmet than a traditional piece of soft goods. Protection becomes central to the product, particularly as racers make contact with gates at speed.

That creates an interesting thread through Level’s history. The sports changed, but the original idea didn’t. Build the glove around what the athlete’s hands actually need.

Putting Warmth to the Test

Protection isn’t the only area where Level has taken a technical approach. One of the company’s biggest differentiators today is something nearly every skier and snowboarder cares about: warm hands.

The problem is that “warm” can be frustratingly subjective when you’re shopping for gloves. Level wanted to make it measurable.

In collaboration with Italian universities, the company developed a testing system that uses specialized equipment to measure the thermal performance of its gloves. Level’s Thermoplus system now classifies gloves across five warmth levels, giving customers a clearer indication of the conditions each product is designed to handle.

Instead of relying entirely on marketing language like “warm” or “extra warm,” the system ranges from Thermoplus 1000 for milder winter conditions up to Thermoplus 5000 for extreme cold.

That focus on testing fits into the larger philosophy behind Level. The company has spent decades specializing in one product category, giving it the ability to concentrate its research and development on the details that can make a glove perform better.

Different Gloves for Different People

Level’s collection has become broad, but describing it as simply having “a glove for everybody” misses what makes the brand interesting.

Nobody searches for a glove for everybody. They search for the right glove for themselves.

A first-time snowboarder may prioritize wrist protection. A ski racer needs impact protection and performance. Someone who is constantly dealing with cold hands may care most about warmth. A resort skier might want a premium glove that balances comfort, warmth, and style.

Level approaches those customers as distinct groups rather than trying to tell them all the same story.

That specialization becomes especially apparent in three areas: snowboarding, racing, and women’s gloves.

For Snowboarders: Protection Comes First

Snowboarding remains part of Level’s DNA more than three decades after the company was founded.

Its protective gloves are particularly interesting because they address such a recognizable problem. Falling is part of learning to snowboard, and hands and wrists often take the impact. Level’s Biomex technology is designed around protecting the wrist while maintaining the mobility needed to ride.

It’s a relatively specialized category, and Andy noted that protective snowboard gloves tend to perform particularly well online because many retailers don’t carry a large selection of them.

For the rider actively searching for wrist protection, however, that specialization can be exactly the point.

For Ski Racers: A Glove Becomes Protective Equipment

Level’s presence in ski racing gives the brand another highly specialized audience.

Racing gloves have to do more than keep hands warm. They need to withstand the demands of gates, speed, repeated impacts, and an environment where equipment is pushed considerably harder than it might be during an average resort day.

Level has developed this category alongside competitive athletes, and racing also plays an important role in the brand’s visibility. Gloves worn by athletes at the highest levels of the sport give skiers a chance to see Level products performing in the conditions they were designed for.

It’s a relatively small segment of the overall ski market, but an influential one.

For Women: Warmth Meets Italian Design

The women’s collection brings together two sides of Level particularly well.

First is the technical story. Level’s warmth testing gives shoppers a way to compare products based on the conditions they’re designed to handle. The brand also develops women’s-specific fits rather than simply changing the colors of an existing men’s glove.

Then there’s the Italian influence.

Level’s women’s collection isn’t afraid of color, materials, or fashion-forward designs. The collection ranges from understated premium gloves and mittens to products designed to immediately stand out.

That combination is important because performance and style aren’t treated as competing priorities. A glove can be engineered for warmth and designed specifically around a woman’s hand while still looking different from the sea of black technical gloves hanging on a shop wall.

It’s where Level’s description of itself, Swiss engineering and Italian style, becomes especially easy to understand.

More Than 35 Years Focused on Gloves

There are plenty of outdoor brands that make gloves. Level is a company built around them.

That distinction matters.

Decades of focusing on one category have allowed Level to develop specialized fits, protective systems, warmth testing, racing products, snowboard-specific designs, and collections built around different types of winter athletes. Rather than approaching gloves as another accessory in a larger apparel line, the category is the business.

That focus also helps explain how Level has managed to establish itself across seemingly different corners of the winter sports world. The snowboarder learning to link turns, the World Cup racer hitting gates at speed, and the resort skier searching for a warmer glove don’t need the same product.

Level doesn’t try to convince them that they do.

Level’s Next Chapter in the United States

Level has a long history in the United States. Andy said the brand has been sold through American retailers for more than 20 years, with the U.S. once serving as one of Level’s most important markets.

In more recent years, the company’s attention shifted toward Europe, where Level developed an especially strong presence in the Alps. Now, the brand is turning its attention back toward the United States.

Level is rebuilding its wholesale distribution, particularly in the West, while also relaunching its direct-to-consumer business in the U.S. That means more American skiers and snowboarders will have the opportunity to discover a brand that, despite its long history, may still be unfamiliar to them.

And perhaps that’s what makes Level particularly interesting right now.

This isn’t a new brand trying to establish its first product. It’s a company with more than 35 years of glove-specific experience, roots in the earliest days of European snowboarding, a deep connection to ski racing, and technology developed around some of the most fundamental problems winter athletes face.

Level started by asking what a snowboarder needed from a glove that traditional ski gloves weren’t providing.

More than three decades later, the audience has grown, but that same specialized thinking remains at the center of the brand.

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