The Proga team combines diverse backgrounds and expertise to pioneer the world’s first rollerski with a brake. Each member of the team plays a vital role in product development, production, and market promotion, ensuring the success of this innovative solution for cross-country skiing enthusiasts.

Klemen Bauer

Manager, Ambassador

Sergej Smrkolj

CEO, Co-founder

Ivan Andres Arnšek

Co-founder

Klemen Bauer, a four-time Olympian and ambassador for Proga, oversees comprehensive product testing. By leveraging his professional insights, he aids in refining product features and aids in promoting the revolutionary rollerski, thereby ensuring it meets the high standards of athletes.

Sergej Smrkolj leads production for Proga, leveraging his experience in a well-established Slovenian company, Skitti. His responsibility includes ensuring high manufacturing standards and utilising best practices while collaborating with renowned firms, thus enhancing the quality of Proga rollerskis.

Ivan Andres Arnšek is a multi-talented professional who works as a professional opera singer and sports innovator. With a passion for cross-country skiing and hands-on approach, he developed the unique braking system in his workshop, focusing on overcoming outdoor sports challenges.

Our Story

The project initiator, Ivan Andres Arnšek, was born in Argentina, Patagonia, where he also spent his childhood. After twenty years, he moved to Slovenia and became a professional opera singer. Since his early years, he has been active in various sports, including cross-country skiing and rollerblading, where the lack of ease and terrain choice posed a problem for braking. He sought and found some technical solutions for this limitation, crafted them in his home workshop.

In 2020, due to increasing technological demands, he started collaborating with the experienced Slovenian family company Skitti, which has a long tradition of successful business and works with renowned Slovenian and foreign companies such as Adria, Mercedes-Benz, Ottobock, and others. Wide knowledge is already being passed on to the next generation. The director of Skitti is Sergej Smrkolj, with whom, after almost four years of further development of brakes, they also patented the product.

Ivan Andres Arnšek and Sergej Smrkolj have established a new company named Proga Rollerski.

Soon, they invited Klemen Bauer to join the collaboration. Klemen Bauer is a long-time professional athlete, member of the Slovenian biathlon team and a four-time Olympian.
Four hundred starts in the World Cup, 4th and 9th place at the Olympics and a silver medal at the
World Championships as a highlight of the sports career. Shortly after the end of his career, he quickly found a challenge and through a chain of coincidences found himself in the story of rollerskis with a brake. As he said he missed such an accessory even during his competitive career, which has now finally arrived on the market.