Mikko Martikainen’s innovation received great international recognition.
Mikko Martikainen developed snow protection mat rose Time magazine’s list of the best inventions of 2025.
– Of course it feels good, Martikainen admits.
He heard already last spring that the invention is about to enter the prestigious list.
This is not a completely new invention, because the company Snow Secure, founded by Martikainen, has been offering a modern snow storage system for over five years.
Why did the snow protection mat appear on Time magazine’s list only now?
– I think that it was noticed in the American media only now, when snow protection mats were sold for the first time in North America 2024, Martikainen thinks.
The inventor is no longer involved in the operations of Snow Secure, as Martikainen, 67, sold his company a couple of years ago and retired. The man’s innovation has previously been reported on, among other things in the Wall Street Journal and The Economist -in leaf.
– This article in Time magazine is in a way also a continuation for them.
Push-up phase
Snow Secure’s snow storage in the Ruka ski resort. Snow Secure oy]
Martikainen started developing the current snow protection mats 7–8 years ago.
– It was quite a push-up phase when we started developing this modern version, Martikainen sighs.
A man could wake up between three and five in the morning, with a distressing thought in his head.
– Has the company already gone bad? Or will it go today? Or maybe tomorrow? In other words, the normal pain of a small entrepreneur, Martikainen recalls.
He is still satisfied that he finished the project. It would not have been successful alone.
– You can’t accomplish anything alone, it’s absolutely impossible. Here, too, an awful lot of input from different people has been needed.
According to Martikainen, luck is also needed for the invention to succeed in the end.
– You have to be in the right place at the right time.
First meters
Also known as the “Snow Whisperer”, Martikainen got the idea of snow preservation at a young age, when he was descending a hill on a glacier in Norway in the summer.
– I got the idea that Finland should get eternal snow.
At the beginning of the 2000s, Martikainen developed protective blankets with a chewing surface.
– But they are a logistical nightmare in slope conditions.
Now an accordion-like insulation mat is in use, which can be easily assembled. It’s just spread over the snow for the summer. The same material is used in buildings.
– Its thermal insulation is superior. The temperature on the surface of the insulating mat can rise to over 50 degrees in the summer in the sun, but the average temperature under the mat is only slightly above +1 degree, CEO of Snow Secure Antti Lauslahti told Iltalehte last year.
According to Martikainen, there is still plenty to develop.
– The world doesn’t stop here. Snow storage as a concept is only in the first meters of its life cycle.
Competition
Antti Lauslahti is the CEO of Snow Secure. Snow Secure oy]
According to Martikainen, snow protection mats are currently used in Finland, at least in the United States, Central Europe and the Nordic countries. It’s not exactly cheap fun.
– The square price is several tens of euros. And if we are talking about a small investment, then it is tens of thousands of euros. In ski resorts, they talk about hundreds of thousands.
Martikainen estimates that the market will grow significantly in the coming years, as the climate continues to warm.
– In the future, in bigger places, we will probably talk about millions, but I don’t immediately see that we will talk about tens of millions, as in the case of snowmaking systems.
Since it is a growing industry, there is also competition. According to Martikainen, a Swiss company sells a type of earth construction fabric for snow storage.
– You can get it yourself and do it self made man -system, but others do not yet have such an industrial solution. And by patenting, the competition has been able to be curbed a little.
New ideas
Although Martikainen is already retired, he is by no means resting on his laurels.
– Now that I’ve had time, there are a few world-class innovations under development that I’ve been thinking about for decades, Martikainen reveals.
The first of them is a gravity-operated snow mover, which can be used to move snow down from the snow storage. Martikainen is already applying for a patent for the product.
– As a business, this is smaller than snow storage if you think about the global market, but then I have two other significant innovations that will be many times bigger than snow storage if they take off, Martikainen reveals.
– These are revolutionary things in a certain way, but it’s not worth talking about them anymore, because usually the possibility of failure in new ideas is greater than the possibility of success in the initial situation.
It sounds like the man never runs out of ideas.
– The wife is already trying to convince the good man to calm down, but what can you do when ingenuity is in mother’s milk, Martikainen laughs.