The small watering hole in the Serengeti Plain of Kenya, vital to all creatures, great and small, can be a stressful place when a herd of elephants moves in on it to slake fierce thirsts and luxuriate in elephantine mud baths. There are inadvertent casualties, for sure, but more significant is the destabilizing of a life system on which so many depend—birds, fish, animals large and small, plant life.
Think, if you will, of the ski areas and their suppliers of goods and services as the creatures great and small, and think of the ski area industry as the small watering hole on which we, the creatures, all depend. Then think of some of the huge players—the multi-area operations, the multi-billion dollar suppliers—as the elephants.
On page 52 is the story of how S-K-I (Killington, Mt. Snow, Haystack, Waterville Valley, Sugarloaf and Bear Mountain) sold off their whole fleet of some 54 groomers, trading them in to Bombardier for cash, and leasing from them a lot of new ones.
These elephants had a grand old time in our watering hole, vigorously exercising their free market instincts and pulling off a creative deal that, one imagines, is spectacularly successful for both parties. But, just as with the interdependent ecosystem at the watering hole and the bruising visit by the elephants, so may it be in the aftermath of our own elephants.
That many vehicles suddenly coming on the used vehicle lot is itself inherently destabilizing. The good news is that a number of smaller areas should be able to pick some pretty neat bargains. The not-so-good news is that in one transaction, the market place is being asked to absorb about half as much product as it does in a “normal” year. There may be some winners (and clearly S-K-I is), but there will be some losers, too.
Then look at the elephants on the ski lift side of things. Les Otten and his pachydermal LBO Enterprises family visited the watering hole this summer and bought a mess of lifts for Sugarbush, Attitash, Cranmore and Sunday River. The package deal with Doppelmayr calls for five new detachable quads and a fixed-grip quad. Throw in a couple of relocated lifts and it adds up to quite a shopping list!
By all accounts, LBO used its considerable buying power to hammer out a great deal for itself. In the process, the other two viable suppliers folded their tents and withdrew from the bidding. All of this is evidence of creative, skillful, tough-minded entrepreneurship at work. But our little industry—those of us who try to live and survive in our little interdependent watering hole—had better look down the road a piece. We should look at the consequences of a diminishing resource list of suppliers of goods and services.
