An institution retires
Elsewhere in this issue is a news report on the retirement of Doc Des Roches from the helm of SIA. The list of honors he has received (considerably shortened because it takes much too damn much space to list them all!) is vivid testimony to his accomplishments, and needs no embellishment here.
Except, perhaps, to remind SIA that he was one of us first, and was in at the birth of NSAA.
In truth, though, nobody can “claim” Doc, because he is living witness to the unity of the whole ski world and the interdependence of its many parts. Ultimately, that must be his legacy to the sport he served so well and so long.
It won’t be the same without you, Doc. And that goes for that remarkable lady, Toby Des Roches, who has been at your side through that long ski industry career.
Congratulations, too, to your successor, Dave Ingemie. SIA will be in strong and knowledgeable hands. And we can’t resist pointing out that he, too, was recruited from the ski area side of the industry. Smart people over there at SIA.
A SAM Editorial
The shoot-out that wasn’t at Vail—more thoughts on ski industry marketing
Well, they came from all over the country to see the shoot-out at Gore Creek, high in the Colorado mountains, just below Vail Pass on December 5th. The word was passed in the Bucket of Blood Saloon that there was sure to be some digging to do on Boot Hill when Marshal David Ingemie, representing the law and order of SIA, confronted David Rowan, notorious gun from North Salem, reputed to be in the pay of some ski area interests.
But, we get ahead of the story, which starts with the November issue of Ski Area Management where we ran an editorial which critiqued the SIA marketing plan. The editorial found much to praise in SIA’s marketing efforts, but said also that the marketing priorities and strategies of the equipment supplier might differ from those of a ski area operator.
The editorial caught the attention of the editors at Ski Magazine, who annually stage a large ski industry conference in Vail called “Ski Magazine’s Ski Business Week.” They invited the two Davids—David Ingemie, the Marketing Director of SIA and David Rowan, Editor of SAM—to debate on the grammatically dubious subject, “Ski Industry Promotion, Who Does It Benefit?”
The idea of the debate, before it even took place, provoked a lot of thought, which was good. It also exposed some underlying frictions and sores which was a painful procedure, but ultimately healthy.
The debate itself hardly fulfilled the expections of those who sensed high drama in the making, but it did set the stage for a lively discussion from the floor among retailers, suppliers, ski area operators, industry officials and others.
Reduced to its simplest terms, the disagreement that exists centers around the feeling on the SIA side that they do a great deal to promote the sport, earmarking $265,000 for the effort. That this effort is in support of the ski industry as a whole, not just for SIA members. That there is a need for greater coordination of industry-wide marketing efforts to make sure the total promotional dollars are spent more efficiently in support of industry growth.
Not expressed as such, but very much a fact of life, was the underlying feeling that the ski area industry drags its feet when it comes to the marketing of skiing.
Ingemie described the elements of the SIA program: the National Media Kit that results in much press pick-up of articles, photography and instruction columns; the High School Assembly program which creates enthusiasm for, and involvement in, the sport of skiing; and several other marketing initiatives.
In discussing the other side I tried to show that there are natural differences in priorities between a ski equipment supplier and a ski area operator. That these differences are not necessarily bad, but should be recognized. That the supplier basically operates from the imperative that products must continually be sold and that demand must continually be stimulated and this results in a need to put more people on skis—create more buyers of equipment. That on the ski area side, while it was fine to try to put more people on skis, there was a basic priority to expand the industry through expansion of facilities, which could best be achieved through strategies that improved utilization and thus profitability. That it was more than just creating new skiers, and involved also the need to maintain the quality of the ski experience, which has always been basic to the appeal and growth of the sport.
As far as the “debate” was concerned, it was a stand-off, but perhaps it also left a little better understanding on all sides. It remained for SIA Executive Director, Doc Des Roches, himself a veteran ski area manager, to remind everyone that “you guys have the stadiums and we provide the uniforms, but we need each other.”
And certainly it was very apparent that much needs to be done to improve coordination between SIA and NSAA. Many of us, for instance, have labored under the impression that there is an ongoing joint marketing committee. There isn’t, but I now wouldn’t be surprised to see one. There is a clear need to improve communications, not only to initiate joint operations, but also to avoid unilateral programs that haven’t been checked for negative impact on other industry segments. There must be better understanding of respective goals and objectives, together with recognition of divergent perspectives; there must be more candor; there must be less ego and more effort toward common good.
All of which is a mite preachy, but true, nonetheless.
For myself, I remained unconvinced that we on the ski area side should be throwing more money at the marketing thing. SIA president, Denny Hanson, for instance, suggested that an average of $500 from each member ski area would enable NSAA to fund a marketing effort equal in size to SIA’s. (To put that in perspective, the quarter million dollars resulting would roughly equal current member dues.)
And I guess that brings me full circle to my point of departure in that November editorial: I see no sound business reason for NSAA to somehow prove itself by matching SIA’s marketing war chest. On the other hand, I would say that such costs as the funding of ASF in Washington and the costs connected with the administration and revision of the B-77 Standard, have severely cut NSAA’s marketing efforts, and that more should be undertaken in this area. (The major commitment now is toward making a new film to replace the very successful “Invitation to Skiing.”)
In this connection, some good suggestions were made in Vail, including one to coordinate a national promotional effort between NSAA and the retailer organizations. The payback to ski areas from this type of effort could be very fast.
The point that I found it difficult to get across during the Vail discussions is that, unlike the equipment suppliers, ski areas deal directly with the public, and the cumulative effect of 500 ski areas promoting directly to the public, selling the sport of skiing in 500 ways, is infinitely more important to the growth of the sport than is centralized marketing. There might be duplicated effort, there is probably lack of finesse, but when that Ski School Director starts talking to that ski club or that school group there is a breath of fresh mountain air that is compelling.
This is not, I repeat, to say that no NSAA marketing should be done; it is not to say that NSAA cannot emulate SIA’s retailer aids and provide equivalent promotional services to individual areas. It is to say that NSAA’s marketing priorities are bound to differ from SIA’s, and vive la difference.
And throughout all this palaver it is well to realize that all of us in the ski industry are still subject to forces beyond our control. Weather is one. “Give me a great snow year and I’ll show you ski areas operating at capacity,” says Sno-engineering’s Jim Branch. That may be an oversimplification, but the record by and large bears it out. The encouraging obverse to this equation is that a disastrous snow year no longer has to spell a disastrous season for the ski area, thanks to modern snowmaking and grooming. The problem last year was not one of creating new skiers but of convincing existing skiers that there was indeed great skiing to be had on machine-made snow. And that, correctly, is where a lot of area marketing effort went.
Another outside force to which we are all subject is the economy—double digit inflation, 20% prime rate etc. As Ingemie correctly states, “The ski industry is not recession-proof as most industry people believe; it is only recession-resistant.” And reports of $400,000 lots in Beaver Creek being snapped up should not blind us to the real world where everyone is making critical choices about how to cope with inflation, and certainly inflation has had, and continues to have, considerable impact on skier participation. Cost is a major concern to all but the very, very rich, and ski area marketers are likely to find that price incentives will work as never before. But even these are not likely to affect the entry-level skier facing the high entry costs. It should not surprise anyone that sales of entry-level equipment—the package ski business—has collapsed.
In this connection, it is worth recording for this readership the considerably disarray on the clothing and equipment end of the industry, because it is probably occasioned more by the economy than by poor snow years. The trade press is now detailing the enormity of the over-production and over-supply that currently exists. Skiing Trade News ran an analysis which referred to “obsolescent inventories now glutting the ski market,” Saying also that the suppliers had consistently failed to read the signs and were considerably to blame for their current situation. It also reported that in cross-country equipment the situation was especially severe, and that, “At the end of the (1979-80) season there was literally more than a year’s supply of X-C boots, skis and bindings in supplier and retailer warehouses.”
Is it any wonder that SIA is anxious to find ways to get more people on skis?
I regret that this column, like some of my prized old 78’s tends to get stuck and repeat itself. And so I come back to one of my oft-repeated suggestions which can’t be much good because nobody does anything with it. It is that before we spend a lot of bucks on programs to put more people on skis, let’s find out a little bit about the entry-level skier—the person who is in his/her first season. After all, today’s entry-level skier is yesterday’s high potential skier who crossed the threshold. We were trying to market to that person yesterday, so what is the nature of this beast? What are the demographics? What were the elements, the influences, the coincidences that triggered the conversion from potential to participatory? What are this person’s expectations about skiing?
Then, hang on to this universe and go back to it at the end of the following season to see how many dropped out, and why. From one statistical universe we could not only get a study of the entry-level skier, but we could end up better understanding the nature of the instant and early drop-outs.
So there it is again, folks—a great research idea waiting for its time.
How to end this rambling? By re-capping.
Yes, there are differences—natural differences—between the priorities of an equipment supplier and an area operator. But certainly there is more that binds us together than holds us apart, and both sides of the industry should be highly supportive of each other. And let us not forget that the sport has largely grown and prospered because of its inherent qualities—athletic, social and even spiritual. And in the last decade or so this better mousetrap has been improved almost beyond recognition. There is equipment that is safer, easier to use, longer lasting and infinitely more fun to use. There are slopes that are better designed and better maintained. Machine-made snow is made in increasing quantities on more slopes at more areas. Ski schools teach better than ever fefore. Much better. The “total product” is a much more saleable one than ever fefore, even though many of us may bemoan the loss of some of its earlier character.
There is no promotional tool stronger than the word of mouth of a satisfied skier, and our industry is doing an increasingly fine job of making sure the skier remains satisfied.
We’ve been doing a lot of things right, notwithstanding the harumphs from this column, and we’ve got a lot going for us. I was reminded of this the day after the debate as I started down an untouched slope in Vail, eight inches of new snow glistening under a brilliant early morning sun. But it was my skiing companion John Fry who did the reminding. “I suppose,” he sneered, “that this is what you mean by all that crap in SAM about the declining quality of the ski experience.”
David Rowan
A farewell to friend Jo
A year ago, in the fall of Seventy-nine, Jo Tyndall Alexander vowed, “This time next year, after my 65th birthday, I’ll be retired from active management and on a world cruise with husband Bill.”
Jo, at the time, was president of Snow Summit Ski Corporation, now a nifty little eight-chair-lift with tremendous snow making capabilities, 1200 feet of vertical, day and night operation mostly through advanced ticket reservations via Ticketron, skier days in excess of 500,000, and a gross over $5 million.
Jo, with husband Tommi Tyndall, had been instrumental in finding and starting up the hugely underfinanced operation in 1951, and in helping to hold things together through 20 years of very difficult financial circumstances. Tommi was the engine and wings of the enterprise, Jo was the rudder, the stabilizer, and the follow-up person.
Snow making came to the area in 1964, and Tommi, in a burst of overzealous management concern to see the system in operation, took a Fordson tractor to the slopes during an unseasonal but not uncharacteristic early winter deluge. The tractor turned turtle on him. He was killed instantly.
Snow Summit’s B of D quickly appointed Jo—because of her close knowledge of operations, her intelligence and capabilities—as secretary and general manager. She held that position for a few years, until she was elected president. She became expert at fending off creditors, gaining credit moratoriums and interim financing through personal appeals and the sale of personal stock holdings in the company. She brought in her son by a pervious marriage, Dick Kun, as assistant manager. Kun, at that time a student of history and economics in San Diego, showed incipient tendencies toward either Hippidom or Academia, but the responsibilities and challenge at Snow Summit soon set him firmly on the trail of righteous ski area management and development. (More about this in a future SAM “Profiles in Profit.”)
Jo was the daughter of a Methodist minister, the Reverend Doctor Alfred E. Hughes of Columbus, Ohio. Her formal training had been in literature and fine arts (B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, Ohio Weslyan, 1937). Immediately upon graduation, she traveled to Vienna, Austria, to study art and painting for a year. She returned to study at the Wisconsin Graduate School of Journalism and subsequently worked on ad copy and public relations for Montgomery Ward.
Her training and talents stood her in good stead as she guided Snow Summit into fiscal solvency by 1972-73. She was possessed of an unusually keen ability to cut through superfluous verbiage and thought, to get right at the core of issues, some call it. Better it should be called wisdom—fact, with all the wishful thinking trimmed therefrom.
Jo was always an ardent booster of junior skiing, making special provision for a ski club house on the very limited private acreage available at Snow Summit. Her activities and interests in promoting commerce and tourism to Big Bear Lake Valley led to her serving as president of the local Chamber of Commerce—a position seldom accessible to American females—for two years.
Jo was well-known, admired, and universally liked by all the ski media people of southern California. She regularly attended and supported the work of the National Ski Areas Association. She was also a fine teacher of things grammatical and played an important part in straightening out the unparseable sentences of this writer, as he learned the art of ski journalism, back in the 50’s.
Sadly, all that is to be written about Jo Tyndall Alexander must now be done past tense. In the very early hours of July 20th, the very day she had vowed to retire to persue her earliest interests of art and travel, she died of complications resulting from a six-month bout with uterine cancer.
She is survived by her son, Dick, who is now president and general manager, and by her husband of the last twelve years, Bill, a Big Bear Lake businessman. She contributed much to the development of skiing as a business in southern California. She undoubtedly would have contributed more, even in retirement. She is missed.
Doug Pfeiffer
What recession ?
Anyone visiting the major Colorado ski resorts these days would be hard-pressed to believe the media reports from elsewhere across the land that the American economy is sputtering and wheezing along, housing permits and construction starts way off and investment capital stashed in some deep, dark vault.
Colorado, it seems, may have cornered the market (with some left for southern California) on growth and construction. Judging by the ski resorts, the Centennial State is one vast construction site.
Mountainside accommodations are going up faster than the prime interest rate. It’s like watching popcorn explode, from Crested Butte to Winter Park, Steamboat to Copper Mountain, Snowmass to Vail and just down the road at Beaver Creek to the high-rises jutting out of the low-rise historic setting at Breckenridge.
Only Keystone among the major destinations seems to have resisted the arms-open dash to embrace condomania.
Vail’s construction has been estimated at more than $30-million. Million-dollar condominiums are planned for the foot of Ajax in Aspen, along with a convention hotel with up to 700 rooms. Homesites in Beaver Creek have gone for a half-million dollars. Snowmass sold a covey of condos priced at $950,000—cash—in just four days.
“Oil money” is the buzzphrase, whether the greenbacks are from Texas or Oklahoma, Mexico or even some of the homegrown energy money from Colorado. Petrodollars seem to be fueling the outbreak of construction and expansion. And now Apex Oil in St. Louis, a marketing and distribution oil company, has scooped up Copper Mountain. Not only was the company apparently wise in picking off such a potential plum of an investment but it showed similar wisdom in signing Chuck Lewis, who gave birth to Copper in 1972, to stay on as chief operating officer.
Overall, for a couple of visitors from the East where construction (except for Sugarbush, Stratton and one or two far smaller projects are underway) is almost a myth and $160,000 is the absolute maximum developers can get for slopeside units, Colorado is an eye-popping experience. Just like Hawaii a couple of years ago when they couldn’t build $200,000 condos fast enough, there seems to be no end to the people able to plunk down $400,000 with little or no hesitation for a vacation home.
And when Club Mediterranee decided it wanted to try anew in the American market, it went right to Colorado. The French-based chain’s 225-room “village” at Copper Mountain is the first of what eventually will be a handful of Club Med layouts in the U.S. The chain already is looking at a small tract in Breckenridge, just over the ridgeline from Copper, and other sites are under consideration. Breckenridge may not come to pass but you can be certain Copper won’t be the last we hear from Club Med on the American ski scene.
The discomforting element in all of this rapid growth, of course, is the question of whether it might not be self-defeating in some small way. Over-development is an obvious evil to eye cautiously. “We’re going to learn from Vail’s mistakes,” say the folks at Beaver Creek, many of whom were in on the growth of Vail. Vail Associates is developing the resort at Beaver Creek and is determined to hold development to 294 homesites, a 1,200-room mountainside hotel and a couple of hundred condos as opposed to the small city at the foot of Vail Mountain. We’ll see, but the determination seems root-deep to preserve Beaver Creek’s natural beauty.
Where does quality give way to quantity? When do we cross that thin line between developing and destroying?
All of the growth, of course, is not inherently bad. By the same token, neither is all of it good. It is a vexing mixture of tasteful and tasteless. The restrained, low-key ambience of Keystone, for instance, is in such stark contrast to the almost mindless ravaging of Breckenridge’s historic tone. The preserved patch of downtown Aspen will be a 180-degree turnaround from the ultra-modern structures ticketed for the foot of Ajax in the next couple of years. By the same token, the National Historic District designation in Crested Butte at the foot of the self-styled “Matterhorn of the Rockies” helped mandate the Victorian look to the new buildings in the town; it also helps provide a “best of both worlds” feel with the modern day resort building under Bo Callaway’s guiding hand up on the hillside.
And in Steamboat Springs, the photogenic well-weathered barn which served as a backdrop for one of that resort’s most popular posters—the one with two riders heading through saddle-deep snow, skis slung across their saddles—has knuckled under to the hammer and nail staccato concert. The barn’s owner is building a modular unit home between it and the road.
The silver lining to all of this scenario, and there surely is one (other than realtors’ profit statements) is the series of controls being implemented in almost every town. Just as the developers who raped southern Vermont through the ’60s gave way to Act 250 which put a lid on such uncontrolled growth, many Colorado residents are gunshy about letting developers turn their area in an architectural glut, a northern New Jersey with two-mile mountains.
Billy Kidd, the ambassador from Steamboat who grew up amid the nearly unspoiled scenery of Stowe, Vt., says the pattern out West is repeating itself. “Things happen so quickly that you can’t keep up with them, but now the controls are coming in. Towns are playing catch-up but they certainly are doing it . . . and better late than never. We haven’t lost everything and we don’t want to,” he says.
Roy Cohen, the aggressive president of Sugarbush Valley in Vermont, talks about things being “in balance.” He is leading the tasteful development of Sugarbush, bringing the mountainside accommodations and facilities into balance with the miles of testing skiing which long have been the hallmark of Sugarbush. It is the same in Colorado. Resorts which have had the superb skiing since they opened, most of them in the last two decades, are finally catching up with their hillside lodging and restaurants and all the other services which will keep them as quality resorts.
The pattern is similar in Europe where many ski villages are watching towering cranes erect new lodges, new homes, new facilities. Yesterday is no more but at least we can slow the sprint into tomorrow.
As an outsider, i.e. a non-resident, far be it from me to suggest what should—or shouldn’t—be done in Colorado. And, over the next few years, probably in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Mankind has a sorrowful record of spoiling its nest in so many places but, with the controls being enacted, it appears the Colorado ski industry is taking strides to see when this part of its history is written, it isn’t entitled “Beauty and the Beast”—the beauty of the mountains and the clutter of over-development which threatens the landscape.
Stay at it, gang; the battle isn’t over.
Paul Robbins
Take a bow Bill
This is a quick note to draw your attention to the latest non-ski accomplishment by one of our own. Bill Alsup, president of Poma Aerial Tramways, has been selected by Roger Penske to replace the great Mario Andretti on Penske’s three-man driving team for the 1981 Championship Auto Racing Team season.
Alsup was 1979 CART Rookie of the Year and was recognized as the most improved CART driver in 1980 when he finished seventh with about $85,000 in winnings. He joins Bobby Unser and Rick Mears, two Indianapolis 500 winners, on the Penske roster.
Alsup has lacked a major sponsor for the last two seasons and now he may be on the verge of the breakthrough. Penske plans to use him in at least eight races and the genial Vermonter will be able to race on his own for the other six races on the CART card.
Before you get behind the wheel, take a bow, Bill. You’ve earned it.
Paul Robbins
