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If You Sell It, They May Come

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Snowsports retailing isn’t easy under any circumstances. Area and resort shops are particularly vulnerable to seasonality and weather. However, a resort’s retail operations can reinforce, and extend, the resort’s brand. And with city and suburban shops in many regions of the country disappearing, there are even opportunities for resort retailers.


Kat Jobanputra, executive vice president and COO of Specialty Sports Ventures (SSV), is in a unique position to see and evaluate the business of resort retailing in key Western states. SSV has some 150 urban, suburban, mountain-town and resort center locations in Colorado, Utah and California/Nevada that maintain their own identities. They operate in a decentralized manner to maintain customer loyalty and respond to local conditions, yet benefit from centralized buying, inventory management, IT, warehousing, distribution and payroll.


SSV was established by the Gart family after the family sold namesake Gart Sports to Sports Authority. The Garts began assembling existing businesses and retained the shops’ local marquee names—among them Colorado Ski & Golf, Boulder Ski Deals, Aspen Sports, Telluride Sports, Ski Depot, and Any Mountain Sports. When Vail Resorts Inc. bought out the Garts in 2010, the existing management and operational philosophy moved to VR.


That means preserving the stores’ original branding, which gives the VR area shops the cachet of independent shops. “SSV’s philosophy is to have the best ski shop in every market. We have iconic dealers, so it didn’t make sense to change their names. Independent teams run these stores to fit their market. We have tried not homogenize them or indentify them as part of a larger enterprise,” Jobanputra says. The lesson for resort shops everywhere: establish an identity, a personality that matches the resort’s. Well-run area shops that provide hard goods and soft goods tailored to the area’s clientele, and superior service from boot fitting to tuneups, can be enormously successful, and establish a reputation in their own right.


SSV’s resort shops start the selling season in earnest at Thanksgiving, as the resorts open. They typically run in-season pricing until Presidents’ Day, when they introduce their first discounts, and adjust pricing according to snow conditions. “In a banner snow year,” Jobanputra says, “prices are more consistent. We look at sell-through and start discounting when it starts to be weak.”


Local Knowledge
With nine stores in the Salt Lake City area and at Utah resorts, Ski ’N See is the local name to know for retail and rentals. “You could say that, in general, valley shops tend to be larger than mountain shops because of the square footage available. But, we have a large shop at Deer Valley because the space was available,” says client relations manager Kerry Phillips. All the shops offer rentals, service (tune-ups, wax, and repair) and retail. Not surprisingly, the chain does greater hard goods business in the city shops, and more last-minute accessories sales in its resort locations.


Multi-location retailers have a couple of advantages over resort retail shops. These include the ability to move inventory from one shop to another, and to sell year-round. Resort retail operations don’t have that kind of flexibility, especially if the resort shuts down for the summer. That creates all the more reason for resort shops to be successful in whatever categories they serve.


For example, Okemo itself doesn’t close in summer, but of Okemo Sport Shop’s two locations, only the 1,000-square-foot convenience shop in the hotel remains open. The bigger store at the ski area base carries hardgoods, but it’s not a priority. Retail director Larry Abelman believes firmly that demoing at the mountain is “the only way to buy skis,” but few do—even though Okemo Sports will credit up to three days of rentals from the Okemo Performance Demo Center toward a purchase.


“We sell 130 or 140 pairs [of skis] a season,” he admits. “We do OK with skis, but snowboards are weak. That [snowboarding] age group wants to buy in a shop at home or online.”


Okemo devotes twice as much floor space to apparel, and does better with it. In part, that’s because the shop treats soft goods like any top specialty retailer. The shop pays special attention to clothing, stocking top brands for adults and children, and makes special efforts to train the sales force. “We have reps in to teach us about their brands, and we sell,” says Abelman. “Most area shops are staffed by kids who only care how much they have to work to get a lift ticket. The average age of our employees is 45 to 50. They sell.”


In addition to apparel, they’re selling a lot of helmets, largely to adults, as well smaller items, of course. “We have lots of layering items and accessories like gloves, mittens and handwarmers,” Abelman says. “Being at a major ski area, weather is important and can make or break a winter. When we have a holiday or weekend day when it’s cold, I’m a hero.”


Monarch Mountain’s retail niche is even narrower. This small, snow-laden Colorado ski area has no on-site lodging, so skiers and riders aren’t around to shop, and it is completely closed in summer. Retail supervisor Dominique Beaubien says the small base-area shop carries no hardgoods at all. But it has been carrying skiwear for three years. It used to carry apparel only at lower price points, but added higher-end clothing and mid-layer garments this year. The shop sells “tons” of accessories.


One niche that has worked well is logo items. Most area shops carry logo items, of course—but not to Monarch’s extent. Management “wants to see everything with the Monarch logo,” says Beaubien. Customers find the area’s iconic butterfly on pint and shot glasses, travel mugs, key chains, baseball caps, ski hats, T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, and pins. She recently adapted the single butterfly to a swarm logo.


Toward the Future
Large operation or small, the same retailing advice applies. “A few years ago with the changing economy,” says Jobanputra, “the industry took a big hit and we had to reinvent the business. Diehards are still going to ski or snowboard, but they are looking for value. We stepped down price points.


“But in good years and bad years, you have to have good relations with vendors. They’re our partners. We took advantage of good deals when we could, but we didn’t beat up manufacturers or hold a gun to their heads. In the long run, it doesn’t pay off. And for our customers, we are genuine and deliver a good experience. No customer is taken for granted. It’s a simple formula that’s easy to say, but hard to execute.”



New Opportunity for Resort Retail?

"This past fall, co-publisher Olivia Rowan decided to get a jump on the season and get the kids’ skis and boots tuned up and fitted. She figured she would do as usual, and take them in to the local shop.

But that shop, Ski Market, went out of business a year ago. And so had several others in the Boston area over the past several years.

Taking the gear to REI was a possibility, but with all the other shop closures, there was a three-week wait for service. Instead of waiting, the shop suggested she take the kids’ gear to the nearest alternative——a nearby ski area, such as Nashoba Valley or Wachusett. For its part, Wachusett has seen an increase in hard goods sales to loyal customers, for whom the area has become their one-stop shop for all things skiing.

The disappearance of specialty shops in Boston is not an isolated incidence. In San Diego, Fran Richards, marketing director for Spy eyewear, notes that nearly all the local snowboard shops——including those that helped launch the sport in the 1980s——have also gone out of business.

With fewer local specialty shops in their hometowns, skiers and riders have little choice for obtaining service, other than turning to their favorite resorts. Serving this need well can help areas cement their relationships with core customers.

There may also be opportunity to increase sales, at least for ski hard goods. Not everyone wants to buy skis and boots online. Plus, the SIA Model for Success research, published in 2006, showed that skiers and riders are looking to buy major goods all season long. In some cases, they are more eager to buy in spring, after they have been on snow for months and have convinced themselves that new gear will help them enjoy their sports more.

Resort retailers are poised for growth if they grab a share of this found business." —— Rick Kahl