Demo centers are popping up all over the place as part of a growing effort to get more ski school business, more rental business and, most importantly, to convert ho-hum skiers into more enthusiastic skiers who come back year after year. For a change, the effort involves players from all aspects of the ski experience—suppliers, resorts and retail shops—with everyone coming out a winner.
Whether a ski resort is large or small, the reasons to jump on the demo-center bandwagon are obvious, according to many resort managers. “We’d be missing the boat if we didn’t get involved,” says Bill Karberg, rental shop manager of Chestnut Mountain Resort in Galena, Ill., adding that it was more than worth the cost to get involved. “It’s necessary to stay competitive when 60 percent of your customers are beginner skiers—especially here in the Midwest.”
Chestnut Mountain, an area with 100,000 skier days that’s a three-hour drive from Chicago, started its efforts low-key, offering a demo program with the Elan SCX skis as part of its regular ski lesson and rental services. But just listing it in the brochure or on the information board wasn’t good enough.
“In this area of the country the product knowledge isn’t out there,” Karberg says, explaining that most of the area’s customers didn’t even know what shaped skis were and without a little push in that direction wouldn’t have shown much interest. To generate more business, management offered an incentive to those lift-ticket cashiers who sold the most Elan SCX packages. The idea worked. The resort sold out of all 75 of its Elan SCX rentals that day as well as getting those same rental customers to take a lesson on the skis.
And, although the demo-center concept is relatively new—Elan and Sunday River, Me., got the ball rolling with Elan’s SCX Learning Centers in the winter of 1995—there aren’t too many ski resorts these days that aren’t doing a program. Demo centers have caught on so fast that ski resorts are scrambling to differentiate themselves from each other.
Some resorts do a by-the-hour-demo rental and just suggest a lesson. The American Skiing Company, however, offers free rentals but skiers must take a guided demo designed to teach them how to ski on shaped skis.
Vail: Reaping the Benefits
Whatever method a resort uses, the setup and maintenance of demo centers comes at a cost that depends on the degree of the various programs. At Vail, the cost is considerable and the resort views the New Technology Centers (NTC) strictly as a guest-services function.
“We had to build the buildings, we’ve got staff and we tune the skis every couple of hours,” explains sales manager Kevin Calabrese, who said that the program pretty much breaks even. Even the tuning can get expensive: touch-up tuning is done by hand at the NTC by a staff person, but the real job is done in the rental services buildings using the $400,000 fully-robotic Snowell tuning machine.
But whatever the cost adds up to, it’s worth it, says Calabrese, explaining, “We feel this is an integral part of getting people into the sport and getting people to improve.”
In order to catch as much as it can of its annual 1.5-million-skier-visit traffic, Vail has made it easy and convenient for skiers to demo skis. Skiers can pop into one of three centers (Eagle’s Nest, mid-Vail or Spruce Saddle at Beaver Creek) and try a large variety of the latest skis at a rate of $7 per hour, with a two-hour minimum.
“Every ski is shaped and we have skis in different categories such as women’s skis, free-carving skis and teen skis,” explains Calabrese, who added that all the major ski manufacturers are represented. At the mid-Vail NTC, located at the bottom of Chair Four, “skiers can cycle through a lot of skis and ski them on consistent terrain,” says Calabrese, “so they can make a nice comparison.”
Another key component at Vail is to make ski-school programs like shaped-ski breakthrough clinics available to customers. “We work closely with our ski school to get our customers into lessons,” says Calabrese.
Tapping into Retail
Vail also works closely with its local retail network and gives customers lists of shops where they can buy the skis they have demoed. “The shops enjoy the extra traffic because they get customers above and beyond what they get by their own means,” says Calabrese.
In fact, most resorts do work with retailers. Even the ASC resorts—criticized by some ski shops for asking skiers after the demo if they want to buy the skis, then walking them into the resort’s retail shop to close the deal—give suggested ski shop names to skiers who are undecided about whether or not to make a purchase.
The demos “are a marketing tool to get more people involved in skiing,” says John Grush, hard-goods coordinator in charge of the demos at Killington, Vt. “It costs us money to do this,” he says, adding that hard goods is the least profitable part of the retail business anyway.
The ASC Formula
The ASC resorts offer guests a completely free rental and guided demo in which a ski instructor usually takes a group of about six skiers on three runs. After the demo is over, the instructor asks the skiers questions about the skis and how they liked them. Finally, he asks if anyone is interested in purchasing skis—if so, the instructor will take the skiers to the resort shop. If not, skiers get a list of retailers that carry the skis in their home area.
Of course, not all ski resorts are as big and sophisticated as Vail and the ASC resorts. But they don’t have to be to offer customers the same basic service. “For a relatively low cost, we got onto the cutting edge of something,” says Rick Owen, director of marketing for Whiteface, N.Y. But he admits that at first, management thought the concept “might be too cutting edge for our relatively conservative clientele.”
How to Do It
Whiteface converted a corner section of its mid-station lodge to the Carving Center as well as a small retail shop selling gloves, hats and other accessories. The demo program started last winter, but the center averaged about 30 people a day taking advantage of a two-hour demo rental for $10 and a free super-sidecut clinic.
“It worked well and became a real impulse thing,” says Owen, adding that he had signs placed on the corner of the lodge facing the chairlift to direct people to the Carving Center. Last season, the center had 60 pairs of skis from Rossignol, Olin and Atomic. Whiteface will continue the program, though the cost of purchasing the higher-end demo skis is about 50 percent more than normal rental skis.
In California, Mountain High—located a couple of hours from Los Angeles—is trying the demo center concept for the first time this winter. Mountain High will carry about six ski brands and offer customers the chance to demo three skis for $25; a normal one-day rental costs $19.
Like Vail, it has teamed up with local retailers. If a skier is interested in a ski purchase, they are directed to a nearby ski shop. Mountain High’s marketing department is still working with shops on some sort of coupon that will give the demo user a free lesson, a demo credit or another similar incentive to further encourage a purchase.
Ski Suppliers Benefit Too
Ski resorts aren’t the only ones benefiting from the growth of demo centers. Equipment companies like the results, too. “Our market share has risen fairly dramatically,” says Bruce Barrows, marketing director of Elan Sports. “It’s making a big difference to us as a brand.”
Indeed, demo centers have helped ski suppliers get the word out about the new shapes and their brands. “We provide them with an incredible marketing platform for their products,” says Calabrese, who adds that the NTCs were responsible for launching several ski brands in Vail and that certain models from Fischer and Atomic had instant success once people tried them.
On the other hand, ski suppliers also have to spend money to support the programs. Now into its fourth winter, Elan has about 150 SCX Learning Centers and provides a team of people to give clinics to ski school management so the learning-to-ski-on-the-new-shaped-skis process trickles down properly to the customer.
Rossignol started two new demo programs in conjunction with eastern and midwestern resorts last winter: the Cut University and the Adventure Center, each offering instruction and demos a different mix of skis. Cut University instructors, for example, traveled to eastern and midwestern resorts and conducted clinics for ski school directors, training them to teach with Rossignol’s more extreme Cut series skis. “We want to emphasize to the areas that we’re the right people to do rentals with,” says Kilchenstein.
One Big, Happy Family
One thing’s for certain: demo centers are bringing ski suppliers and ski resorts closer together. Most ski suppliers involved in demo centers list on the Internet the ski resorts where people can demo their skis.
For the industry, demo centers seem to be a win-win situation: Equipment companies are referring people to ski resorts and ski resorts are referring people to ski shops. In the end, both ski shops and ski suppliers should be selling more skis and ski resorts should be selling more lift tickets. “Our money is in the lift ticket—anything we can do to encourage more people to ski makes us happy,” says Skip King, director of communications for ASC, adding that the primary goal is “to make people excited about skiing—more excited than they are.”
“Almost the same number of people who bought skis from us went to their own shops and bought equipment,” says Killington’s Grush. “We’re selling skiing, and if we can get more people to enjoy themselves out on the hill, it benefits everyone.”
