There’s little argument that ski shop employees can be valuable extensions of a ski area’s marketing efforts, acting as goodwill ambassadors to sell particular resorts to customers along with ski gear and clothing. Research by Stratton Mountain, Vt., shows that 40 percent of ticket buyers are there because of a direct recommendation from a ski shop located dozens or even hundreds of miles away.
It’s easy to give employees of distant shops lift tickets that are free or, at least, steeply discounted. It’s more complicated to make the experience more than simply a fringe benefit, especially given the reluctance of retail personnel to participate in forced marches around snowmaking operations or lectures about market niche. The trick is finding the balance between fun and familiarization.
Increasingly, resorts are seeking high-volume retailers for long-term reciprocal arrangements: you display our posters, brochures and/or videos and post our daily faxed snow condition reports and we will give you VIP treatment on the hill. Areas that accommodate just anybody who shows up at the ticket window with a store I.D. are becoming as rare as single chairlifts.
Reciprocal arrangements don’t have to be complicated or expensive. Both Waterville Valley and Canon Mountain, N.H., are good examples. They sponsor periodic outings for employees of the Ski Market chain, which has 20-plus locations within a four-hour drive of the resorts.
Ski Market employees gather in a base area room set aside for them where they can stow gear for the day. Over juice, coffee and muffins, area management makes a brief presentation about—well, anything they want. The operational word is brief. It’s a captive audience because free passes are not handed out until after the presentation. Management is available again, after the lifts close, over après-ski refreshments. Nobody can recall any retail employee requesting a visit to the snowmaking ponds.
The simple, low-cost program delivers tremendous payback for both sides. Steamboat, Colo., has a similar arrangement with Denver-based Gart Bros. shops, southern California’s Sport Chalet chain, and with Hoigaards in Minneapolis. “We try to tie employee discounts to point-of-purchase visibility for the mountain,” said Barbara Jennings, Steamboat’s director of public relations.
Martin Underwood, general manager of the Peter Glenn Ski and Sports Shops in Florida, Georgia and Arizona, is euphoric over the three-year arrangement with Copper Mountain, Colo. Each spring, Underwood flies top-volume sales personnel on an expenses-paid trip to the area with costs shared by the mountain and the retailer. “They treat us so well, you better believe it’s the first place my employees will recommend to a customer,” he said. Underwood also lines up hardgoods and accessory manufacturers for demos of the next season’s equipment.
The advantage of working with Peter Glenn is the retailer’s in-house travel agency, said John Walters, Copper’s manager of group sales. “It makes it easy to track the additional exposure we get from them,” including repeat business.
Stratton Mountain has flip-flopped its comp policy several times in the last decade and now, again, provides free tickets to employees of any ski shop in the northeast, instead of just the top 100. According to sales manager Dave Rathbun, Stratton views ski shops as “one contiguous group. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a mass marketer selling $299 entry-level packages or a boutique selling $600 racing boots, we need to be represented well,” with on-mountain experience by the sales personnel.
Nearby Stowe, Vt., prefers grouping retailers around the mid-January Shop Employee Appreciation Week, which attracts a handful of store owners in addition to their employees. Invitations are sent to more than 500 retailers in the northeast.
Probably the biggest employee party of the year is the end-of-season Salomon Spring Thing at Crested Butte, Colo., scheduled for April 13-18 this season. It’s a showcase of multi-pronged marketing. With more than 1,000 retail employees attending, Crested Butte keeps hotel rooms and restaurants filled at a time when liftlines are in full-scale meltdown. Salomon trucks in next year’s hardgoods for shop employees to demo, plus celebrities to race against and be photographed with. And the ski shop employees get five days of lifts, lodging and more for $155.
Heavenly, Calif., is re-evaluating shop employee programs because, “our database has been changing with the advent of snowboarding,” said marketing manager Mike Allen. The area’s association with the Any Mountain chain in the San Francisco region includes a pre-season party for shop employees.
Heavenly hosted approximately 1,000 free days for ski and snowboard shop employees last season and is the only mountain surveyed that likes to be told to expect a retailer. Said media relation director Monica Bandows, “We can have somebody available to show the secret spots on the mountain that aren’t on the trail map. We let the mountain do the talking, there’s no hard sell.”
Any Mountain’s marketing and advertising director Derrick Van der Maden said, “first-hand knowledge sells loyalty,” creating paybacks for both retailer and ski area. He believes it’s shortsighted to limit discounts to ski shop personnel. “Although we encourage familiarizing themselves with all the areas our customers ski, the reality is my employees flock to where they can ski cheap.” Around Lake Tahoe, that means Heavenly, where they can ski free, rather than up the road at Squaw Valley, where tickets are $20 mid-week.
Okemo, Vt., claims to have one of the most liberal retailer policies in the Northeast. “We want shop employees here anytime they have off, weekend or not,” said Pam Cruikshank, manager of sales and marketing at Okemo.
“Shop employees are the first line of contact for what’s new, what’s going on at a mountain,” said Les Otten, CEO at Sunday River, Me. “The goal should be to get a shop employee out on the hill, any hill. The more that person knows about the experiences of skiing and snowboarding, the better off we will all be.”
