The recent vote by SIA may have taken some people by surprise. At this point, with NSAA structurally and physically re-emerging, my concern is that we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
I will not try to defend or second guess what happened in the past three years. Suffice it to say that it has not worked out as originally designed or intended. There are, however, a couple of observations that I think are important to point out at this juncture.
Our industry is immature and manifests this immaturity in failing to recognize the need to work for common goals and objectives especially in the area of market growth. Somehow we just cannot get over our regionalism and recognize the need for destination areas to cooperate with breeder regions and so forth. We also cannot seem to recognize that an association charged with facilitating the lift engineering regulatory processes and risk management processes and a host of other educational services and responsibilities cannot adequately offer these services for a mere couple of hundred dollars dues per member. There is a little bit of room for blame all around but the general sense of dissatisfaction with the service fulfillment from USIA is only partially correct. There is no question in my mind that the services we were receiving at the time of this reversal were well worth the cost of my dues.
As a former NSAA board member at the time of merger and a USIA board member through the first three years of the organization’s existence, I was disappointed that our supplier cousins were as disinterested in ski area management issues as they were. Concerns with the health and vitality of the Las Vegas trade show was always their front burner issue, and understandably so since it was such a large cash generator for the SIA side of the budget. But it far outweighed their concern with market growth. What will really drive the Las Vegas show success and retailer buying is not the size of the show, the beauty of the booths and the width of the aisles; it is the level of inventories at home on the shelves in the retail outlets in the marketplace. Those shelves only get emptied by skiers who ski, love the sport and return again and again.
Consequently we all need to market the sport to the consumer more, and if done properly, the retailer will be open to buy a lot more. Today, 80 percent of supplier marketing is directly targeted to make the retailer buy and ignore the consumer. I think the days of a nationally funded advertising schedule for a demand building program are gone for now but if our two organizations, as separate as they are becoming, fail to recognize the need to cooperate in marketing, we will have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Regional associations need to keep their eyes on the goals of national market growth as they do their own regional programs. Vehicles for cooperation between manufacturers, resort areas, breeder regions and destination communities need to be facilitated by someone and that can only occur within the ranks of an NSAA/SIA relationship.
I don’t think that blame is warranted or productive at this juncture, but a reality check needs to be made in all quarters as we decide how are we going to productively move ahead, keep parochialisms aside, avoid the temptation to point fingers and keep focused on the need to build the marketplace and to keep skiers happy, satisfied, and returning again and again. It will take the better part of the year for NSAA to reorganize physically and from a personnel standpoint. I hope and feel confident that the new NSAA Board will bear in mind the marketing engine going in some form or fashion.
