“You look chipper,” he grumbled.
“I just got a huge tip.”
“What’d you do for it?”
“Taught a guy to ski.”
“That’s your job.”
“Slats, I taught a guy to really ski. From ground zero to bumps, in four days. This new ski gear is miraculous.”
“Tell me. This guy play hockey?”
“Well, he grew up in Ottawa. So most likely, yeah.”
“Well, it was either that or he grew up wet on Oahu.”
“It was great. This is a 30-year-old stockbroker. Never skied in his life. We got him on the right skis and boots, and I put him on the Magic Carpet on Monday morning. Linked his turns on the second run.”
“And?”
“And I threw out the progression. Said to myself, ‘I’m not gonna teach this guy to stem, because he’ll have to lose it on Tuesday. I’m not gonna teach him to up-unweight, because he’ll be skiing bumps by Wednesday.’ He didn’t fall until we put him in powder on Thursday.”
“And what lesson did you learn?”
“If people can learn to ski this fast, why aren’t we telling the world?”
“It ain’t quite that easy. You learned that a kid who skates well can learn to ski in a few days.”
“Well, yeah. There must be millions.”
“About 7.5 million, according to the National Sporting Goods Association.”
“You know about this?”
“I’m not as dumb as you like to think. I like to find little opportunities. There’s about 2.2 million kids playing organized hockey in the U.S. At least that many in Canada. And about 5.3 million kids take figure skating lessons.”
“Wow.”
“This is a missed opportunity. Every one of those kids could learn to ski in a couple of days. All you gotta do is drag ’em onto the hill. If 10 percent came back, you’d double the number of skis and boots sold next year, and lift ticket sales could go up 25 percent.”
“What? You lost me there.”
“Ten percent of seven million is 700,000, which is a nice approximation of the number of skis and boots sold every year. And if each of those kids skis 10 days, and brings along a parent and a sibling, or both parents, then we’ll get another 21 million skier days.”
“So how would you get them to ski that first day?”
“Drop off a stack of flyers at every skating rink you can find. Promise a free day of skiing and gear if they take a two-hour beginner lesson. It’s like selling condos or giving away free soup: Give ’em a good time, but they gotta listen to the sermon. The hockey coaches will hate it, but the kids will love it. Guaranteed: Enough kids will come back to pay for the freebies.”
“And the surfers?”
“That’s hard. You gotta airlift ’em off the beach. Most of the hockey kids already live in the snow belt. For them it’s just a matter of redirecting the car pool.”
“What else? Who else would you go after?”
“Roller hockey kids, of course. That’s a street sport and it mostly self-organizes, so the kids are harder to get at. But they’re aggressive, they don’t mind falling on hard surfaces, and they got the skills to carve on day one. It’s a natural if you can evangelize ’em.”
“Evangelize?”
“That’s what the Microsoft guys call it. It’s just deep selling.”
“What else?”
“Single parents.”
“What makes you think they can skate?”
“Don’t interrupt, I’m on a roll here. This is another opportunity. Do you know what the divorce rate is in affluent suburbs? It’s more than 50 percent. Nationally, 25 percent of all kids live in single-parent households. But the percentage is higher in tony towns where divorcees migrate to find themselves. These people gotta do something with the kids on weekends. If the mom already skis, you can keep her from dropping out by giving her a break. Put the kids into ski school, give mom some other single parents to ski with, and roll it all into a single-parent-family pass. If the dad has the kid on weekends, he’ll go for it too. In fact, you could sell the kids a season pass that allows them to drag either parent along each weekend. Very PC. They’ll eat it up.”
“I guess they might.”
“If you don’t, you’re turning your back on at least 25 percent of the population. Who can afford to do that?”
“So how do you reach these people?”
“YMCAs and community centers— anyplace an athlete on a budget might take kids on a rainy day. And put flyers on every minivan in town.”
“How do you know about all this?”
“My kids are divorced. That’s why I get to ski with my grandkids so often.”
“So should we also be selling to Grampa?”
“Now you’re thinking. But focus on the real issue.”
“What’s that?”
“Evangelize whoever is stuck with the kids on Sunday.”
