This article proposes three general steps to take between now and next season in order to realize more fully your rental income potential.
1. Boot bottleneck. The customer must sit down. This takes space, which is usually at a premium. The beginner skier may be unfamiliar with how to lace the boots. Hints: a) Have boots all sized and arranged by street shoe sizes; b) speed lacing on inner boot will help.
2. Binding bottleneck. With any sort of volume, you should have either mounting platforms or pits so that your personnel work at something between knee and waist level. It is faster and much easier. Binding adjustment is best and fastest when boots are worn by customer.
3. Checkout bottleneck. Fastest method with volume rental operation is to get names, addresses, deposits, drivers’ licenses (all depending on the system you use) before the customer gets his equipment. Otherwise rentor is encumbered with skis and poles when trying to fumble with wallet and ball-point pen. It also makes it possible to use fastest system of all: when bindings are adjusted the customer walks out on a carpeted surface with his skis on.
The space problem can be illustrated with a little over-simplified arithmetic. Let us say you want to push out 200 sets in two hours. If you are set up to equip a customer with skis, poles and boots in 12 minutes, it means:
1 skier in 12 minutes, 1 at a time
200 skiers in 120 minutes, 20 at a time
Thus you have to have space for at least 20 skiers at various stages of getting equipped. Let us say arbitrarily that these 20 might be distributed as follows:
- 2 bindings being adjusted
- 2 with skis, waiting for binding adjustment
- 2 being assigned skis or waiting for them
- 3 in checkout or check-in procedures
- 11 trying on boots and lacing boots
These figures, remember, apply to processing 200 sets in 2 hours under ideal conditions. The figures assume that these two hundred skiers will arrive neatly and evenly spaced over the two-hour period. In reality, of course, they won’t.
Now let us examine the situation in the light of personnel needs—again with some over-simplified arithmetic.
Let us assume that the last operation in equipping the rentor is the binding adjustment. Obviously, your capacity will be determined by the speed at which customers can pass through the final operation.
Let us say you have two men on binding adjustments. Let us say further that each one can adjust a pair of skis every 90 seconds (a fast speed to maintain over any period of time). Each man, therefore, can process 40 skiers in an hour—if everything goes right. The two men can push 160 rental customers through in that two-hour period—again, if they don’t stop for one second, and if all the customers cooperate. Mathematically, therefore, we have arrived at a third full-time binding adjuster for the peak periods if the 200 sets to be rented in two hours is to be realized.
A volume operation, therefore, must be thought out extremely carefully. Practice sessions before the season begins, complete with good time-motion studies, would be effective. Also, now is the time to think about expanding the physical space for your rental operation.
Finally, here are some ideas and trends in rental equipment from a spot check across the country:
1. Skis . . . Shorter lengths in demand. 7-ft. rental ski a museum piece, virtually no call for 6-nines. One prominent rental operator plans to phase out everything except 6-footers and 6-sixes . . . Increasing demand in some areas for shortie rentals—39-inchers, 4-footers and 5-footers. High capacity metropolitan areas are pushing them, and the same skiers are asking for them when they go to the big areas . . . Good idea to have a very few special skis for rent—high-priced metal competition skis, for instance. Some hot-shot skiers will want to try a pair before buying . . . What about metal versus wood skis for rentals? Why try to earn a rental buck on skis that cost about $50 when your rental income is very little different on a ski that can be bought for $12-$15? Answer is that wood skis are good money-makers, but they do require a lot more maintenance, and don’t last as long. Also, metal ski rentals mean metal ski purchases.
2. Boots. More and more rental operators not shopping price alone. Difference of $3-5 in wholesale price can often buy a lot more boot; this amount is recovered in 1-2 days of additional rental service! (And once again, keep your boots neatly and extend their earning lives by keeping them in rental boot trees.) Several rental operations experimenting with buckle boots. Speed factor is good. Cheap buckle boots will not stand up, however.
3. Bindings. Must fulfill three general conditions: a) provide release feature; b) be adjustable to any boot; c) be simple, sturdy and quick to adjust.
Your area rental operation can be a great image-builder at the same time that it makes good money. Don’t let it be an image-destroyer. Rental operations are springing up like fruit and vegetable stands on the ski highways. Don’t compete with them on the junk level; keep your area rental operation so that it reflects credit on the area.
