A Tight Year
Well, this was the year of the Boa. That was the biggest news (and controversy) after the new product introductions last year at the Winter Sports Market trade show. In hindsight it seems even more that way. Things got tighter as the year went on. For the first time in memory, all regions of the country had poor retail results in the Snowsports market. Why? Well as usual, the weather played the biggest part. Other than a global pandemic not much can affect the industry like bad weather.
At the end we got a decent amount of snow. Just about 14 days ago we got a great little storm that gave us great snow. But the problem wasn’t recent. The problem was Christmas. We didn’t get good skiing before Christmas. I had been told by Martin Sulser once that that when you lose Christmas, it just never gets going really hard. I speak to dealers all over the country on a regular basis. Nobody seemed to get excited this year. We had lost Christmas. It was just sort of Blah,,,
Don’t get me wrong, we did ok in the end, but it will be harder to get through the summer than I like. Boot fitting is still going on every day. Customers are still buying skis. We will never catch up though. It is now getting to the end. I have laid off staff. We’re running lower prices this spring than ever before (hint-hint?). . Still we are looking at just squeaking through and being able to start anew in August. But that is the beauty of this business. We do it over and over again. Some years we get it right and some years we flounder a bit. This year I feel like I was a flounder. A flounder in the grip of a boa!