Friday, March 6, 2009

All of the sudden "POW"!

Well I have been terribly remiss in blog work, but I have a great excuse...right in the middle of the ski season, POW! hit the Sierra and I have been chasing it ever since. First, we had Demo days in Mammoth with deep powder at the end of last month. It was the first time in a number of seasons that we have had demo days for the next years gear in deep powder. Most years it is hard to evaluate powder skis. This year it was hard to evaluate carving skis. Temperatures around zero and abundant snowfall made this a great year to ski everything super wide. John, Peter, Becky, Paul Karst and myself all had a few days of powder bliss. This was great as there are so many new powder skis out now with "reverse camber', "no camber", "rocker", "semi rocker", "full rocker" and the like, that it was important to get a feel for where this market segment is going and what really works and what doesn't. Then it was off to Utah to ski with my best friend from High School. He brought his son and both my kids came. We stayed with a close girl friend from both High School and Chico State. The three (out of four) musketeers were back together! We skied at Snowbird and got to spend a day with Peter Keelty (realskiers.com), as well as great days with our host family and each other. Hot tub, Snowbird, 6 demo skis waiting to try, and great company. Life is good! One day back, and it was off to Reno for our spring buying show. John and I went and drove over Donner summit last Monday night just before it closed. Driving through a nasty storm we got into Reno at 2:30 after a few hours of whiteout navigation. The show was different than it usually is. The economy has the industry in a stir and everyone seemed nervous. Retail tactics will have to change, and distributors are going to struggle. Nobody is going to avoid the realities of the world economic situation. It's a changing world. None of us is really in it for the money anyway, however, so a lot of people (vendors and retailers alike) were absent from the show on Wednesday as they figured skiing was more important. Can't blame them! John and I hammered out a few contracts and now it's up to me to place all the orders. What to do. what to do... how will next year be? I don't know about the future. All I know is skiers will keep skiing and we will be there to take care of them. I am still unpacking, but soon enough I will post photos of Utah and talk some about next years skis.