Don't talk to me about Golfing yet!

Well, Spring has been nipping away at the winter season. We have all been getting our ski days in while thinking in the backs of our heads about activities like Golf, Biking, fishing and the like. We know that we are in the transition zone. Some customers will be hanging up the skis and turning their attention to other things outdoors. Others are sticking with the snow sports opportunities until they are turned away. Those that are still skiing have been getting repaid with some great spring conditions. Lot's of powder falling from the sky still. Some of the best powder days of the season have come recently. Shortly after it is warm and back to traditional spring conditions.

I am obviously part of the latter group. The past four weeks have given me:

Week one- three days in Utah with 50 degree days. Ice, corn, slush was the cycle. Not great but good fun with good friends.

Week two- Two days with John at Squaw skiing with Fischer skis upper management and our Norcal rep. Conditions were about like Utah the week before. The main difference was KT22 with expert skiers instead of Snowbird with old friends. Ripping the corn baby! Thanks for the room and the lift tickets. Thanks too for the good company. Fischer is rolling again!

Week Three- Wow. Big pow day for a Wednesday turn and burn at Sugar Bowl. Fresh light snow. Midwinter conditions. Timing is everything!

Week Four (the last four days)- Road trip to Utah for the Soze group Boot Camp. This was our second year (John and I) and we drove to Park City to hang out, ski, and learn with a group of about 20 elite boot fitters. Last year we got incredible powder. This year- incredible powder! We drove eleven hours with no weather. The last half hour was into a full blown blizzard at Park City. Park City had been getting snow for the last five days! Our first two days skiing were in waist deep powder with the occasional face shot (see photo above). I skied the Boone Skis Powder model at 118mm under foot and fully rockered with a lightweight bamboo core (http://www.booneskis.com/). Awesome! Day three it cleared, and it was blue skies as far as the eye could see. Perfect conditions for all to enjoy. Also perfect conditions for what we needed to do. Video taping our techniques and then tweaking our boots to improve form. Videotape, tweak, repeat. All day. Good times! Thanks to Jay, Kim, Pete, and Steve of the Soze group http://www.thesozegroup.com/. Special thanks to Ernie, Mike and John at Boot Works in Park City for hosting again this year http://www.bootworks.com/. Then another long drive home yesterday. Now off to work in a few minutes. Still coming down from a hard core Utah High!

It looks like we have another month or so of skiing. What will next week bring? Who knows? One of these weeks I will go golfing or biking on my day off. It's pretty nice out. I could probably do it next Wednesday...but I won't!

The Big Time

The shop was featured in an article in the Wall Street Journal today. We've hit the big time! Check it out at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304575109920292668054.html?KEYWORDS=ski+berkeley

Olympic Glory

Well the games are over. I hope you all got as caught up in the Olympics. I did. I didn't go into the event amped. By the end, I was mesmerized. It was fantastic! The skiing, sliding, hockey, and yes, the curling too. The USA had great results. All the right people seemed to have success. Sportsmanship and fair play were on showcase. In the alpine skiing events all the stars shone. Bode did great. Julia had fantastic success. Lindsey got the results she deserved as did her good friend Maria Riesch. Anja Paerson came back from a huge crash to get a medal too. In the end, however, the biggest winner overall may not have been an individual. The biggest winner may have been Head. Head's ski and boot dominance was indeed impressive! In Europe this will translate to big sales increases for the brand. That's what they pay the sponsorship dollars for. In the U.S. I was uncertain. Would American buying habits be influenced? They were during the games but would it last? Well, now that the Olympics have been over for a week we are indeed seeing continued Olympic fueled interest in the Head products. Hopefully that will carry over to next year too!

With that in mind we are holding a "Gold Medal Sale" through the end of March. Four products that we carry were given great Olympic exposure. Head Skis and boots, Leki poles, Uvex goggles, and POC helmets. Customers took more notice of these brands when they were shopping. "Isn't this the brand that Julia Mancuso wore in the Olympics?" That sort of thing. So we decided to run with it a bit and have a "Gold Medal Sale" on these product lines. We have them all on sale now and I am impressed with the results! Advertising does work. Thanks Head! Thanks Olympics! Thanks Bode, Lindsey, Julia, Anja, Maria, Didier, Elisabeth, and Zaeka!

Last week was the Reno "buying show" for the regional ski industry. Three days of discussions and decisions with our sales representatives. John and I headed up in the Honda Element. We got a lot done but were able to put off most binding decisions for a week or two as deadlines were not too firm for the second year in a row. When the distributors can demand the orders earlier they do. With a bad economy, the retailers as a group will not stand for taking any more risk than they must. That seems to be the case again this year. So I got to go out to dinner instead of working the first night. Basque food with our Head reps Dan and George. Good company and good fun. While in Reno it snowed in the mountains too. All in all a good week. Now I need to buckle down with the computer and crunch some numbers and make some final decisions!

So much to catch up on...

It has been soo busy at the shop. Every day. So I haven't updated well here.

Sorry.

Let's see. The Olympics are on every day. Awesome to see. The US has done us proud in Alpine skiing and overall. Head skis has surely been dominant and the customers have noticed. Interesting. Advertising does work! Happy for Americans Lindsay, Julia, Bode, and Ted. For Maria Reich and the other winners too. Those that deserved to win did so. Can't say that I am a fan of the NBC coverage but it is still awesome!

The industry is running out of gear! We are getting low on certain items. Our inventory looks like it typically does a month from now. Not really a bad problem to have, but we will miss a sale every here and there. And worse yet let a customer down perhaps. Sorry! I wish I could get more but the suppliers are out too. It has been a good year so far!

We had a demo day with Wayne Wong and the amazing Anton Gliders (http://www.antongliders.com/) scheduled for tomorrow but weather cancelled. Rescheduled for March 13. Our Toko tuning clinic is set for March 15 at the shop. Interested? Give us a call and get signed up. Max number is 30.

Speaking of tuning we got a NEW STONE GRINDER! Sorry to yell but this is pretty exciting. Our old machine had a stone that will not let us stone grind snowboards. Even wide skis available these days are a challenge. The new Grindrite 21Hundred from Wintersteiger is a thing to behold. Twenty two preset stone patterns and we can program in more. We have already added the Head "christmas tree" chevron pattern from their world cup skis. Also the Stockli pattern. Both were too complex for our old machine. And it is so easy to use that pretty much anyone could run it. Automation is expensive but efficient and repeatable. Good stuff. It cost about as much as a Mercedes Benz, but hey, you cant make your Stocklis sing in the snow using a Mercedes!

Another mid winter storm has been going on. I go to Reno on Tuesday with John to buy for next year. We will be there Tuesday through Thursday. By the end our lineup for next year will be pretty much set. Due to the pace of retail as mentioned above, I am not as prepared for Reno this year. I spend as much time as possible each year doing basic business analysis and create "open to buy" numbers for each category and carefully pour through the various options. This year I may have to trust my gut a bit more. I should still hit it about 95% right but will miss a few things. I will revisit it all in the spring and try to fix any mistakes...

Anyway, that's about it around here! How 'bout you? You been skiing?

Blizzard in the Sierra!

Actually it was a very warm day at Sugar Bowl yesterday. Bluebird skies and light jackets. Good snow. For the first time in many ski days I got to ski my personal skis. Awesome day!

In addition to my skis we obtained three models of the Blizzard 2010/11 lineup to spend time on. We also brought a Boone ski from our shop demos. I had not skied the Boone's and recently a number of customers have taken out the demo ski and come back saying it was their favorite ski ever. So I thought I should give it a whirl.

All the skis were great- particularly mine! Steve really liked both the Blizzard 8.7 and the Titan Atlas. They are quite different from each other in feel but both very satisfying. The Boone features an all bamboo core and this makes it very light and very "poppy" or springy feeling. Very distinctive and different than anything else I have skied. Boone is local (from Alameda) and seems to be on to something here! Check them out at www.booneskis.com.

We skied a bit with Steve from Sugar Bowl who is a friend of CalSkiCo Steve. They are friends from Chico State and also both work for Outward Bound. Sugar Bowl Steve skis telemark only. And he telemarks very well. It must be nice to spin a few laps every day while on your lunch break!

I am still mentally sorting things out from the Denver show and the on snow demos in my mind. I tend to dream about skis quite a bit this time of year. This season the dreams seem to involve Fischer wide skis more often than not. The redesigned Watea 101. The new Watea 98. The new Watea 114. Wow. Also the new Line Prophet 115. Rockered skis are for real and will be a big buzz this season.

So the season is "over the hump" from a business perspective. The major holidays have passed. We are more than half way through the resort season. Overall I would have to say that I am pleased. Very pleased. The end results for the year will be good. If the storms keep coming and we finish string, the sales results will be fantastic. The staff has been stellar as usual. Our customers are awesome. Life is good.

And I am excited about next year as well. Since I need to think about next year so much this time of year, I cannot help but speculate. The new products are compelling and well done. I think you will like them. Now over the next few weeks I will place the rest of my orders for the 2010/11 winter. Then in mid March I will have put my orders in and then fly to Salt Lake City to ski with friend for a few days. Until then, keep demoing skis (next week is Salomon) and dial in the order!

We have loaded up the cars, We got the keg in there. They have the skis. It's demo season! After a great trade show in Denver, followed by two days at the Rocky Mountain Dealers ski demos at Winter Park we're off to Alpine Meadows for our regional demo. Two days at Alpine will be followed by two more at Mammoth Mountain set up for the SoCal dealers.

Every manufacturer will be there with their goods. Ski all of next years skis. Try some new goggle models. Whatever you want! It is like Disneyland for us, but serious work too. We fill out test cards on every ski we try. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Then it is back to headquarters to make decisions on what gear we will display for you next year. At Winter Park we got through most of the women's skis narrower than 90mm at the waist. Beneilia and Becky will finish off the category and confirm our test results on the cards we filled out (or possibly disagree with the results we got). We had four skiers at Winter Park. Six at Alpine. Four at Mammoth later this week. That's 14 skier days. There will still be arguments and indecision. We will mop up those questions in the next few weeks with arraigned private demos for CalSkiCo by the reps.

I'll tell you more about the Denver show when I get back. It was awesome. Right now I have to finish packing!

Show Time again!

"So ya, Thought ya, Might like to go to the show. To feel the warm thrill of confusion? That space cadet glow. Tell me is something eluding you, sunshine? Is this not what you expected to see? If you wanna find out what's behind these cold eyes You'll just have to claw your way through this disguise."

In the Flesh? (Waters)

I was listening to Pink Floyd last night after a good session of Wii Skiing. As the annual National trade show is approaching and on my mind, these words rung true. The experience for me is still overwhelming. There is so much to see. So many important decisions need to be made. So much pressure to provide you my customers with the best possible selection. And so much "socializing" available with other industry members. All packed into four days.

Yes, four days. To see everything produced that could possibly be relevant to a ski shop owner. That's a lot to see in a short time! I am nervous and excited every year at this time as the show approaches.

So it is a bit overwhelming to me, and a lot of hard serious work. And there is important partying to do as well. Oops- did I say that? I meant "social interaction". This is important too. Chatting it up with colleagues is definitely important on a lot of levels. Many are even business related! And this is the best opportunity to do it.

This year the show moves from Las Vegas to Denver. I won't get into the politics of the industry, but for various reasons, many retailers will not be going to the show this year. It could all change at the last moment, but it looks like only about twenty percent of the storefronts across the country will be represented. This is both good and bad in my eyes. On the one hand it is easier to get appointment to see product lines at a time that fits into my itinerary as the sales reps have less appointments. I can more easily get the ear of a factory tech or national sales manager. On the other hand we as retailers need to support a national show as an industry. If we don't, it will go away. On top of it all, I want to come back from the show with a great skiing stoke. I like to be pumped up by the vibe at the show. The vibe of thousands of passionate skiers reveling in all that gear in one room. It reminds me why I am involved in this silly business where it is so hard to scratch out a living. If you go to the big Warren Miller showings just before the ski season starts, you know what I mean. You walk out knowing you will dream of epic powder days for nights afterwards. You want to ski so bad you can taste it in your mouth.

Hopefully, the dealers who do show up are the ones that do have that passion and so will not pass on the show. Hopefully, even if it is smaller in numbers, the quality of the participants will be top notch and so it will still have a strong and positive vibe. I will personally pledge right now that I will do my part!

Being in Denver changes a few other things for me as well. I have a good friend in Denver and will get to spend some time with him there. Martin Sulser from the shop will come along as usual, but I send him back after a few days. After that I stay with my friend Jim. Jimmy and I skied a lot in High School and see each other rarely since then. I can't wait to see him. He is pumped too. He will be with me as a "buyer" and I will send him out to research and view some categories of products for me.

Also different is that there will be two "on snow" days after the four days of the Floor Show. That means two days of ski demos! Yahoo! The best part of my job! The Demo will be at Winter Park. I have a condo in the village for Jim and I. Psyche! Jim is really excited too. Last night he sent me a facebook note and joked "Hey Whitey, If you want to invite Ingrid Backstrom to come skiing with us that's fine by me". I wrote back that I know Ingrid a bit and typically get a few runs in with her at the demos and would introduce him. Jim won't sleep well tonight I think! Yes Jimmy, this will be even better than you could imagine!

Yes, every year the show is better than I can imagine and I have been there many times. Better than I remember it. Better than any other job in the world!

Now I'm getting all worked up too. I hadn't been thinking about the trade show much yet with business as brisk as it is this time of year, but it is getting close enough that I am getting pretty excited. I guess I had better just jump into the shower and go to work!