When I first raised the topic of composing a weekly newsletter with Realskiers.com founder Peter Keelty, he coughed, bit down on the Salem that was forever dangling from his lips and curtly advised me that I would run out of topics in a month.
This will be the 332nd Revelation I’ve posted since Keelty dismissed the idea back in 2013.
One could be forgiven for supposing that much of this cobweb-covered content has outlived its usefulness, but having recently revisited all of them, I’d surmise that the vast majority have at least some measure of relevance and most could be re-posted today. To drive this point home, the Realskiers home page will henceforth feature a fresh-albeit-former Revelation every week.
To make navigation through this trove less cumbersome, I’ve created 22 topics that bundle like-minded essays so subscribers can search by subject matter. (Please note that access to the Revelations Archive is a Realskiers’ subscriber benefit.) Topics include such predictable fare as Boot Buying Advice, most of the chapters of Snowbird Secrets and, of course, Ski Buying Advice. But there is also an array of musings on such disparate subjects as ski technique, the death of ski journalism and installments of my personal skiing odyssey, The Making of a Skier.
So, what do we learn about today’s ski gear market by examining the minutia of the last decade or so? That on a fundamental level, very little has changed. All skis are made of essentially the same stuff, only a ratio here and there has changed to provide just enough differentiation to allow all brands to claim their concoction is the best. Brands can only make what their factories are set up to make. An apt comparison would be the world of fine cooking: everyone has access to the same ingredients, and once they procure their hardware, they are limited to what that hardware (e.g., ovens, sundry cooking tools) is able to make. Nobody has a monopoly on any essential ingredients, be they basics like eggs and flour, or exotica like oysters or Kobe beef.
Trendlines
As we pick through the recent past, a few trends emerge that appear to have legs. From a PR standpoint, the most attention-grabbing arena concerns converting the ski gear lifecycle into a more eco-friendly process. Ski making in particular has always been a messy business, but factories have been gradually cleaning up their act, an evolution that began decades ago with the adoption of sublimation in lieu of silk-screening for decorating topskins. Today the emphasis is on using more recycled materials and devising a means of corralling skis at the end of their useful life rather than adding them to the world’s landfills. It bears noting that there are no short-cut solutions in the recycling initiative, so skiing’s collective efforts in this department will continue to be newsworthy.
The pandemic left a deep sitzmark in the ski trade, shutting down the 2020 season in a single stroke before reversing field and turbo-charging the in-resort ski business while sending the sales of Alpine Touring (AT) gear into the stratosphere. An entire genre of hybrid boots emerged, populated mostly with alpine designs with a “hike mode.” The bulge in equipment sales ending up creating a clog in the inventory pipeline that would take the better part of three seasons to clear. There must be a quarter-million pairs of nearly new touring skis (and attendant accoutrements) clogging ski lockers across America, the residue of the discovery that skinning uphill for hours on end is hard.
Another arena with a curious path to its current state of affairs is the women’s market. One of the fun facts about the last decade is that the number one selling ski in the U.S.A. was a women’s model, Blizzard’s Black Pearl, a ski originally conceived as a copy of the brand’s unisex ski that morphed into a genuinely “designed by women for women” model that has further evolved into a full-fledged family under the same Black Pearl moniker.
What the Pearl’s boffo success disguises is a market where most “women’s” models are the same as the men’s models, albeit with a different size range. The wider the model, the greater the likelihood that it’s the men’s version, which means that in the all-important All-Mountain East genre (home of the 85mm-94mm waist), for the most part, men’s and women’s models are all but indistinguishable.
While I would never presume to give equipment advice to the race community, any discussion of trends in alpine skiing has to include mention of the ever-widening gap between race gear and civilian set-ups. Once upon a time, there was only one avatar of skiing, and it was the racer, with a skill set a recreational skier could aspire to (if only feebly imitate). Now there is very little connective tissue between alpine racing and the in-resort ski experience. This isn’t perforce good or bad, it’s just where we find ourselves now, a more fragmented community.
If one spends time perusing the 45 archived Revelations about boots and bootfitting, you’ll find that the advice on how a proper bootfit should proceed hasn’t changed. (See The First Five Minutes, posted October 18, 2016.) But over the course of the last two seasons, the BOA® internal cable system has replaced buckles – either in the forefoot, the cuff, or both – providing skiers of all abilities a choice in closure systems that didn’t exist three seasons ago.
The Realskiers Archives aren’t limited to deep reserves in the Revelations department; they also encompass five years of podcasts (Realskiers with Jackson Hogen) and hundreds of our renowned long-form ski reviews, sorted by season. It could be the curriculum for a master’s class in the evolution of the U.S. ski market.
It is my solemn duty to remind all my Dear Readers and Dear Listeners that first-time subscribers pay only $24.95 to open this vault of insights, and recurring subs are only $19.95. This modest fee includes the right to contact me directly with whatever gear queries you have, a service I feel confident in saying isn’t available anywhere else.
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Reader Comments on Why Ski Sales Have Shrunk
In this week’s Revelation, I posted my top ten (twelve, actually) reasons why skis sales have shrunk, along with the musings of two Dear Readers on the subject. Note that the topic’s focus was ski sales at retail, not skier or skier/rider participation rates, subjects that are certainly related but just as certainly not the same.
Below are verbatim reader responses culled in the last 48 hours. I’ve corrected the odd typo, but otherwise left these contributions intact.
My thanks to all who took the time to tell their tales. – J
Top Reasons U.S. Ski Sales Have Shrunk
[As I wrapped up an earlier Revelation, I proposed to my beloved readership that they share their list of the top ten reasons U.S. ski sales have shrunk. I elicited only two written responses, so I’ll reproduce both here in their entirety, along with my musings on the subject. Consider these submissions tinder to light a fire under you, Dear Reader, to submit a list of your own.]
From Rick Pasturczak
1. Snowboarding-
I’ve noticed most snowboarders are 12 to 20 years old and once they become an adult, almost all stop. While I noticed most skiers continue on.
2. High school and college sports-
Schools now require practicing sports during Christmas and spring breaks taking away opportunities to hit the slopes and family vacations to the mountains. I’ve been told by many parents the coaches forbid them to ski.
3. Travel costs-
Lodging, airfare, ground transportation, and lift tickets.
4. Video games
5. Cost of lessons make it expensive to improve.
6. Confusing selection of equipment
7. Magazines and movies showing extreme skiing
8. Cruising. We need some resorts to be all inclusive.
9. Baggy pants. Bring back stretch pants and sex appeal.
10. Last, we need mother nature to be more consistent with snow.
The Making of a Skier, Part X: The Mechanics & Managers Workshop Tour
When I left Salomon in the spring of 1987, my motivations could be distilled into three principal components:
• The parent company declared it was moving its Reno-based North American HQ back from whence it came. Neither I nor my family had the slightest desire to return to New England.
• I felt I was spending more energy battling factions within my own company than I was out-flanking our competition. I’d worked more or less without a break since June of 1978. My thin veneer of patience cracked.
• I wanted to write screenplays. Not that I had demonstrated any talent for creative writing or had any training in the field. I’d written reams of technical swill, brochure copy, training manuals and memos which created the illusion that I could at least write something, so why not screenplays?
Note that none of these factors involves finding a new job. At the time, I didn’t want to resume wearing the shackles of employment as they would interfere with my ludicrous screenwriting ambitions. Then the stock market went into a tailspin in October, crippling what little equity I’d managed to accrue on my minimalist salary. Oops.
