jeff | Jeff Harbaugh

A Good Snow Year Does Not Make Us Heroes of Management; A Minor Reality Check

1980- Michael Porter, the Harvard strategy Guru published Competitive Strategy. In it, he discusses how industries change, and how companies have to change, as they transition from growth to maturity. I want to look briefly at what Porter says stereotypically happens during this transition and see how it applies to the winter resort business. Like all […]

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Questions That Retailers Should Always Have Answers To

Retail

When I start writing these articles, I always have to remind myself who the audience is. The Skateboard Industry, of course and, based on the circulation of Skate Biz, skateboard retailers especially. That’s where things get a little tougher, because what I know is that skateboard retailers don’t just sell skateboards and they don’t just

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Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live Without Them; Trade Shows, That Is

Trade Shows

It feels to me like more trade shows are being better produced at exactly the time when we don’t need them in quite the same way we use to. Or maybe there’s the same number of trade shows, but we don’t feel the need to go to as many. Or maybe retailers, who don’t make their living

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Swell Raises $2 Million

Surfing

Almost as soon as my article on surf industry internet models was finished, Swell shut down its Crossrocket site and then, on May 3rd, announced it had raised $2 million in bridge financing. I hate it when that happens. Rather than just throw up a press release that created more questions than it answered (see it

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Recession? You’re Kidding- Right? Please?

General Management, Macroeconomics

The NASDAQ stock market rocketed towards heaven for several years. Its decline has been equally spectacular. Four trillion dollars of value have been wiped out in a year. It’s matched its worst fall ever in percentage terms, but it’s done it in half the time. Should we be surprised? No. The statistical concept of “regression to the mean” is working like

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After the Gold Rush; The Internet’s Role in the Surf Industry, One Year Later

Surfing

Just about a year ago, I asked here in Surf Biz what it took to make money on the internet in the surf business. I said that if you were exclusively an etailer, and had to be both a merchant and journalist, it cost a lot of money just to operate, and you had the added

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Sell!? Maybe It’s Time to Think About It

General Management, Strategy

Here we all are, back from ASR and boy are we excited. More brands, more excitement, hype, orders, deals, three page ads in Skate Biz. People can’t get enough of skateboarding There’s nowhere for business to go but up, and it’s got to be even better next year. Unless, of course, it’s not. As a business

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Everybody Needs a Balance Sheet; Notes from the Conference Retailer Panel

Financial Management

It’s not that this group of retailers, speaking at the Transworld Industry Conference in Banff, was wrong in the comments they made about how suppliers work with them. God knows I wouldn’t want to be a snowboard retailer and, in the words of one participant, it may indeed be a good year if you manage to

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I Think I See a Plan. News From the Ski Industry Summit

Snowsports, Strategy, Trade Shows

Okay, what was I doing at the Ski Industry Summit (formerly known as Ski Week) and why am I writing about it for Snow Biz? Anybody got a problem with some early season turns in Vail when there’s hardly anybody here? Didn’t think so. Also, there was an open bar each night. But aside from the

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Benefiting from Recent Industry Initiatives; It’s Up to Each of You

Snowsports

By now, you should all have seen SIA’s study “Growing the Snow Sports Industry” and NSAA’s growth model for the resort business. They don’t claim that any industry initiative by a trade association is the salvation of the winter sports industry’s issues of participation and profitability. They say, if not exactly this way, “It’s up to each

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