Snowboarding | Jeff Harbaugh

Growing Snowboard Brand Revenue; the Active Outdoor Market and Year Around Resorts

There has been much ringing of hands and gnashing of teeth around the subject of snowboard participation and what to do about it. Studies have been done and programs implemented. What has their impact been? Hard to know, because we don’t know what things would look like if they hadn’t happened. SIA reports there were […]

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Interview with Blue Montgomery

Snowboarding

Some people up in Canada decided, for whatever reason, to start an action sports industry news magazine called The BoardPress. Their sanity in trying to do this can be questioned, but they sent me a copy of their first print magazine, which came out some months ago. Probably hoping I’d write something about them. It

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Blowback From the 4th Quarter; The SIMA Study and Snowboard Retailers

Retail, Snowboarding

I received The 2008 SIMA Retail Distribution Study (highlights only) about the same time I got yet another phone call from another snowboard focused, core retailer that had been around a long time and was in trouble. I hate those calls because these are shops that I would like to see do well. My little accidental,

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New Stuff to Do More; New Strategies are Critical as the Snowboard Industry Evolution Continues

Snowboarding

I remember when this was a simple business. Or at least I thought it was a simple business. You had a pro team, ran some ads, built relationships with core shops, sold C.O.D. or on 30-day terms, and were thrilled if you could get enough product to fill orders. With supply shortages, the fact that quality wasn’t

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Buying Smart; Selecting Among Snowboard Brands

General Management, Snowboarding

Ain’t business grand? You’ve got a choice of something over 100 snowboard brands to sell in your shop. ‘Course, 20 of them will be gone by the time the snow melts and next year there’ll be 35 new ones. Delivery, not to mention service, is uncertain. Some of those new companies will be only as real as the

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Snowboard Company Business Models and Core Retailer Problems; A Basic Incompatibility?

Retail, Snowboarding

“They may put me out of business and they can’t even put a wax on a board!” said the snowboard retailer about the Zumiez down the street. I talked to him enough to know that he wasn’t kidding and he wasn’t being sarcastic and he wasn’t just trying to make a point. After a bunch of

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Wherever You Go, There You’ll Be. I Can’t Think of a Subtitle

Economic History, Snowboarding

It’s 2002 and I think the five biggest snowboard companies, in alphabetical order, are Burton, Gen X, K2, Rossignol, and Salomon. Gen X is owned by Huffy and Salomon is part of Adidas, so maybe I should change the alphabetical listing. But the point, and I hope this helps me think of a subtitle, is that

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You Did What !!?? Starting a New Snowboard Brand

Branding, Snowboarding

Your first reaction is that they must be crazy. Starting a new brand when the snowboard market is dominated by five companies fighting to take market share from each other, pushing distribution to every corner of the retail world and, to some extent, using price as a weapon in the battle doesn’t seem to make a

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Tackling The Snowboard Industry Buy/Sell Cycle Are We Trying to Fix the Wrong Problem?

Snowboarding

The buy/sell cycle seems to be on everybody’s mind these days. The brands are concerned because the decline of in season orders means they have to take more inventory risk. Retailers, on the other hand, are thrilled to be able to get quality product in season at discounts, though are perhaps concerned that it’s tougher to hold

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“Hey! How Come You’re Still Around?” Conversations With Survivors

Snowboarding, Strategy

It’s old news, of course, that we’ve gotten to the point in this industry where probably north of eighty-five percent of the snowboards sold come from a handful of brands, mostly made by ski companies with the usual exception. And if that concentration is not how we’d like it to be, it’s how it almost always

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