Orders; I Got to Get Some Orders! The View From Las Vegas

Anybody who had hoped that the worst of the consolidation was behind the industry unfortunately knows better now. Even as retail sales climb and snowboarding becomes more mainstream and better established, some industry participants seem to be facing hard times.

 

 

SIA’s numbers on the show for 1997 and the three preceding years appear to validate industry conditions and suggest why some companies have been disappointed by their preseason order numbers. The total number of show exhibitors grew from 705 in 1994 to 897 in 1996. In 1997, the number declined a little more than eight percent to 823.

 

Total show square footage grew almost twenty-one percent from 427,000 in 1994 to 515,960 in 1996. In 1997, total square feet fell to a little over 504,000. That decline was reflected by the fact that no companies were exhibiting in the upstairs meeting rooms like they had the previous year.

 

The total number of buyers attending the show and shops represented also dropped. After growing thirty-one percent between 1994 and 1996, from 2,854 to 3,738, the number of shops attending dropped by over seventeen percent to 3,101. The number of buyers grew twenty percent during the same three year period from 7,761 to 9,333. It fell five percent in 1997 to 8,867.

 

My conjecture is that the decline in the number of shops and buyers attending the show is to some extent a function of an increase in orders being written at regional shows. As a result, I don’t see it as being a significant negative for the industry.

 

 

Comparing the mood at Vegas this year to last year was initially difficult. In past years, the peaks of excitement in the snowboard area were balanced by the valleys of the ski side. This year, with both major ski and snowboard players in the main hall, the energy level seemed more even, the peaks and valleys having leveled off somewhat.

 

Perhaps this was the result of the show reorganization. More likely, it followed from the larger booth and more business-like atmosphere, a continuation of trends from last year. The product, not the booth, was definitely the focal point. Ride and Sims must have been thrilled by that, since it appeared that the same designer using the same materials had created both their booths.

 

There were more people with ties than purple hair. Nobody was thrown out for having drugs in their booth and I heard fewer stories (only one) of product theft. There didn’t seem to be a keg in a booth anywhere. It’s possible I just wasn’t in the right place at the right time, but I’m usually pretty good at sniffing them out.   

 

My other observation about booths is that many companies were using the same booth materials they used the previous year, though the materials were assembled in a different way. I took that as one confirmation that maturing industry conditions are leading companies to be a little more careful how they spend money.

 

The booths of the leading snowboard companies seemed busy most of the time. Salomon and Bonfire shared a booth, with the boards along the back and the clothing on both sides. To keep things from getting too businesslike, Mervyn Manufacturing featured big white boards on which they listed and ranked the leading marketing gimmicks as reported by people walking the show. These included three dimensional top sheets and a bunch of others I can’t remember. Mervyn also had some women (I think they were women) walking around dressed as nuns.

 

It occurred to me that the best marketing gimmick at the show was Mervyn making fun of everybody else’s marketing gimmicks as a way of attracting attention to their booth. Thank God we’ve got Mervyn to keep us from taking ourselves too seriously.

 

 

Back across the lobby, in what use to be the snowboard ghetto, it was, well, kind of a ghetto. Though traffic picked up as the week progressed, there were few larger companies to serve as a draw for the smaller players there. West Beach was the largest snowboard related company in that hall, and they seemed to be having a good show. The moral of the story may be that if you have good product, programs, financing, management, industry history and your reps do their jobs, show location may not be as big an issue for you.

 

In the corner of the hall, as far from the main entrance as you can get, was the Reef Brazil booth. I have absolutely no recollection what the booth looked like. I don’t even remember what products they were selling. But(t) till the day I die I will carry with me the memory of the Reef Brazil models standing there and signing posters. My own theory is that SIA intentionally put the Reef booth in that location to draw traffic into and through that hall in response to some of the complaints from companies who didn’t get into the other hall. I think it worked and I hope Reef took the same approach at ISPO.

 

 

I swear I didn’t expect to have to write this section. I thought the recent performance of snowboard company stocks, the publicity about over supply, and the declining prices for hard goods would cause people to be cautious about entering the industry now. Compared to previous years I suppose they were cautious. But there were fifteen or so new brands I hadn’t seen before. Even more interesting was the amount of additional manufacturing capacity associated with these brands.

 

Wolverine Snowboards is apparently owned by a Michigan auto parts manufacturer and expects to do OEM business. I don’t know for whom. Kuusport Mfg. Ltd. has a great looking accessory line but has decided to start making snowboards. They took out a full page color ad in Transworld Snowboard Business advertising what appeared to be good quality boards for between $105 and, I think, $130 dollars. Good luck to them.

 

After a few days of going from booth to booth to booth and being told by everybody that business was great and they were writing lots of orders, I had begun to feel like Diogenese searching for an honest man. At one of the new brands, I finally found one.

 

This booth was manned by an industry veteran who was old enough to have had his rose colored glasses shattered. After a few minutes of conversation, I cautiously approached the subject of his ability to compete and ask him, in the nicest possible way, why his current employer had leaped into snowboarding now and how they expected to succeed. He looked me right in the eye and, with hardly a moment’s hesitation said, “We can afford to lose a lot of money.”

 

It was one of those moments of clarity that happens all too infrequently in business. I don’t know where this guy is now. I have no reason to think he’ll see this article. But if he should, I want him to know that if I was starting a new snowboard company, I’d hire him in a minute.

 

 

Boards really do seem lighter this year. Significantly; not just by an ounce or two. It’s been suggested to me that this trend will finally run its course when durability declines and there isn’t enough weight to provide adequate dampening. Like pants can get too baggy, boards can get too light.

 

Quicksilver introduced its step in, joining the apparent rush towards that technology. But the waters were muddied a bit by improvements to traditional soft bindings that improved their ease of use and, in some cases, claimed to make them nearly as convenient as a true step in. All I really care about is that somebody makes a step in boot bigger than a (US size) 13 so I can actually try one of them.

 

Maybe a dozen companies showed some form of a three dimensional top sheet. Some claimed various performance benefits, but I see it mostly as a decorative way to reduce weight. Morrow first used this technology in a limited way maybe three years ago. It’s not new, but it’s sure gotten more popular.

 

This year’s Vegas show and the period immediately following it basically validated the changes many of us have seen coming in the industry. I won’t characterize them as good or bad, but as inevitable. Hype and image aren’t enough anymore.