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#21
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Damn it's hard to buy Nordic Skis Nowadays!
First off, I would like to note that you weren't honest in your
original post. Really, this is about your dislike for REI. Which is OK, this is usenet after all. SMS wrote: People like to buy their equipment close to home. That's why stores that are hundreds of miles from the closest snow sell skis (ditto for climbing equipment). I'm not sure you're connected with reality here. If I lived a couple of hours drive from the nearest skiable snow I have no doubt that the nearest shop to buy ski stuff would be a couple of hours drive away. And when Gene talks about ski shops in the Twin Cities, in a similar situation I doubt many of them would be devoting floor space to skis. The guy that runs my favorite shop knows the numbers. He knows how much revenue per square foot he needs in order to justify the space. Years ago he used to sell inline skates. He stopped when the revenue stream dropped below that point, and he replaced them with something else. We have chain stores here too. Clothing has better markups and require no sales expertise. The local shop sells Patagonia and Trek branded stuff, where he isn't competing directly with the chain stores. Most of his stuff targets a niche where he can get his margins to a point where he can survive. If something changes his numbers then he has to adapt to that. Now, I don't know the details about retail operations in the bay area. But a former employer with headquarters there kept a failed business model afloat for years by burning through massively appreciated real estate. So I am guessing that shops in the area were adapting to this, and that marginal uses were shaken out. And I hate to say it, but selling ski stuff in a place where it doesn't snow just might be a marginal use. I remember when REI didn't sell downhill skis or snowboards, and they had a tiny selection of rather crappy road bicycles. Now they are into downhill skiing and snowboarding and mountain biking big time, and less into stuff like backpacking or XC skiing. In the Bay Area, only two of their nine stores carry XC skis (Berkeley and Saratoga). I don't blame them; stocking ten different sizes of ten different ski models, and 15 different sizes of five types of boots, is tough when the TAM is so small. REI is one of the few stores where you can buy a commuter bike or touring bike--few bicycle stores carry them any more, but REI still has them made for them under their Novara brand. See, you're just not that connected to reality. No one carries touring bikes anymore because bicycle touring represents a market niche. If you sell a million bikes only a small number of them will ever carry a pannier. But the world is flooded with commuter bikes. http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/urban/ http://www.specialized.com/us/en/bc/...nuItemId=12189 http://www.giant-bicycles.com/en-us/...ty/6963/43123/ Just swimming with them. Every major bike manufacturer has a product in that space. Unlike touring bikes, which only represent a small niche. And I want to note that if the numbers on the Sierra Club ski outings are dropping, it is entirely possible that that is a reflection on the Sierra Club and not on skiing. Is the hair color on the remaining outings trending a little grayer? Bob Schwartz |
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#22
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Damn it's hard to buy Nordic Skis Nowadays!
On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:48:47 -0600
Bob Schwartz wrote: And I want to note that if the numbers on the Sierra Club ski outings are dropping, it is entirely possible that that is a reflection on the Sierra Club and not on skiing. Is the hair color on the remaining outings trending a little grayer? I'm no longer a member, but aging was so much the case in LA by the mid 1990s that they were actively working on more youth-oriented recruiting. The Bay Area seemed a fair bit younger, but I never got a full look. It didn't help, at least in California, when about 10 years ago it came to the surface that the underlying principles of the Sierra Club are anti-immigrant, with one faction running a national slate openly on that platform and getting 40% of the vote (immigrants mean more population, therefore screw up the environment, so the argument goes). But I think the shift is mainly the Me Generation and its subsequent variants being less interested, or less able to afford certain little-used types of increasingly expensive toys, such as x-c skis (individual income has pretty much been dropping since the early 1970s in the U.S., while household income has been flat, at least prior to 2008). Gene |
#24
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Damn it's hard to buy Nordic Skis Nowadays!
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#25
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Damn it's hard to buy Nordic Skis Nowadays!
Bob Schwartz wrote:
Actually I was thinking about the ill advised war on mountain biking. By the mid 90s the Sierra Club would have been well into their effort to alienate outdoors oriented young people. Yes, that was exceedingly stupid. |
#26
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Damn it's hard to buy Nordic Skis Nowadays!
On Mar 6, 6:01*pm, SMS wrote:
The spousal unit really hates her 16 year old Asolo Blisterfield II boots, and wanted NNN-BC boots and bindings. She also really needs lighter skis than her Europa 99's for the kind of stuff she does. There used to be at least 10 stores selling nordic skis on the San Francisco Peninsula, including North Face (x2), Sierra Designs, Western Mountaineering (x2), REI, Any Mountain, Helm of Sun Valley, The Co-op, Mel Cotton's, and several other stores that I can't remember the names of. Most of those stores are out of business, and of the remaining ones no longer carry nordic skis. Only _one_ of the four REI stores on the Peninsula carriers Nordic skis, and their selection and stock is awful. I ended up driving 50 miles to Berkeley to go to Marmot Mountain Works, a store that's a real PITA because it's busy but has only one employee working the sales floor, going nuts with all the people bombarding him for help. I also got a new pair for myself at Marmot, but they were out of 3 pin bindings so I went to REI in Berkeley to buy bindings because the REI near me in Saratoga ran out of bindings (both NNN-BC and 3 pin). It's pretty bad that an area with a population of 3.5 million people can't support a single actual mountaineering store. Nothing to be upset about. Bejing has way more than 3.5 mln people, I am sure you would have an even harder time there. San Fran is relatively close to the Sierrras (3 hrs, day trip for me), but most of my co-workers (scientists) go to the Sierras once a winter, and that's for "real" skiing (for me nordic is "real" but that's a different story). If you need quality XC stuff you have to go where the snow is - i.e. Truckee, or go online. And backcountry E99-like stuff is even more esoteric than nordic per se (i.e. skiing on groomed trails). Mammoth Mntn in Berkeley is probably the only store in the BA that can be remotely called a "montaineering store". Most people I see there are renting downhill skis to ski at SugarBowl. If you want quality specialized equipment you have to go out of your way. What percentage of the average population finds sleeping in the snow plain insane and pointless? 99.99. |
#27
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Damn it's hard to buy Nordic Skis Nowadays!
On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:22:57 -0600
Bob Schwartz wrote: The average Birkie skier is atypical, because they represent a demographic able to travel to a ski race. But here are the numbers. http://www.birkie.com/news_article/show/37342 They are a highly educated group and probably more resistant than others to economic trends. Yeah, but they are not the ones who would keep the stores in the Bay Area and LA in x-c ski gear. Gene |
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