Skiing Notes from Ira Riklis

How Ira Riklis got back into skiing:

The sons of Alden Hanson, the Dow Chemical scientist that invented the fan powered snow making machine and the “flow” material that would make ski boots SO much more comfortable, Chris and Denny Hanson, invented the rear entry boot.

This boot was much higher than ski boots had been until then. As I had written previously, ski equipment, boots included, had adapted from hiking and show shoeing equipment. Therefore, early ski boots were low, near the ankle, much like hiking boots. It has since been determined that bringing the boot higher up the calf creates a stronger connection between knee movement and ski movement. That meant that the break area was going to be completely surrounded and held tightly together.

But the rear entry element is what really did the trick. In a front entry boot, the sides are squeezed together and that put great pressure on my break area. In the rear entry boot, my break area rested uniformly against a thick “tongue” and distributed the stress throughout my leg. The material of the liner was very sticky and in order to get your foot into the boot you needed to spray on silicone.

But with my new bright red pair of Hanson Riva recreational rear entry ski boots, I was ready to take on skiing once again.

Now deciding to go skiing in the winter of 1975-1976 was no small deal.

In 1970 I had suffered a severe leg break of both the Tibia and Fibula, directly at the top of the ski boot. The leg did heal but to this day my right leg has a slight bend at the point of the break and a “collar” grew connecting the two broken bones. The day that the “collar” separated between the two bones was exceedingly painful, but that’s another story.

I tried to take skiing up again after the break. However, the pain of the break zone at the top of the ski boots was unbearable. Essentially I had not skied since 1970. Diana encouraged me to take it back up again as a very loving gesture.

Diana, while an excellent skier herself, does not actually like to ski much and really dislikes the cold environment. She was really trying, against her own best interests, to help me get back something that I truly love and enjoy. But there was hope.

Ira Riklis on his first trip to Vail:

We were on our way back to Philadelphia having traveled south along the California coast, then east to Las Vegas, and northeast to Aspen. We spent a few days in Aspen enjoying the pristine beauty. Aspen was intended to be our stop in the Rockies. However, the United States had a new president, Gerald R. Ford, and he was staying in his vacation condo in the then rather new village of Vail, Colorado.

Vail was only nine years old at that point and Ford had been a charter purchaser of a condo in the then new (and only) condo hotel in Vail, The Lodge at Vail, long before he ascended to the Presidency. We had never seen the president and thought that it might be fun to stop off on our way to Denver in Vail; after all, Vail was directly on the route from Aspen to Denver in 1975. It turned out that the president wasn’t in town when we got there.

This was the time of the great oil shortages and Ford was off inspecting a shale oil demonstration project; he left in the morning and returned in the evening. We were in Vail for lunch. We never got to see the president up close. We did, however, have a charming lunch on the outside terrace of Pepi’s Gasthof Gramshammer which is located right across the street from The Lodge at Vail and at the very center of the small town. We were enchanted, ensorcelled, and smitten.

We just fell in love with Vail and decided to return the following winter to ski.

In the Summer of 1975, Diana and I decided to do a road trip around the United States. While Diana had traveled extensively in Europe with her parents, she had never seen much of the majesty or vastness of the United States. We packed up our brand new American Motors Pacer (in Burgundy Red with the Navajo Red & White interior) and set out West on a northerly route out from our home in Philadelphia.

The Pacer has pretty much been lost to time and history, and I doubt that there are many people today who were alive then that would remember the Pacer. It was produced from 1975 to 1980 and only a little over 350,000 were ever made in all configurations. It was a most unusual car with a unique jelly bean shape, but two characteristics made it a particularly bad choice for a round trip cross country jaunt of 8,000 miles in seven weeks. First, it was underpowered. The Pacer was originally intended to be powered by a short but powerful Wankel engine. When the promise of the Wankel was abandoned, AMC went with an inline 6 that was insufficient for the bulk of the Pacer.

We were moving on the highway through the Rockies east of Denver at 5 MPH with the gas pedal floored. I felt certain that we wouldn’t make it to the top of the last hill, but we did and the car was able to drive (coast?) at normal speeds on the way down the Rockies. Second, the car had massive side, rear and front windshield glass areas. This made the car a huge solar oven on wheels. Traveling in summer through the badlands, deserts, etc. that are out west was quite an experience in such a car, a little like taking a sauna while in transit. But how does this all relate to skiing?

He continues:

Our operating problem is that we lose money during the summer season. Obviously, in a resort known for the skiing, BIBs are more precious in the summer and we have less to sell them. This is really a shame because the summer activities in a resort like Vail really do rival the winter activities.

Aside from the obvious of hiking (which is made more interesting by being able to take the ski lifts up to attractive areas), the summer activities include riding a bicycle non-stop from the top of Vail Pass back into the Town of Vail. This experience approximates the experience of skiing down a mountain. It’s a real rush. There is also river rafting over rapids, golf and tennis, mountain biking, ATV (all terrain vehicle) trips, four wheeling off road trips, and much more.

We once went off road with Mike up to an old cabin originally built by the 10th Mountain Division as a training facility. There we had an elegant picnic, wine and all, way above the valley. The views were breath taking. It was an experience I will never forget. And all those fine restaurants in the Valley, which I’m going to write about later, are easy to get dinner reservations. I hope someone reading this blog will choose to visit a ski resort in the summer.

Ira Riklis continues:

Our operating problem is that we lose money during the summer season. Obviously, in a resort known for the skiing, BIBs are more precious in the summer and we have less to sell them. This is really a shame because the summer activities in a resort like Vail really do rival the winter activities.

Aside from the obvious of hiking (which is made more interesting by being able to take the ski lifts up to attractive areas), the summer activities include riding a bicycle non-stop from the top of Vail Pass back into the Town of Vail. This experience approximates the experience of skiing down a mountain. It’s a real rush. There is also river rafting over rapids, golf and tennis, mountain biking, ATV (all terrain vehicle) trips, four wheeling off road trips, and much more.

We once went off road with Mike up to an old cabin originally built by the 10th Mountain Division as a training facility. There we had an elegant picnic, wine and all, way above the valley. The views were breath taking. It was an experience I will never forget. And all those fine restaurants in the Valley, which I’m going to write about later, are easy to get dinner reservations. I hope someone reading this blog will choose to visit a ski resort in the summer.

Ira Riklis continues:

You may wonder how comping the customer pays off for us and contributes to our unbroken string of annual earnings. It actually is a rather straight forward calculation.

Of our 11 stores, two of the properties are owned by real estate investors. On those two stores we get 3 year leases and every 3 years the rent is reset to suck out ALL the earnings from that store. The investor doesn’t care a lick that we contribute to the successful skiing experience of the vacationer, only about maximizing return on their property. I’m not condemning that attitude; it makes perfect sense.

It also means that a real estate investor is the wrong landlord for us and we will never rent a store owned by an investor ever again. Hotel operators and condo associations also care about maximizing their returns, but the calculation by which they achieve their returns is more complex. For the typical 250 unit property, if the goodwill that we build in the minds of their customers contributes to just a 5% rise in occupancy only during the Low Season, then that is worth much more to the property than even doubling the rent on our store.

We have become known for building this kind of customer goodwill and having this effect for the benefit of the hotel such that we no longer purchase existing stores. Instead, real estate developers and condo associations will offer us attractive packages to move into their property as an amenity for their customers. We are generally offered 10, 15 year leases at attractive rents and with renewal options, often with the landlord either contributing towards or outright performing the space buildout.

An interesting customer-relations point, from our friend Ira Riklis:

Another part of our “secret sauce” if you will is that we don’t view the skier as our true customer. I’m not suggesting that we aren’t renting skis to skiers somehow, we are. But if the skier has a bad experience, they don’t go home and in a disgruntled voice say that Charter Sports was awful; they go home and say they had a lousy time in Vail and they wouldn’t recommend the Marriott in Lionshead. In essence, the skier is the customer of the mountain and, even more so, the hotel.

It is the job of the resort (both mountain and hotel) to put “butts in beds”, or BIBs as we call them. We don’t create the BIBs and they won’t decide to come to Vail or Lionshead in order to rent from Charter Sports. Once a BIB is in place, then we have the opportunity to provide them with their needs. So in essence, keeping the hotel happy by keeping THEIR customer happy is more important to us than the revenue that any particular skier may generate.

Therefore, if a skier comes in and is having a bad experience caused by any of our equipment (foot discomfort being the most likely), we move into high gear. First off, we will work diligently to determine the problem and solve it. Second, if the problem was severe, we will likely comp (not charge) the skier for the ski rental for the week. If the problem was really severe, we will probably comp their entire family for the week. And third, when they leave our store they will take along some small gifts like lip balm or hand warmers as our way of apologizing. These customers end up being our strongest advocates, often writing letters to the hotel or condo association extolling our service.

The greatest expression of these feelings occurs every year in the Travel & Leisure Magazine survey of their subscribers as to the 50 best ski resorts in North America. There are only two ski shops mentioned in the reviews and they are BOTH Charter Sports. In one instance we are mentioned by name and in the other we are nameless, but it must be us because we are the only ski shop in that resort. We are immensely proud of this compliment and have posted the articles in some of our stores (when space is available).

Continued from Ira Riklis‘ interview on Vail and the skiing life:

“We are different from the usual ski shop in that we are focused on providing ski rentals. All sales of merchandise are incidental to the rental equipment and we do not sell ski equipment.

“This philosophy of business penalizes us in good years and rewards us in bad years. For example, the 2008/2009 ski season was during the depths of the recession (near depression?) and Vail Resorts, the operator of the mountains of Vail, Lionshead and Beaver Creek, reported a 22.3% drop in skier visits and a 20.7% drop in Operating Earnings. In spite of that, Charter Sports experienced only a slight drop off in earnings, nicely under 10%. In fact, in our 20 years of operation, Charter Sports has never had a money losing year.

“Of course we carry merchandise ranging from ski gloves and lip balm to T-shirts and scented candles. However, none of our merchandise is seasonally based. We try to sell through our merchandise during the season, and we certainly will take markdowns to clean out the last 3 jackets in odd sizes of a 50 jacket order, but anything that we have left over at the end of the season can be packed away and put out again at the start of the next season.

“Further, our merchandise is not fashion oriented. Believe it or not, even ski equipment is fashion based. A ski shop carrying a multi-million dollar inventory of skis and boots, as well as ski clothes, at the end of a bad ski season will have to take significant markdowns and losses to get rid of it because all that inventory will be worthless next year when the new equipment comes out.”

More from Ira Riklis very soon!

Ira Riklis continues his interview about skiing and starting a ski-equipment rental business in Colorado:

It was a good partnership, but that partner couldn’t really support Mike’s ambitions for growth. So when the time came that Mike had another opportunity to pick up a store, Mike and I went into partnership. Mike found the opportunity to buy the ski shop in the Charter Hotel and Resort in Beaver Creek, about 20 minutes away from Vail/Lionshead. We took the name for that store from the hotel, calling ourselves Charter Sports. It has been a long hard slog, but today we have 11 stores, including the original Tech Sports (since renamed) with stores in Vail/Lionshead, Beaver Creek, Avon and Breckenridge, plus a premium ski delivery we call Premier which caters to the multi-million dollar mansions around the valley and celebrities that don’t want to come into a ski shop to get fitted for equipment.