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!