![]() The industry swung heavily back toward skiing for a short time. The kids didn’t want to do what their Dads were doing. ![]() At that time, those who’d started snowboarding early had kids who were growing up. No families meant no purchasing boards for the family, accessories, apparel, hotels, the whole thing. Then, the resorts started raising lift ticket prices, essentially killing the family vacation.” Everyone who’s going to drink coffee is drinking coffee. Everyone who was going to snowboard was snowboarding. They looked at me like I just broke wind in an elevator. When there was a lull in the conversation I asked, “What happened to the snowboarding industry when they hit the bubble? How did they go from 400 to 4 companies? What were the triggers?” Four guys from one of the really cool hipster surf apparel companies were eating across from me and I heard one of them mention he’d worked at Burton Snowboards early on. I was having lunch Friday in the food court. ![]() I’m going to take a quick detour about the “bubble” and snowboarding. Let me relay a completely unscientific anecdote… A small conversation with big implications This seems to be compounding the stress of the slowest time of the year for most retailers and manufacturers.Īdd the inevitability of universal direct online sales, and I can only hope that retailers have built strong services (like rentals, classes, lessons, etc) and local community. That means there are a lot of boards out there-a lot of inexpensive boards. Some manufacturers bet BIG and seem to be sitting on or dumping a lot of inventory. From what I’ve gathered, the demand has fallen, but the production of boards has remained steady. In fact, I didn’t see a single paddle company there this year that wasn’t part of a board manufacture exhibitor. Paddle companies like Kialoa, Werner, and Quickblade stopped coming to this event a long time ago. That’s a totally unscientific assessment, but you get it. Maybe you can attribute that to the fact that at the start of the sport, 100% of the potential shops and accounts were there to sign. In that time, I’ve seen a sharp increase, then a steady decrease in the number of vendors and level of excitement at the shows. This was my ninth Surf Expo, which in the history of the Expo isn’t much, but for SUP, it’s pretty much its entire lifespan. (And bring friends paddling.) For the industry people, here’s my take after walking around for 3 days. For many of you, this glimpse into the industry won’t make a lot of sense or really matter. I keep having the same off-the-record conversations about the 2016 Surf Expo in Orlando.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |