Ski & Snowboard Equipment
Whilst the European ski season is well and truly over until next year the Southern Hemisphere ski season has yet to begin. There are ski and snowboard instructors who travel the world moving from season to season and effectively working a full year now that flights have become affordable and the demand for leisure activities is at an all time high. There is no reason why a like minded entrepreneur could not benefit from the same “year long” season by building a business that promotes itself in different markets at different times of year whilst effectively maintaining a static base of operations.
If you are an international sports star, or a major sports brand then you are probably already doing this using personal appearances, and mainstream advertising to get your message across and ensuring that your manufacturing efforts remain constant (and thus more efficient year round). The question is how does the little guy, the stay at home trader use the year round season to its best advantage.
Assuming that you are able to buy stock and ship it to any of the key ski/snowboarding markets cost effectively then this is ultimately a question of distribution. Understanding how to reach your customers, what are the best times to sell, and when to begin marketing each year is important but easy to find out using the internet. Start by learning about each of the major markets, and roughly when the seasons run, then search for forums frequented by enthusiasts and start chatting with your potential customers. You will learn almost as much doing this as you can being there in person.
The natural place to start is your closest market, whether that be North America, Europe, New Zealand or somewhere else (I know Korea/Japan have ski seasons and think S.America does?). Decide on your product line and use the following distribution techniques: -
Ebay/Yahoo Auction
Website
Direct Response
PR – magazine articles, radio interviews, TV interviews
Sell through resort shops/hotels/ski lifts
The key to this is to find techniques that you can transport (hopefully remotely) to other markets. In other words you shouldn’t need to transport yourself around the world like those intrepid ski instructors, just your business model.
Ebay and Yahoo Auctions are great in as much as they also have local sites, and you can focus on a local market. Setting up on a local site gives less competition and may single you out from the crowd if you are the only English poster, or the only person posting snowboard ads in the off season for example. Remember that at the end of the season a lot of people will try to sell of last years gear, you need to be selling pre-season and to have stopped before the end of the season to maximise returns. As each season ends/begins, you simply switch your ads on/off for each local site.
Having a website is a truly global phenomenon in and of itself. You will probably make most of your sales through a well presented site with a clean easy to use shopping cart. This doesn’t need to be expensive; something like Zen-cart will suffice. You do need to focus on promoting your site however and will need to move offline activities such as word of mouth and referrals into internet chat rooms and forums, you can’t hand out business cards so will need to think about clever signature blocks etc, to build your brand and encourage traffic to the website.
Direct response in its simplest form might be advertising in ski/boarding magazines and/or more general sports magazines as the ski season starts to build up. This should encourage traffic to the website and maybe some postal orders. You may want to get a mail forwarding service in a city on the correct continent to reduce postage for your potential customers who do not use the net to buy their gear. A more sophisticated approach would be to try and find a mail list for boarders, skiers, or related sports such a mountain bikers and rock climbers and send them a nicely put together mail piece inviting them to check out your website and offering them a discount. You will need to work with local name list suppliers to do this, but you can find them on the internet.
PR in all its forms gets bad press. You want to get yourself noticed when you aren’t even in the right continent. Research the media in and around the resorts that you want to target. Try to find English speaking radio shows, news slots, magazines and/or newspapers and write to them telling them how you can sell in their town despite being based in Paris, Texas. If someone picks up on your letter or email then you can make yourself available for an interview even at 3a.m. if it will get exposure for your business.
Similarly if you research on the internet you can get email addresses for shops, hotels and ski operators in resorts all over the world. Offer to provide them with stock, display units, whatever it takes to carry your goods. It doesn’t matter too much who you get to display your stuff as long as you have a presence in as many resorts as possible and can list the suppliers on your website. Having 2 or 3 stockists in 20 or 30 resorts, worldwide will look very impressive, but will take some time and effort to do.
I mentioned ski lift operators as a weird example from my main industry. Many lift operators now sell accident cover when you buy your lift pass. It is inexpensive but very profitable for both the lift operator (who earns a commission) and the insurance companies. There is no reason why other items could not also be sold this way.Whether you want to sell clothing, hats, gloves, boards, skis, poles, boots or après ski packs you will be able to find your suppliers online. As usual the key will be being able to buy in sufficient bulk, but if you can build a truly global network and offer constant orders over a full 12 month period you will soon be a firm favourite as a customer and able to demand bigger discounts and better access to new items and samples. Start by talking to suppliers from www.alibaba.com in your own off season and work from there.
Just because you are part time, and a one man band does not stop you building a global presence. You will find English speakers in every market if you look for them, and they will be happy to deal with you. Clever PR will work in most markets and you can often simply re-use the same campaigns providing no one beats you to it. Your biggest expense will be shipping costs, try to work with the shipping companies as you do with your other suppliers and demand discounts for regular business as well as bulk usage.