A Bird's Eye View



SIA Stratton on-snow demo

Every job, every profession, every past-time has its own subculture, its own idiosyncrasies and oddities, and the snowsports industry is no exception. Far from it. Go deeper, take a look at the working life of ski and snowboard instructors, and things become peculiar very fast. Maybe I’m just a bit self-conscious about it, or maybe we just get a little weird. Entire conversations go on ad nauseam in The Loft about the way we articulate our ankles in our ski boots. I know ski instructors that actually comfortably use the word ‘fore-agonal’ in sentences, and in front of guests for crying out loud! Just because my particular micro-culture may have the cache value of a healthy, lifestyle-driven outdoor sport doesn’t mean that it doesn’t get a bit ridiculous at times.

One of the problems of working so hard to make a living in such a comparatively small and nuanced profession is that we often have trouble picking our heads up above the water, so to speak. I’m pretty lucky in this regard – I have a wide range of responsibilities in the industry, here at Okemo and elsewhere, so I tend to get frequent glimpses of the big picture by necessity. Among the more gratifying ways in which I’ve been exposed to another side of the business over the past eight years or so has been my relationship with Nordica, the venerable Italian ski equipment manufacturer. My role with Nordica is pretty simple – I ski on their equipment, promote the brand with guests and pros alike, liaise with our retailers and generally lend a hand when my friends at the company need it. It’s a lot of fun, the insight into the direction equipment is going and why, and how the equipment side of the business works in general is always interesting and really helps me provide a better and more complete sense of the world of skiing to my guests and to the instructors I train. This season has been particularly valuable in this regard as I’ve been working a bit with my friends at The Boot Pro, a successful specialty boot and ski retailer here in Ludlow that is a big Nordica dealer. I’ve learned a ton from them and, combined with my work with Nordica, I’ve now seen how the manufacturers look at sales, how the retailers look at sales, and how the consumers approach the whole process. As I said, at the end of the day the most important piece of all of this is that it helps me become a better and more complete ski teacher and really assists me in providing the highest level of service I can to my guests to enhance their skiing experiences. And it’s genuinely fun and a welcome change.

Speaking of fun, I recently had a day that drew together numerous aspects of my place in the ski industry all at the same time. For the first time, I attended the Ski Industry Association on snow demo at Stratton Mountain Resort here in Vermont. It’s an event that is essential for the manufacturers and for the retailers as they button up their sales for the following season. It’s a huge show, with every major ski and snowboard equipment manufacturer bringing their lineup for next year and every retailer in the Eastern US testing as many pieces of equipment as they can for three days. The schwag flies, everyone talks the talk, and it’s a non-stop equipment and schmoozing hootenanny. Totally cool and a lot of fun. I was at Stratton wearing three different hats: as a Nordica Elite Team member I needed to familiarize myself with next year’s lineup; as a Boot Pro employee I needed to ski on some of the equipment we’re looking at for our shop next year; and then in the afternoon I conducted a training clinic for Stratton’s instructors. Talk about being deep in the material. Honestly, the whole experience was a bit overwhelming and when I finally got on the hill with my clinic group in the afternoon it was almost a relief to simply get back into my comfort zone and work on skiing with ski instructors.

As a teacher, I often explain to my guests that their understanding of the big picture is essential and that we’ll dip down into the details that are important for their improvement as needed and incrementally over time. I like to make sure they are comfortable from a vantage point where they can see the curvature of the earth so that the details make sense in that big picture. For my own place in the industry, the varied exposure does just that – it helps me keep the details of my students’ skiing in perspective, helps me better understand their consumption options and decisions, and helps me guide them to a better, happier life as successful skiers. And it helps me get out of those annoying conversations in The Loft, especially when I run out of patience with people who insist on making up words like ‘fore-agonal’.

Sara and Alex from Boot Pro talking shop with Erica
from Nordica - all in the family at Stratton SIA!