SIA The Intelligent Partner - Fall 2007 - (Page 15)

Downhill may be a genetic passion (his wife skis, too), since their young daughter began just after her second birthday. Pachmayer “basically worked at retail since I could see over the counter,” so the transition to the repping side of the business was totally natural. His parents opened up their ﬁrst ski shop in Wisconsin in 1971, bought a second in the mid-1980s and ran others at ski areas. They sold their shops in 1998, now live in Vail and ski around 50 days a year. Pachmayer has spent almost 16 years as a rep, most of them in the same territory, including about nine years as an independent. He had been out of college about two months when Rossignol contacted him, offering a job as an associate that was “too good to pass up.” Later he worked for Salomon. Today he handles Nordica skis, boots and apparel, among other lines. He says “It’s been a priceless experience.” The biggest changes he’s seen are in “how we all do business.” On the other hand, he believes it’s still a shared experience, “a business that’s designed around passion for skiing and outdoors.” Retailers are friends as well as business partners. Everything depends on relationships, along with great products. He identiﬁes technology as another major change, making the sport easier for everyone from beginners to more experienced skiers. Reps have adapted well and have become more efﬁcient. In the retail world, “The stalwarts are still there,” have weathered the changes and are the backbone of his business. The dominant trend he expects this winter is products “pushing the envelope, making the sport as fun as possible.” “People in the winter sports business have lost a lot of the passion, believing that you’ve got to live and breathe skiing,” he said. If not, “the consumer is very aware of it.” He feels reps have to get retailers on skis to test products, making sure they have an association with a ski before trying to sell it. Trends he sees for the coming winter include twin-tips bringing young snowboarders back to skiing, emphasis on lifestyle instead of ski- or snowboard-speciﬁc clothing and tremendous growth in online sales. Dane Stephenson (Northwest) Some reps work winter only. Based near Seattle, Dane Stephenson has a huge ﬁvestate territory (including Alaska), and his ﬁve-person team handles both winter and summer lines. He’s another long-timer in the snow business though he’s only 39 – working almost 26 years, 21 of them as a rep. His ﬁrst professional experience was at a local ski and bike shop in Walla Walla, Wash., when he was a 13-year-old junior high school student. Stephenson is primarily an alpine skier but also skis cross-country. He got into the repping business by joining an agency as a tech rep. He’s been with Swix and Rollerblade the entire time, while association with Nordica started about nine years ago. Stephenson has seen changes in technology. “The web has changed our entire industry,” he said. Computers, e-mail and what he calls “access to information.” Still, he said, “at the end of the day, we’re selling a fun lifestyle activity. People want to be associated with that, whether it’s the rep or the store owner or the buyer or the consumer. That’s really what draws me to the category – it’s not selling a used car or something.” Stephenson prefers communicating by phone to exchanging e-mails, which don’t express nuances of tone. But to stay at the communications forefront, he started a website – www. leadingedgenorthwest.com – this summer. The long-term goal is to password-protect some of the pages so it will be a useful place for retailers to get proprietary materials, from price lists to graphics. He predicts the hottest trend this winter reﬂects “we’re in a technology-driven sport, and at the end of the day performance is really the key thing.” As to why he’s successful, he said, “Our big thing is treating retailers like business partners instead of just selling product to them. We’ll only sell goods if we feel that the retailer will sell them through proﬁtably.” ❄ NOTE: Jonathan Wiesel writes about snow sports for consumer and trade publications. He’s also a marketing specialist and Nordic ski area planner. Doug Smith (Northern California) Doug Smith grew up as a surfer in Southern California. As he relates it, “In 1965 I realized I couldn’t make money surfing, skiing was very close to surﬁng, and I went, ‘I’ll try that,’ and that was the end of the program.” For the past 35 years, he’s been based in June Lake, Calif. (about 25 miles north of Mammoth ski resort), where he owns a marina and campground. He alpine skis 80 days a year, does crosscountry almost the same and his wife loves both sports, too. Smith ﬁnished high school in 1968 and put himself through college, taking classes three days a week and working four days a week at June Mountain. He became a certiﬁed ski patrolman and instructor, working on lifts or construction in summer through about 1976, with a stint in rental, retail and repair at Mammoth. Smith started with Rossignol as a tech rep in 1977 and has been with them ever since, though he’s recently picked up additional lines. He sells both alpine and Nordic products. “I thought snowboarding was going to be a ﬂash in the pan, so I chose not to sell snowboards and stayed with skiing,” he said. | S I A | T . I . P . | FA L L 2 0 0 7 | 15 http://www.leadingedgenorthwest.com http://www.leadingedgenorthwest.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of SIA The Intelligent Partner - Fall 2007

SIA The Intelligent Partner - Fall 2007 Contents Word off the Slopes Welcome Best of the Best 287 Goodyear Blimps and the Bottom Line Faces in the Crowd On the Money SIA Products and Services Index to Advertisers Advertisers.com

SIA The Intelligent Partner - Fall 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.