Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2017 - 55

lot of people look at lightweight gear and think
it's for the super athletes, but I think it's the opposite," said Borro. "The slower you are, the
more benefit the lightweight gear has, and it's
just so eye opening when you figure out what is
possible when you lighten up your equipment."
He tests gear the old fashioned way and simply refuses to stock equipment that doesn't
meet his high standards. "He tests everything
pretty hard," said Dorais. "He's out skiing and
scrambling on the lightest possible gear, like
full-carbon boots, just going for it." And this
is reflected on the website, where the product
descriptions have a personalized and consumer-focused touch. "What he's written for each
product isn't regurgitated manufacturing
copy," said Dorais. "It's based on his personal
use of each product."

THAT PASSION FOR SKIMO DOES NOT JUST
mean Borro gets to ski and call it work; it's one
of many marketplace differentiators that have

MAKE
TRACKS
FOLLOW THESE FIVE
TIPS FROM JASON
BORRO TO HELP SELL
UPHILL SKI GEAR IN
YOUR SHOP.

been key to Borro's success. "We've also spent
tons of time and money on in-house and thirdparty binding testing," says Borro. "In some
cases, we know more about the release characteristics of a binding than the manufacturer."
Those technical details are key to performance
and safety, a binding that does not release properly can cause or contribute to injury. "This
stuff is remarkably not well-known in the ski
industry, by anybody, which is scary."
Francis agrees, "This is not something that
has really been done before, at least in the U.S.,
or it has not been publicly available."
The big question, however, is why would
Borro want to make the jump into brick-andmortar, especially when dealing with such a
small, demanding niche? Online success rarely
means you have an idea that will work outside
the digital realm. But with the digital business
booming, Borro simply needed a space bigger
than his basement to hold stock.
"Jason figured he could rent this retail space

right around the corner from his house and if
it didn't work out, he could black out the windows and just make it a warehouse," Bunce
said. The store was almost instantly popular.
Local diehard skiers who have been starved of
the gear they covet, and even possible enthusiasts who had stayed away since the gear was not
easily available, now finally had a place to actually fondle that gear, rather than obsess over it
in the virtual space.
Ever fastidious, Borro has gone the extra mile
to assure success in the real world, too. "I wasn't
able to pick up a pair of skins I'd purchased online last winter, but by the time I got home, they
were waiting for me," said Francis. "Jason had
hand-delivered them to my front door."
It remains to be seen if what has made Skimo
Co successful will be scalable as the shop grows
in tandem with the market demand. "We
haven't had to black out the windows," says
Bunce. "So, now the goal is just to make the most
kickass shop in the world." O.R.

Hire real
backcountry
skiers to work in
your store.

Have
employees
get out and ski the
gear they are
selling.

Perform a lot of
test mounts with
your jigs before
trusting them since
they are usually
inaccurate.

Have a scale
handy for weightweenie questions.
(It matters more
than you think to
this crowd).

Obsessive
focus helps, as
does learning
Italian.

Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2017

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