soulskier":38524834 said:
Mike Bernstein":38524834 said:
soulskier":38524834 said:
As mentioned earlier, we are conceptualizing a MRA Freestyle area. This would be totally different experience than lift served big mountain skiing, but with the same core hippy values, incorporating clean energy and social responsibility into the business model.
So yes, it's about big terrain still, this is another type of project all together.
Diversifying away from your core business model/idea before you're even in business - always a solid plan. :roll:
The beauty is, it's applying the same core values, Community, Environment and Riders to the operating and business model.
It can be a lower angle family hill, a jib center or a big mountain arena, and still fit within our mantra, "Creating Sustainable Mountain Playgrounds".
I'm going to try this one last time, b/c apparently the message isn't sinking in. Let me try using a personal anecdote from my previous career. I used to work for a massive beverage and snacks company. They had a long and well-earned reputation for hitting their revenue/volume targets quarter after quarter, year after year in their core soda and bottled water business. As you may be aware, over the last 10-15 years the beverage market has seen significant growth in "alternative" beverages, be it energy drinks, teas, coffees, juices, enhanced waters - whatever. Whereas it used to be soda and water, now there's a million different brands and categories competing for attention.
When it became obvious that this trend was not just a fad but was in fact a paradigm shift, that company quickly and eagerly jumped on board, creating new brands of its own and buying or licensing other successful brands. The logic was flawless - we already sent delivery trucks and sales people to every single convenience store, gas station, supermarket, and restaurant every day of the week. It would be an absolute no-brainer to simply place these new brands on those same trucks, and have our existing salespeople leverage their relationships to drive additional volume in their accounts. Same trucks, same people, same company, same customers and, in some cases, same consumers. A total lay-up, right?
Wrong. For the first time anyone could remember, our bottlers started missing their sales targets for these beverages. Despite millions of dollars of ad spending behind us and an army of tens of thousands of salespeople and deliverymen, the brands we had in our portfolio were actually losing share to smaller competitors. As it turns out, what looked like such a lay-up was a very different sale than our traditional soda business. Smaller volumes, less/different shelf space, different margins in the channel, different consumption patterns, and sometimes different consumers. What seemed to even industry experts/veterans as being identical businesses were in fact very different.
Why am I telling you this story? Because it's clear you are underestimating just how different the two business models you are proposing are from one another. Having the same core values re: community, environment and riders is essentially irrelevant in the larger scheme of how you are going to profitably operate those two ski areas on a day to day basis. You will be marketing to an almost completely different skier/rider, dealing with a completely different set of mtn ops challenges (avi control/snow safety vs. snowmaking/park maintenance), a vastly higher liability exposure, a radically different expense budget composition and, of course, an entirely different set of regulatory obstacles (by definition, the urban jib park is likely to be on private land and subject to some form of zoning/oversight vs. the freeride area which will be on NFS/Crown land). It is disturbing to me that you not only fail to see this, but in fact refuse to acknowledge these (and other) substantial differences even when they are pointed out to you. And this is before we even discuss the absurdity of trying to create a "green" urban jib park that is reliant largely on man-made snow and night skiing, both of which consume huge amounts of energy.
Jamie - the larger point here is that, even if the urban jib park were a good idea with lots of synergies/similarities with your freeride area, you would be wise to crawl before you try to walk, and walk before you try to run. As stated in the other thread, there's only so much time in the day. How much of your work day are you willing to ignore the mgmt needs of your freeride area (there will be many) in favor or focusing on the completely different needs and priorities of your urban jib area? Two hours? Three? Is that fair to the employees and/or investors of either area that they aren't getting your full attention? Even if you plan to hire someone to look after the jib area so you don't have to, do you think that's the best use of scarce start-up capital when that same money could be used to hire a kick-ass mtn ops manager or snow safety director (I hear there's a really good one looking for work in Alberta) for the freeride area?
You need to think long and hard about this b/c all of your public utterances leave the impression that you're caught up in the coolness of spreading your "core values" w/o realizing that if you don't focus on your core business, you'll have no platform from which to spread your "core values". In other words, no one gives a shit how green, or core, or community-friendly you are when you are out of business. You'll just be another clueless dreamer with internet access spewing banal platitudes about the evils of the ski industry.
-worthy conditions to back up his words -- is evidence enough for me that it would be an interesting test ground for some sort of back-to-the-roots ski-area model. It just wouldn't necessarily be Soul Skier's model because it doesn't have the gnar/vertical factor or western location.
