Top 5 Fridays Ski Industry News - Episode 184 - October 4, 2024

Hey skiers, I'm Jeff from SkiEssentials.com. I'm Bob, happy Friday. Welcome back to our Top 5 Fridays ski industry news videos and like really welcome back because we were just talking about it and neither of us could actually remember in the moment but I think it's been four weeks since we've done a Top 5 Fridays video. It's been a minute. Yeah, because we released the ski test. Hopefully people are really enjoying the ski test. We actually have a couple videos to add kind of just some straggler skis that are right over there. The skis themselves have pages but they don't have videos going with them yet so we released that and then I was out of the office for I mean at least two Fridays in a row. Yeah. Because I went and got married. Yeah, congratulations. Hang on now and yeah it's nice to be back. I mean what I mean the world went on without us here. Barely. I think barely. I think people were really probably starting to lose it like this week just not having this really grounding weekly feature. You're probably right. Good thing we're back. But no, yeah, hopefully people are enjoying the ski test. Thank you for your patience with us as we work to get that up. We do want to change a few things on it like mostly just design things like the home page didn't end up being exactly what we had planned because it kind of just turned into a time thing and we had to get it eliminate certain things just to get it up. So take a look at that if you haven't already. Comparison series has been going great. Matt joined you for 100 freeride. You and I just did 110 freeride this week that just went up yesterday and then now we're gonna go narrower for a while. So next week we'll go into basically mid 80 which is that has become one of my favorite comparisons because I feel like those skis still don't get as much as as much attention as they deserve. There's just there's just too many darn good options out there. Yeah. Like it's amazing we go through all these skis and we're like, oh, this is good, too. There's all look at all these good skis on this list that we haven't even talked about yet. Yeah. So we'll go narrower for a little bit. And then I don't even know if you're aware of this, but I know I told you that. I told you this. Emily's been writing some women's comparisons. Emily is still out in Aspen, so we're not 100 percent sure what we'll do for those videos. But Ali comes back. Ali's been on maternity leave. Many of you know Ali. Maybe we'll get Ali back in here. Just throw it right in on Monday. Yeah. First day back. All right. Come on upstairs. You got to do this video. Stand here. So we got plenty more comparisons to share. And that's been really fun. And then just a quick touch on some sales stuff. We've got an outlet sale going on right now. Some pretty aggressive pricing on 2024 and older stuff. And then keep an eye out next week. Next week, we should have some different, different and exciting, exciting things going on. That's all I got. Anything else? It's been four weeks. Yeah. No, I mean, I did notice that we have some nice prices on perennial favorites. Revolt 96. Yeah. Bent 90. Yeah. Believe they have twos at the beginning of their price tag. Yeah, it was pretty awesome. Wild. Yep. Yep. So a lot of good stuff out there. We are getting low on inventory levels and certain things, but some, some there's still enough there that you don't have to be. It's not an immediate sense of urgency, but in some, in some cases it is. It's a good time to buy, whether you're looking for a new 25 ski or one of these old good deals. Right. From a business perspective, I should probably be saying, it's almost gone. Yeah. Buy it now. Buy now. And then, and truly in some cases that is, that is the case. Yeah. But anyways, that's it. You good? Good. You want to talk about some news? Yeah. Some good business speak in this week. We're really getting into like, it's, you know, it's October now. Yeah. We're really getting into ski news. Yep. Which is exciting. So first topic of the week, there is a new partnership between the FIS and the UN to raise climate change awareness. So UN's world meteorological, I don't know why I struggle to pronounce that word. I don't think I ever have until 15 minutes ago. Their world meteorological organization has signed its very first agreement with a sports league, which I thought was just an interesting statement. Who else would it be? I guess. Like Formula One. Yeah. That would be like, that's where my mind went first because of like emissions stuff. And I don't know. I mean, like football. Yeah. I mean, you got to think of like global, more global activities. That's kind of what I was trying to with Formula One. So anyways, we've got a quote that is quite a quote. We've got multiple impressive quotes. Their goal is to work together to highlight the far reaching impacts of rising global temperatures on snow and ice cover and to establish practical initiatives to strengthen scientific and sporting dialogue. Someone got paid like a hundred thousand dollars to write that line. I can't believe that's someone's job. I can. I went to business school. That's amazing. Unbelievable. No idea what you just said. Yeah. No, I don't really know what I just said either. I mean, I think I just said that they're going to work together to try and just raise awareness. Yeah. But not that I didn't really see any like concrete stuff. So time will tell what they actually do. They'll string you right along. Yeah, exactly. And that's all I really have to say about that. But it's certainly not a bad thing. Nope. More people working together. Yeah. I don't know what movie reference I was just thinking of, but there's some movie where they say something similar and it's funny. Yeah. It would probably come to me at like 8 30 tonight as I'm lying on the couch. Yeah. And then second topic of the week, we have the tour calendar for the 2025 Freeride World Tour. No crazy changes other than there is a new stop in Val Thorens. That's in France. The weather window is January 27th to February 1st. All of the other stops are basically the same. And it's kind of interesting because this is the, I believe the first time they've had six events in a season. And Matt McGinnis had some interesting speculation that if anything, it's kind of an insurance policy that they'll be able to at least hold five events due to potential for cancellations. Correct. Yeah. And, you know, without even further speculation, that kind of makes sense heading into 2025, 26, when kind of big mountain competitive skiing will make its Olympic debut. So both from like, I don't, I don't exactly know how like rankings from this season will work for team selection next season, but I wouldn't be surprised if that is at all integrated. And then also just from like a public perception, if there's one more event, they're going to get it in front of X more eyeballs. Yeah. I mean, this must be kind of a, I'm getting like a million text messages. It's Friday afternoon. That's when everyone wants something. It's everyone wants me to play golf. And I told them I can't. Anyways, my point was, this might be like that kind of next step of FIS owning the free ride world tours. Right. All right. Let's standardize things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, excited for a sixth event. Yep. I was excited for the free ride world tour season. I don't often get to watch like every single event start to finish because they're so long. They do a great job with the with the recap. I know. I mean, that's I guess I guess I'm just saying I wish I had time to watch them live start to finish because it's just such an incredible event. And I like watching the snowboarders too. I don't snow. I do snowboard, but not like that or frequently. Third topic of transformation plan. I believe this was announced before this past week, but we're just talking about it now. And in their words, it's an effort to reduce costs. And actually, I don't think this is their words, but it's basically an effort to reduce costs and appease their investors. Wonderful euphemism for laying people off. I believe that was Matt's words. But I do have I did write down a quote. Anyways, so this is basically going to be a primary primary round of corporate layoffs and a consolidation of operations, which to me is interesting. And it gets even more interesting, but I'll preface this by reminding people that I have never really been anti Vale there. I know that there are a lot of people that are anti Vale resorts, but I work for Vale resorts for a year. I totally understand why people don't like the organization, but I kind of at least try to like check myself to not fall into that just perception. And that being said, I have had the existing opinion that they already do this. Right. When they acquire someone, they install their own protocols and procedures. That was my impression. But a lot of this is basically saying that's not what we did, which to me was kind of striking. So in a press release, they kind of summarize growing from 10 to 42 resorts and the challenges of doubling the company's workforce. And then here's your quote, Bob. The company captured initial acquisition synergies in corporate support functions and through technology integrations. They must have the same writer as the FIS-UN collaboration. Yeah, no doubt there. It's unbelievable that someone gets paid to write that. Yeah. And essentially what they're communicating or trying to communicate is that they kept staff in place to operate their acquisitions. But now after 10 years of all those acquisitions, they have just like an overly complex web and overly costly network of employees. Yeah. I mean, sure. It's a business. After a certain amount of period, you figure out trim the fat is kind of a not nice way of saying to fire people, but it's a business and they need to... You got to figure it out eventually. Yeah. I mean, we kind of experienced that buying the basin down in Killington. And neither you or I were immediately involved in the business decisions there. But I would say, what? How long have we had it? Two years? A couple of years. Yeah. Fast forward that amount of time and we've learned a lot of work, but it would be better if we did things more efficiently here or over there. So it is interesting, but I feel like it was... I don't know. You could dig pretty deep here and it's just kind of a little bit not surprising, but I wouldn't have expected them to go with that angle because I feel like the general public, those with existing perceptions of their business practices, I think would fall more on my side. I'm like, I thought you already did that. But also, they don't have to justify anyone to anything. No, I know. That's a very good point. They can do whatever they want. But it'll be interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if each mountain in New England doesn't have a general manager. Like more regional stuff, you mean? Right. Yeah. I feel like that's the path. But time will tell. This is also undoubtedly in response to what we've talked about recently with their revenue being down. I sat with my employer probably 15 years ago and they were in a struggling financial situation and revenue was down. And I said, I'm sorry, but you need to cut costs. And they said, no, we're going to increase revenue. And I said, that's harder to do. And then they went out of business. So it's kind of just what you have to do. Moving on, fourth topic of the week, Killington is officially in the hands of its new owners. This seems exciting. Really contrasting kind of what we just talked about with Vale owning what, 42 mountains now and Killington now is essentially independently owned. They put out a press release with a short video. Bob, I'm going to go out and say that the new owners seem pretty cool. Yeah. Right out of the gate, they're adding all sorts of snow guns and chairlifts. Yeah. Like that's what people like to see. Yeah. Like especially here in the Northeast, it's like snowmaking. Everyone is very, very excited about snowmaking. I think they already installed a thousand new, like low energy guns. The new HKD. HKD is the brand. Yeah. Like new, their newest, fanciest efficiency guns. They also announced that they've raised $30 million to invest into the resort in the next 12 to 16 months. They also announced that they will reinvest all profits back into the business for the next decade. Cool. I thought that was like a really cool statement of like, no, we're not going to take any money out of this. And you know what the coolest thing that they're doing is Bob? Six pack? No, they're bringing back Rails to Riches. Oh yeah. I knew you'd be more excited. I'm more excited about the superstar six pack. I figured I would just skim over all of that stuff and only talk about Rails to Riches. Rails to Riches, if you're unfamiliar, was a pretty high exposure rail jam. I would say arguably the biggest rail jam in the world, at least for a couple of years, it definitely was, or maybe more than a couple of years. Really big prize purse. It's pretty rare that you enter a rail jam and have the potential of winning thousands of dollars. And that was always the case with Rails to Riches. So it was gone for a long time and they're bringing it back, which is exciting. Sweet. Yeah. I don't think I will be entering. Me neither. If anything, you should because that would be great. Although people would be angry. There's like, in some years there was like a lottery. To get in? Yeah. Or like if you didn't know somebody, like I used to have to like go through the certain channels of like connections in the park world to get an entry. Yeah. I think I did it six years in a row. And then that's it. Now we're on to edits of the week. First, we have five. Big edit week. First one is Glomska from Max Palm. Really talented skier. Always super fun to watch. Then we've got another talented skier. We've got the Rough Cut from Magma3 from Hunter Hess. And then we've got Protection Ratchet from the Wells Brothers, who you don't see too much from the Wells Brothers anymore. No, I don't. Turns out they're all still really good at skiing. And then we've got one just from our backyard here, Bob. We've got the trailer for Ski the East Promise Land, Land and Lappin. Bunch of friends in there. Matt Testa, Jose. Just some good East Coast tree skiing probably. I would venture a guess that it's got a lot of East Coast tree skiing. Moguls, Donnie Pelletier is in this one. I saw a Radio Ron cameo. Nice. Nice to see Radio Ron back in the fold. And then undoubtedly, you will see some aggressive and borderline dangerous East Coast park skiing because that basically describes East Coast park skiing. It's all dangerous. Borderline dangerous. Yeah. And then lastly, we've got the official trailer for Kaldor from Josh Dayek. Cool. That's it. Nice. It was a big week. You got anything to end on, Bob? I don't think so. Nice to be in October. That's it. Yeah. Leaves are changing. Yeah. Leaves are falling. Ski season in Vermont typically starts in October. Yeah. Thanks to our friends down at Killington. And some natural early snowfall usually. Oh yeah. Mount Mansfield will get snow in October. Yeah. It pretty much always does, right? Pretty much. Whether it's measurable is a different story, but yeah. I don't know that we'll get any snowy-age this year. You don't think so? I mean, it's like 80 degrees outside right now. Exactly. Yeah. And we're kind of like, are we at peak foliage? I'd give it another couple days, but pretty close. Okay. I like the yellows. I don't say it's peak until there's like... Good yellows? Good yellows. Do the reds come first? The reds come first. Yeah. Yeah. You're not really getting like the fruity pebbles effect right now. You're kind of just getting like red. It's very red. It's gorgeous, but it hasn't quite... I like it when it just turned over. Yeah. All right. Fair enough. Well, there you go. That's your report from a resident foliage expert here in Stowe, Vermont. And we are in a hotbed of foliage. It is true. To the point where it's a little annoying. I might walk home. Yeah. It's going to take me 20 minutes to drive a quarter mile on my way home today. But the leaves will be pretty. Yeah. At least you're in a nice area. I got the Miata so I can put the top down. Get the whole view. Yeah. Anyway, it's good to be back. Thanks for joining us. Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend and we will talk to you next week. Bye.