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Snowboarding

"If you really wanted to get fitted out it would cost close to 1500 dollars."

Listen to this Commentary!

By Phil Herrick

Snowboarding emerged as a teen culture phenomenon in the late 80s when skateboarding converts like Chad Voren made their own snowboards from scratch and brought their aggressive attitudes to the slopes.

Chad: It was a bunch of skaters who got around and wanted to try something different on the snow….It was kind of a punk culture at first because it was rebellious and it was new.

But once the sport got big, Chad says of course corporations jumped on it.

Chad: The ski companies started to pick up on the fact that snowboarding was going to be a large money-maker. So Soloman started to make snowboards, Rossignol started to make snowboards. Pretty much everybody who thought they could started to make snowboards.

The rest is history. Today it’s a 130 million dollar business, according to Snowsports Industries America, and young people are a major target market for equipment and snowboarding fashion. Kids are turning in their torn jeans for gortex bibs, and sweats for fleece liners. Let me give you an idea of how much things cost these days. 18-year-old AJ Hermann spends his days leafing through snowboarding magazines. He knows all the latest prices.

AJ: To get a new board like the one they advertise in the magazines would be like 500 dollars, you could pay 200 dollars for bindings, 200 dollars for boots, you buy a 200 dollar jacket and 100 dollar pants and you are already up to 1000 bucks right there and that’s not including goggles, gloves whatever. If you really wanted to get fitted out it would cost close to 1500 dollars, something like that. And that’s outrageous.

Checking out snowboarding gear in Lafayette, California at Nor Ski and Sports, there’s nothing I can afford…despite a good sales pitch from Peter. I tell him I want a board I can use to bust tricks like they do in snowboard magazines.

Peter: I’d recommend a board like this. 10% off. It’s still pretty up there. About 429 dollars.

I have a buck 50 and a stick of gum in my pocket. If I saved every penny I earned after school, it would take me two and a half months to earn that much…. And we haven’t even mentioned the cost of lift tickets — around 50 bucks.

With these kinds of prices, it’s hard to believe that snowboarding can attract a broad cross-section of teenagers. Even though it is marketed as a teen phenomenon, few teens are actually doing it. Simon Hadley can’t even imagine spending that much money on a hobby.

Simon: I wouldn’t pay that much to go snowboarding. That’s for people who are fanatics of that type of thing. That’s a lot of money. That’s a car. That’s somebody’s rent, plus groceries.

It turns out the whole snowboarding industry is riding on the support of a select few. I’m not surprised, but what happens when everyone’s income goes down? Does the industry suffer? Peter Wilton says no. He’s a professor of marketing at UC Berkeley.

Peter: In fact, if you look at most other luxury products, sales have been increasing. Tiffany, for example, has been able to grow its revenues dramatically in a recession, but they’ve targeted teenagers who have less money, so they’ve developed a whole range of lower priced products that are within the reach of these customers.

So if snowboarding brands can learn from Tiffany, and maintain the integrity of their image, teens will keep coming back…even in a recession. You’d think marketers would be savvy enough to target the parent’s dollar as well. But Peter Wilton says that’s a bad idea, since kids stay away from anything mom and dad think is cool. Even if marketers don’t appeal to parents directly, I’ve noticed that teens will hit up their parents for a new board on their own. If mom and dad refuse, teens resort to subversive cost-cutting measures, perfected by craft boarders like Scott Shimoda and Simon Oliveri.

Scott and Simon: To cut corners in price you have to lie. You have to lie about your age because that’s the only way you can get a better price because there aren’t any disability prices or anything like that. You go up there and kind of kneel down and pretend to be young so it looks like you’re younger so you can get the 12 and under passes for 10 dollars. Those are really good.

As for me, I’ve found myself saving money by just making fewer trips to the mountains. Keeping my snowboard in the closet is definitely hard these days. The spring season this year is better than ever.

I’m Phil Herrick.