Grays On Trays

Do companies that neglect market niches leave money on the table? It all depends on the niche, the market, and the company. But I suspect that when it comes to snowboarding, the answer is yes: Snowboarding-related companies aren’t doing enough to talk to the adult market.

I see an analogy with the market for women golfers.

The Golf Blogger reports that the magazine Golf for Women is ceasing publication. He blames it on a lack of advertisers, and in turn, companies missing an opportunity to tap 40 million women baby boomers who could be golfers.

The golf company that takes these women as seriously as they take the men can really position itself. And that doesn’t mean taking a man’s club, making it a little lighter and coloring it powder blue or pink. It means starting from scratch, and putting the same effort into research and development as they do with the men. Then they need to market that equipment—clubs, balls, bags, pull carts, and so on—with the same aggressive stance that they do with the men.

To their credit, some snowsports companies are coming out with gear designed for women, gear that takes into account the fact that women are not small men, but have (for example) calf muscles that are differently shaped than those found on a man.

What alterations would be useful for adult riders? Flows, K2 Cinch bindings, and other bindings help, by reducing or eliminating the need to bend over or stand up, heelside, after having sat down to adjust bindings. Other than that, I’m not sure what other adjustments to gear are necessary. But there are plenty of adjustments that can be made to marketing materials. In brief, offer some grown-up graphics and text.

If you will need or want a new snowboard, bindings, or boots for next season, this might be a good time to go shopping. You can save a lot of money off retail.

One place that may be worthwhile is Sierra Snowboard. I’ve never bought anything from them, but their site has several features that could be useful. There are user forums, a Wiki, a chat, and helpful videos, to start with.

There are many places where you can buy snowboards, so look around.

At the start of this season I bought some new boots. They’re Salomon Maori.

Truth be told, I didn’t quite need to replace my old boots, a pair from Ride. But four things convinced me to make the plunge and buy some new boots. One, the old ones were showing some wear, externally. That’s inevitable, I suppose, but it struck me as a sign of things to come. After all, I had those boots for four seasons.

They were also rather stinky–literally. Athletic gear can get a certain odor about it, and my old boots qualified. And they stunk not just right after a snowboarding session, but the next day, and even some days afterward.

The old boots were also the lace variety, requiring exposing my bare fingers to the cold to tie them up. If I didn’t tie them up, I would drag them through the parking lot, through the mud, and so forth. They also had an unfortunate tendency to come loose.

Finally, I thought it was time to have a fresh start with a whole new kit: snowboard, bindings, boots.

I spent quite a while talking with a shop manager about the board, and went with a Salomon Special. There was a certain logic, then, in choosing a Salomon boot. On their web page for the boot, the company says “If we had to keep one single boot model to sell to all riders, it would be this one.”

Upon the recommendation of the manager, and after walking around in various sizes for a while, I went a full size smaller in this boot than I had in my ride. It took a while to get used to, and was rather painful for the first day or two. In fact, the pressure so great that it caused some bruising on my big toes. So I don’t recommend the one-size-smaller route!

The boot is a step up from the long, round floppy laces of my old Ride boots. There are two lacing systems, both of which use a line thin and some sort of hardware to keep them in place.

There is first a line for an inner layer, a sort of tongue that rests closest to your boot. The outer layer is secured by a separate line.

But after a not-too-frequent season of riding, some weaknesses have appeared. To start with, the heel cup is starting to flake away.

A shop employee blames my Flow bindings, and suggested that Salomon would do the same. I’m not sure what to make of that claim. The Ride boots never had that problem, and I was using Flows with them the whole time.

Then there’s the matter of the clip. The excess line from the inside lacing system tucks nicely inside the boot. The excess line from the outside system has to go somewhere. To tighten this line, you pull on a rather thick handle. The handle works well enough, but it is too bulky to fit inside the boot. Instead, it has a clip that attaches to the top of the boot.

During my trip to Aspen, the clip on one of the boots broke off, leaving me a relatively large handle that, absent the clip, had to be put somewhere. I ended up tying it to my leg with a spare lanyard from a discount card. That’s the bailing-wire-and-duct-tape approach to snowboarding gear.

Unfortunately, the shop did me wrong when I called about the problem. The person I spoke to said “Oh yes, we have those” when I explained the problem. But after I made the 30-minute drive, I found out that no, they don’t have those handles with the clip; they need to be ordered from Salomon. So it’s back to improvising for a while.

There’s another problem with the boots: they feel much too lose around my leg, especially towards the top of the boots. The slop in that part of the boot may be suitable for freestyle tricks, but it is looser than it should be for riding at fast or even moderate speeds.

The search for the perfect not-yet-stinky boot continues.

Lately I have been trying rollerblading. (It’s been difficult, as most new things are.) Doing this has showed me the importance of having good gear–especially boots–for snowboarding.

My rollerblades are $30 cheapies that I bought at Target. The footbed keeps popping out whenever I take the boots off. But that’s not the worst part of it. The worst part is that the support the boots offer my ankles is, at best, modest. Skating in this situation feels more difficult than it should be. And it probably is. But I’m still experimenting, and am not sure that I will be skating enough to go to the trouble of buying an expensive pair of skates.

I went out for about an hour last night, gliding through the neighborhood. Then I stopped to see my next-door neighbor, who was sitting out front with her son. We talked for a while; after a while, I saw down and unloosened the laces on the boots.

Eventually I stood up and started to talk across the yard to go home. What a difference! I had little control over my skates.

Sometimes taking a lesson to its logical extreme can be quite useful. In this case, I had a lesson in the importance of a boot that fits snugly.

We sometimes learn the most when we compare something new with something old. In this case, “new” is inline skating, and “old” is snowboarding. Perhaps other lessons for snowboarding will become obvious if I continue to work on inline skating.

When you’re just starting out, just anything will do. And then it comes time when “just anything” won’t do.

I have enjoyed having my own equipment this season. No need to stop by the rental shop. No need to put down a $300 deposit on my credit card (as if I would steal equipment, especially that which had been used by dozens of people.) No need to always adjust to slightly different gear.

But I decided that the boots I had bought, as a ski swap find, were simply too big. So I bought a new pair from my favorite shop.

I paid about $100 for the pair, but then dropped in another $30 for semi-custom insoles. That is, the sales girl took a pair of insoles off the rack, and then baked them in the oven for a while. Then she tore out the OEM insoles from the boots, dropped in the new insoles, and I had toasty toes for about 15 minutes as I walked around the shop, imprinting the shape of my foot into the renovated boots.

In yet another example of commerce-meets-recycling, I sold the old boots on eBay. They will serve someone else for a while, before being passed along again. Ultimately, they will be so worn out that they will be good only for walking in the snow or shoveling the driveway.

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying my new boots. Not as tight as I would like, but they tell me that I’m not skiing, so I don’t need ski-tight boots. I may regret this, but I won’t know for a while.