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| Ski shoppers stick with bricks and mortar |
November 6, 2001 |
By Lori Knowles
TIMES,THEY AREN’T A CHANGING. IN THE YEAR 2001, WE’LL BUY OUR BOOKS, OUR COMPUTERS, OUR CDS, our electronics and our kids’ toys on the Web, but when it comes to ski equipment we prefer to take a measured approach to e-commerce.
Call us old fashioned, but as Canadians we still consider browsing for skis, boots, poles and bindings in a shop a skier’s rite of passage. On crisp autumn afternoons, we settle into local boutiques that smell vaguely of ski wax and wood smoke. We get friendly with boot fitters and snowboard experts.
We plow through buyers’ guides, swap tales of the steep ‘n’ deep, and spend hours in bare feet on the boot room’s bench while our new footbeds roast in the oven.
In short, we Canadian skiers prefer bricks and mortar to online clicks and orders.
Of course, shopping for anything on the Internet isn’t big with Canadians. Ernst & Young’s 2000 e-tailing research indicates that even though we’re more Web savvy than citizens of either the U.K. or America, Canadians don’t have much spirit when it comes to online shopping. More than 56 per cent own household computers, nearly 40 per cent are hooked up to the Internet, but fewer than one in 10 actually decide to make online purchases.
When we do muster the courage, Ernst & Young says 70 per cent of our buys ring-in at less than US$500. When it comes to the ‘net, we like to keep our shopping small, cheap and simple to service-and rarely is ski equipment small, cheap and simple to service.
What’s out there
Ski and snowboard products are available on the e-market. A handful of ski retailers have braved the faces of these unskied cyber mountains. Ski Trader, sister to
Ontario’s Skiis & Biikes shops, is heading into its fourth online ski season. Corbett’s Ski Shop, another Ontario ski retailer, maintains an online presence, as does Comor Sports, a dominator in the Vancouver and Whistler markets. High-end and specialty racing shops like Michel Pratte Sport have adapted their traditional mail order businesses to the Internet, and the Forzani Group, owner of Sport Chek stores across Canada, are launching ski lines online this October.
Despite intrepid efforts, most of these e-ski founders report minimal sales. “Canadians haven’t bought into it,” said Sean Lasseter, head of Ski Trader. In the past three years, the majority of his e-venture’s business has come from U.S. customers, with Canadians securing about two per cent of his market. “Once they pay shipping costs and tax,” Lasseter said, “they might as well buy off the wall.”
Indeed, Ski Trader’s online prices are the same as Skiis & Biikes in-store rates, giving cyber shoppers little or no advantage. Al Harvey, director of content for Forzani Interactive, maintains that once live, Sport Chek’s online and in-store prices for ski equipment will be identical. Plus, when you buy online you have to pay for shippingÉ or you can have your skis shipped to a Sport Chek store free of charge. But then, what’s the advantage of buying online?
Experts in the biz say snow riders prefer a touchy-feely approach to equipment. Rick Lalonde, president of Canada’s National Snow Industries Association (NSIA) and general manager of Head Tyrolia Sports Canada, said ski shoppers lay out big bucks for skis and bindings, paying upwards of $2,000, and they want to touch their purchases. Add $600 for ski boots, $150 for footbeds, $1,200 for a ski suit, often more than $100 each for poles, gloves, goggles and the season’s hippest sunglasses, and ski shoppers figure they deserve a little personal service.
“When you get right down to it, skiers prefer the hands-on approach,” Lalonde said, “which is a specialty of the in-store experience.” Ski-boot fitting, he adds, is a prime example. “A boot can look fantastic in a photograph-exactly what you want. But that boot may have the wrong last for your foot, and you’re not going to know that on your computer.”
Michel Pratte’s not entirely in agreement. His equipment and ski racing supply business has been online for five years, complimenting his Quebec-based stores and mail order business. While he admits he “can’t live on revenues from the Web site,” he receives up to 3,000 hits per day. Pratte’s paper catalogue makes more money, but he insists his portal is a necessary extension of his business. Skiers can purchase exactly what they want, and his customers log on and get 24-by-7 service from as far away as the Yukon. As for personal assistance, Pratte said a cyber customer receives nearly the quality of service as an in-store client: “We’ve gone as far as receiving faxes of feet from our (boot-buying) customers.”
Still, Pratte calls himself a pioneer in ski e-tailing and claims he’s been “ambushed from every corner” since he started. At the very least, ski and boot manufacturers haven’t been supportive. NSIA’s Rick Lalonde confirms selling ski equipment online is a “delicate” issue, and spokespeople from the major players-Salomon, Atomic, Head and Nordica-are in agreement.
“It’s a tough road to walk on,” said Atomic Sports Canada’s promotional and technical director Dave Armstrong. The issue is a tender one because traditional brick-and-mortar retailers fear the Internet will steal their customers. And because storefront retailers account for the bulk of ski sales in North America, manufacturers don’t wish to ruffle their feathers.
“In our (manufacturers’) business,” Armstrong said, “our retailers are our customers.We don’t want to tick them off. We need them.”
“We have a no-Internet sales policy,” added Haley Twerdun, Canadian sales and marketing coordinator for Nordica. “We want to stay true to our dealers.”
Another worry centres on insurance. Bindings need to be mounted on skis by certified technicians to avoid legal entanglements down the road. Some e-tailers take the buyer’s height, weight, ability and boot sole length over the ‘net, mount the bindings and ship them in a box ready to ski. But there are dark clouds hanging low over this practice-manufacturers say they need the buyer to sign off on the mounting, and a signature is still hard to produce in an Internet transaction.
But perhaps at the forefront of manufacturer’s reticence is their fear of cross-border shopping. U.S. buyers can purchase skis cheaper in Canadian dollars through Canadian portals-a detail that miffs American suppliers.To keep the peace, manufacturers make Canadian e-tailers sign detailed agreements that discourage the sale of ski equipment across the border. Some manufacturers employ Web police to detect transgressions.
“We have a group of people watching the Internet and conducting random tests,” said Scott Friesen, Salomon’s business unit manager. “We maintain strict rules about crossborder shipping.”
Friesen admits it’s a practice that’s difficult to patrol and he’s not sure how far equipment manufacturers are willing to push the issue. Already e-tailers have found loopholes in their agreements and boldly continue to accept American transactions.
Manufacturers are finding themselves wedged between a rock and a hard place. The bulk of Ski Trader’s business, for example, is with the Americans, according to Lasseter. But its sister company, Skiis & Biikes, is a major Canadian retailer and massive buyer.
In the end, said Atomic’s Armstrong,”We can’t regulate the Internet any more than anyone else can.”
Besides, all this ballyhoo may be for nothing. Salomon’s Friesen said while cross-border and ski e-shopping was a hot topic at industry trade shows two seasons ago, talk has since been silenced. “E-commerce in the sporting goods industry represents less than three per cent of sales in Canada,” he said. Translation: Canucks simply refuse to jump wholeheartedly onto the Internet snow train. And in this case, the pundits and the folk singers and the e-gurus were wrong. As far as ski shopping goes, times aren’t a changing.
Webskis
Comor Sports - http://www.comorsports.com
Corbett’s Ski Shop - http://www.skiandsnowboards.com
Michel Pratte Sport - http://www.michelprattesport.com
Ski Trader - http://www.skitrader.com
Sport Chek - http://www.sportchek.ca
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