Intrawest Corp.

Books by Seth

Ski tuning video

Equipment advice

Snowdeath, the novel

Contact us!

Search Now:

I hooked up with Slats Grabski over spring break. You'll recall that Slats made a nice little killing last year when he shorted his ski industry stocks. He put some of his profit into a couple of run-down condo units in Edwards, just a few miles down valley from Whale. We met at the local burger joint when he came through to check up on his tenants.

"Six people and two dogs in each two-bedroom unit, can you believe?" he told me. "They park their pickup trucks three deep in the driveways. I get $3600 a month for each place, so I'm pulling in twice my mortgage payment, so my nut is covered as long as I got skiers in there November to April. Meanwhile the units appreciate about twenty percent annually, and anything I get over the summer is gravy. Is this a great country or what?"

"Where do they work, Slats?"

"On the hill. They're all ski instructors. Hey, remember what it was like? Ski all day with rich people, and they give you lunch, a C-note tip, and maybe dinner. Some of these guys are pulling in $5000 a month here, and it's been a crummy season. Actually I figured out how these guys can double their money."

"How's that?"

"E-Bay. On-line auctioning. It's the future."

"Umm, I don't get it."

"Look, everybody knows about E-Bay."

"Right. But how do you sell a ski instructor on E-Bay?"

"Simple. Look at what the mountain gets: $450 a day for a private lesson. The sleaze gets a third of that if he's been around a few years, less if he's new. And in this valley, you gotta book a year ahead to get an instructor for the holidays. The Coaster people are crazed to line up someone to herd their kids over Christmas and the school breaks. They go bananas when the ski school runs short on bodies."

"So?"

"So they'll pay more than $450. But the ski schools are afraid to charge more, and if they did charge more, the instructors would still get $100, $120, $150 a day plus the tip. But."

"But what?"

"Say I'm teaching at Whale. Say I got three different clients who want me for Christmas. I book myself for the two weeks, $450 a day, that's $6300. Then I auction those days on E-Bay. If I average $600, I've made $2100 over and above the ski school wage, which would have been about $1750. So I've more than doubled my base, and we haven't put the tip in yet. $100 a day, so my haul for two weeks is $5250, or $375 a day. Not bad. And what if the clients bid each other up to $1000 a day? Could happen. Then I got, lessee, $14,000 minus $6300, umm, yup, $9000 with tip plus the ski school still owes me $1750 so I made $10,750 which works out to what, about $775 a day? It's better than smuggling dope, unless it's really good dope."

"You're an evil genius."

"Wait, there's more. You're in business for yourself now, right? You declare the $450 as a business expense, so you're going to get back, say, 28 percent. That's another $126 a day, or $1764 for the two weeks. Now we're up to $900 a day, or $12,600 for Christmas."

"Why don't the ski schools do this themselves?"

"No creativity. Hey, look, the ski areas are crying about resource allocation, right? No customers midweek? Big crowds on weekends? Why don't they auction the lift tickets? Start the bidding at $10 on Wednesday, and $50 on Saturday. Put a ceiling on the number you sell for each day - say 12,000 max. On a powder day, maybe some of the last tickets would go at 8 am for $150. Guys would book their days a year ahead, and pay a premium to get their vacation blocks."

"The Forest Service isn't going to like this."

"Hey, we're talking capitalism here. Real capitalism, where scarce resources find their natural price. None of this government-mandated, Washington-regulated monopoly bushwa. The guys who ski here claim to be capitalists. Let's see how they like bidding against each other in a real market."

Slats ordered another beer. "And it's simple. Hey, have you looked at the day-ticket pricing on the ski resort Websites? It's more complicated than the rates the airlines charge. What you pay depends on when you buy, who you are and where you live. Aspen and Keystone publish 56 different day ticket prices. Breckenridge has 112. Jesus. Berthoud Pass is the only pricing structure that makes any sense to me: they charge $30 but tack on an extra $4 on powder days. Why not just use the Web for what it does best - float the price for what the market will bear?"