Andy Wirth

Andy Wirth is CEO and cofounder (with Bode Miller) of Peak Skis. Wirth previously was the president and CEO of Squaw Valley Ski Holdings (parent company of what is now known as Palisades Tahoe), and before that he worked at Steamboat. Yes, we cover Peak skis and the ski industry, but also tune in to hear about Andy's skydiving accident in which his arm was nearly completely severed, as well as his history growing up in a military family, and fighting forest fires, and...

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is Andy Wirth, co founder and CEO
of Peak Skis Andy, how do you know Body Miller
your partner, Bob.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Great to be here and really an honor to be
on your show, and also total dig on your Joe
Walsh riff that brings us into the show. One of
the great songs of all time.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Wait wait, wait, most people don't recognize it. That's Meadows,
the first song on the second side of the Smoker
you drink the player that you get. How do you
know that?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
I am a music fan. I played guitar. He used
to play a little bit better than I do nowadays
because of this lile accident ten years ago. But I
have loved and appreciated anybody who can play guitar well,
regardless of genre. And I first cut my teeth on
Joe Walsh Gosh, I know, early eighties, late eighties, seventies,

(01:03):
something like that, and just love that album. And Rocky
Mountain Way a different album though.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Right, well that's the opening track on that.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, but then Mountain Meadow excuse me, love that I like. Also,
how on your show you took out the oh really
and yeah at the.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Beginning of the song me you really know it? That's
for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Oh no. I listened to that tune probably about fifteen times,
and then I've also played it on guitar a tenth
as good as Joe Walsh about three hundred times. So yeah,
great tune, cool cool selection. What's your story on it?
What is the deal?

Speaker 1 (01:37):
I mean there's I mean, I'm a big Joe Walsh fan.
Joe said I could use it, but I knew the track.
But his final albums ABC Dunhill Deal. He put out
a live album which was actually a TV show. And
I was driving from Salt Lake back to Connecticut and
I played the six cassettes that I bought. I never

(01:59):
bought cassettes, but I didn't have a tape player. That
was one of them, and I think of They'll passed,
which used to be difficult but now since has been
for many years. Four lane but at the top it's
like a meadow and I remember playing that right in
that area. But you have a relationship with Eddie Vedder.

(02:19):
How do you know Eddie Vedder?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well, I don't know, I'm well, but I've been a
fan of Pearl Jam going back to along with about
ten billion other people early nineties, with everything that they
put out starting in ninety two ninety three. And like
I said, love all kind of music. I probably go
deepest on country, country, Western, both types of music. But
at the same time was always into Zeppelin, Aerosmith and

(02:44):
the great guitar players Joe Walsh and the like you
name it, but then got into Pearl Jam. And what's
interesting is I had a bad skydamming accident about ten
years ago. In fact, coming up on the ten year
anniversary of that accident, which I want I call my
live day. When we talked about that week, certainly can
but one of his tunes that I really accidentally came into,

(03:08):
accidentally stumbled into, came to me at a very critical
moment what I was bleeding out and dying, and I
eventually died, but they brought me back and which worked
out well. It was a good day. But one of
his tunes called just Breathe was halfway through the closing

(03:29):
credits of a movie about a very good friend of
mine who's a good, great horseman. His name is Buck
Branneman out of Sheridan, Wyoming. He had worked with Nicholas
Sparks on the movie the book A Horse Whisper with
Redford on the movie Horse Whisper. But he had been
doing a whole bunch of horse work for years and years,
and they made this indie film about him, One Sun Dance,

(03:51):
and I'm watching it for the first time and halfway
through the ending of the closing credits, just brief comes
on and it just doesn't make any sense. I mean,
you got to keep in mind that when I introduced
Buck in Steamwa Springs, Colorado, where I used to live,
to Tanny Tucker, I mean, that was the deal. I
mean he thought tannyse the sun rose and said on

(04:13):
Tanny Tucker, and he probably right. It probably still does.
But in this case caught me off guard because what
is a Pearl Jam song doing at the end of
a movie about Buck? Brannman curious called him found out
four months later. And I had known this song. This
song came to me at a very critical crucial time.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Right before you get there.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
How did it end up in the movie. It had
to do with his upbringing and his life. And I
highly recommend watching this movie. Whether or not you're into
horses kind of doesn't matter. And he had a really
really rough upbringing in a town called Ennis, Montana, which
I happened to live nowadays, about fifteen twenty minutes away

(04:55):
from Ennis, and he just got the crap beat out
of him by his dad. It was bullshit. Angers me
to think about it as part of him navigating that
and a's who he is today because of that. He
mentioned that song just fit, It just worked, and the
song had meeting and more so that's how it kind

(05:17):
of related to his It was a tip of the hat,
regardless of the music type, tip of the hat to
what that song speaks to. Okay, so let's go back
ten years ago. You're skydiving. How much experience had you
had skydiving? A fair amount. I've got what's called AFF
Accelerated free Fall Certification.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
What is that.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
It's a licensed certification to jump. It's like get in
your driver's license. And I never sought to wanted to
jump in a tandem. So I ended up getting AFF
this certification, and it ended up jumping a bunch with
friends that you might might know of or no from
Squaw Valley, JT. Holmes and Timmy Dutton, the late Great

(06:02):
Timmy Dutton, and a few others. Charles Bryan RedBull air
Force guy, and I had to. I had to. I
got to jump with them quite a bit, actually, Paris,
Lodi Davis, all over California anytime could find an airplane
with the door love jump out of it. So got
into that in a substantial way and had a fair

(06:23):
amount of experience. The thing is jumping with these guys.
I had the opportunity. Most of them had jumps well
over ten or fifteen thousand. Most of them actually jump
for a living. Most of the guys that I would
jump with with whom I would jump excuse me, would
would actually be in films. You know. JT worked with
on Transformers three. I mean, these are very high level folks.

(06:46):
So I was kind of the rookie tagging along. But
because of that I got a fair amount of experience
quickly and had the opportunity to jump with some outstanding people.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Okay, so tell us about this day ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
So, by the way, I love it. Have you ever
done it?

Speaker 1 (07:00):
I never have.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
By that look, it doesn't look like it's on your well.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
You know, I like being in control. It's like when
someone said, you know, I remember when someone said, let's
go to mammoth for the day, and there's this airplane
these people have with a parachute whatever. But he was
an instrument rated and I said, no, it's like if
I'm going to commercial jet, I'm not worried, or if
you're flying net jet or something like that. So there's
certain Let's put it this way, if I die on

(07:25):
the hill, if I run into a tree or god knowed,
or an avalanche whatever inbounds, that's okay with me. But
there's certain things I don't want to take a risk doing.
Begging the question, other than skydiving, are you a limit
tester in other areas? Oh.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
I quote my good friend JT, who he's been on
sixty Minutes twice, I think, both times with Anderson Cooper
AC and he was asked a questions similarly by Anderson Cooper.
Are you an adrenaline junkie? Maybe a different maybe second
cousin to your question, right, but pretty close, And he
said no, I'm an adrenaline aficionado. So I don't know

(08:06):
if I could say testing limits. I've not had a
life full of compliance. But at the same time, I
don't necessarily volunto. But I just say that maybe I'm
not too sure I think about it like that, but
I totally well have you have you bungee jumped? Oh?
Heck yeah?

Speaker 1 (08:23):
What other extreme things have you done?

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Well? I don't know. Uh, gosh, I don't know. I
don't know how to define that other than I don't
see it think them as extreme. They're just things. I
fought wildland fires on a shot crew when I was young,
pagd for college. Maybe maybe that's scene by extreme, is
extreme by others, but for me, it was a great
way to make a living running a chainsaw on on
big fires out of southern New Mexico and northern New

(08:48):
Mexico and Arizona. Oh, I've done quite a bit of uh.
I was backcountry ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park, did
quite a bit of hig angle rescue that was more
industrial climbing because it was rescue than anything else. But
I think some might see Hiengel rescue as being a
little bit extreme. I don't know, but I thought it
was great.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Before you get there, you had this near death experience
ten years ago. Prior to that, had you had any
experiences were you were on the line.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
No, And by the way, I have to say, I
found out a year later. It wasn't near death. I
was dead. I was dead for six minutes. That's why
it was a good day, right, Because my arm got
torn off. They put it back on. I was dead
in the helicopter and they brought me back to life.
So in all, October thirteenth was a great day.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Okay, a little bit slower. You jump out of the
plane and where are you? What happened?

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Sure? And by the way, you just got to answer
one of your five questions there, and that was I
love freefall. When there would jump at fourteen thousand feet AGL,
which is an acronym for above ground level, and you
typically we'll come back to that pull at four thousand AGL.
In between fourteen and four thousand feet is ten thousand

(09:56):
feet of free falling. And it's just one of the
most pure, condemned joyful things I've ever done in my
entire life. It doesn't take a particular a great deal
of skill or athleticism even but it is fucking fun, man.
It is so exhilarating, thrilling joy. From the first time

(10:17):
I jumped in Paris, California, getting aff I just couldn't
stop smiling. So I just love it. Absolutely love that.
And I don't know if that's testing limits or adrenaline whatever,
it just all they can do is tell you I
love it. But so it was down there, JT and
I and other friends would go down and jump down
a load. I quite a bit. We lived in Trucky.
I was CEO at squad Ally and Alpine Meadows for

(10:39):
a little bit. Got hooked into JT. Great guy, great
dear friend of mine and the late great Timmy Dutton
who died tragically a year later in an air to
air accident skydiving the same location. Still breaks my heart
to think about Timmy because he's remarkable kid, remarkable young
man with an incredible story. He's overcome more than most

(10:59):
people have U and he had. He was just the
best ever. Talked all show long about Timmy Dutton. But
so Timmy, JT and I are jumping. Oh, actually it
wasn't this weekend we were jumping with were jumping with
some other friends. We had gone down to Davis to jump,
but the winds were blusteries, so we got blown out there.
They weren't flying that day on that Saturday, so we
drove to Lodi, which is not too far from Davis,

(11:21):
I guess and load Ie is kind of considered. With
a smile on my face, I'd say it's a little
bit of the truck stop of drop zones. They kind
of are flying and jumping all the time and it's
a good place, but it's, you know, just there and
it works, and we ended up getting in a load.
So what happened is we ended up in classic three

(11:43):
or four cloaked things in sequence took place because we
have a fair amount of experience jumping. We jumped out
of the plane light the last group jumping Number two's
pilot flew a slightly bad jump line number three. Importantly,
the winds changed fold about one hundred and twenty degrees
from the time we took off to the time we

(12:03):
got to fourteen thousand feet AGL and the green light
came on to jump. And then the last thing is
because JT and Timmy and I had jumped quite a
bit and those guys base jump, we tend to pull low,
so instead of pulling at four thousand feet AGL, which
gives you a fair amount of time to remedy problems
like a bad wing, a bad canopy or something like that,

(12:25):
or spiral kick out of twisted lines. You have time
to remedy. But we're pretty competent, and there's that whole
confidence competent breakover curve. And I violated that curb right there,
pulled low on a day I shouldn't have it. Turns out,
the entire plane it was a d day landing. Everybody
was scattered. But by the time I pulled it was

(12:46):
that twelve hundred feet AGL, pretty close to the ground
under canopy, and I didn't Nobody realized that the wines
had folded at that point, including me. That's why I
was a DDA landing. Everybody went everywhere. So got my
canopy up, got a good wing, I'm gonna looking. I'm going, oh,
I have a headwind right now, and I should have
a tailwind. And when you don't have propulsion like in airplanes,

(13:06):
this matters. And so you take off from and you
seek to land on the drop zone. Now I'm aiming
at the drop zone under canopy at say a thousand
feet AGL, and your cent rates pretty decent. And I
have a set of power lines in front of me,
in front of me and to the right, and a
couple of buildings, and I remember thinking I think this

(13:28):
is a crack up that it's you know, skydiving Onlike skiing,
for instance, there's not much of a gradient of injuries right.
In other words, skiing you can hurt yourself a little
bit or a lot. In skydiving, it's pretty binary. There's
not much to it, right. All I could think about
was the headline kind of the skydiver tried to make

(13:51):
it underneath the power lines, right, end up like one
of those bugs on a bug zapper. Okay, that one
through my mind was nope. So I look down to
my left and now I'm about eight hundred Things move
pretty quickly in this moment. Ended up hook turning, So
flying my canopy, pull hard left and hook turned into
what turned out to be a vineyard. And if you
didn't know what in vineyards, they have these very high

(14:13):
tensile strong wires hold up the vines. And I'm lining
up this landing. I'm pretty decent under canopy and land
and blinding it up. Still a bit of a blustery day,
but I'm like, okay, pull this off. Nothing panicky in
my mind at this point. But right as I'm flaring,
which is you've flown enough to know when you land
an airplane, to see the pilots put down the flaps.

(14:35):
So when you flare a canopy, it's the same effective
things as a plane pulling the flaps down. Right, basically
bring yourself to a clothes of land on your feet. Well,
right as I'm flaring this, I remember catching out of
the front left's risers on my canopy. My parachute pushed
about foot to the right, and I'm landing in between

(14:55):
these rows of vines and by god, if that little
foot it feels like foot. Maybe it was more pushed
me enough right right at the right time where one
of those high tension wires caught my arm pulled it
off and uh and uh at the at the elbow
and uh yeah, that's that's okay. Just dont cover that, okay.

(15:17):
Was it completely detached. It was detached at the elbow,
and there was this thin strip of tissue turns out
very valuable thin strip of tissue that was there. But yeah,
I know, my my forearm and right hand were kind
of on the ground ground. I was kneeling because the
shrouds of my canopy were held up behind me on
the vines. And uh yeah, so yeah, I was detached

(15:39):
minus a shred of tissue. And I have to mention
this because I again I think it's I look back
with it worked out really well that day, it worked
out great, and but I reached down. I'll talk about
all that I did. I've done a bunch of work
in trauma, right, I've been around trauma. And there's a
question you asked me about eight minutes ago that I
not answered. But I have never had anything like this

(16:00):
happened to me. But I treated a whole lot of
people in bad places and trauma, climbing accidents, car accidents,
you name it. I've done a whole bunch of stuff
in trauma. I've been in the blood. I have a
stick if you will, and so, but never in this
case with myself, if I had something like this, so,

(16:21):
I hadn't clicked into that gear yet. But I reached
down right when it happened, I looked down. And do
you ever see that Money Python movie, Monty Python in
the Holy Grail? Of course, remember when the night cuts
off his arm as a blood spurt OUTA that was me.
It was spurting out, man, it was it was going
after it. And I hope that it doesn't gross out
some of your listeners.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Maybe maybe it is audio. You got to put the
metal images.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
So so, first thing I did was reach down and
grab my right forearm with my left hand and tried
to reattach it. Tried to put it back, tried to
put it back into the elbow socket, and that didn't work.
It didn't work, it didn't stay. I was bummed about that.
But then then the next you know, eight ten minutes
were interesting, to say the least.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Okay, Unfortunately, I've been injured a number of times. Usually
whatever the science is, you don't feel the pain for
a while. When did you ultimately feel the pain? If ever?

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, I want to hear more about your injuries. I'm
sorry for that. Hopefully you had somebody good on you.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Well yeah, well listen, I'm here now, but keep going.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Good, good guy?

Speaker 1 (17:32):
How long until you uh so?

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah? It was, You're right, And I couldn't say that
I felt pain, but I know maybe a few I
would say moments, and I lose track of time because
I've been tracking it. I felt some pain because when
you have that kind of I had a stub, basically
a humorous bone sticking out and bleeding out pretty well

(17:55):
and I'll go back and provide you some other interesting
stories about ed vettersong just Breathe that came in my
background experience and more. It is quite critical how these things,
in a crazy way converged into one moment my mind.
But I did feel pain when I took my fist
because I couldn't make a tourniquet. I just had a

(18:16):
great tourniquet on my left hand, an altimeter had a
Velkoz trap, but I couldn't get it off to put
it back on the stub. So, as most anybody who's listening,
as any trauma experiencers with you have that kind of bleeding,
there's two things, tournique or direct pressure. In this case,
I took my fist and put it underneath my stub

(18:37):
and slowed down the bleeding. That was painful, I have
to say. In the past, I've said that that was
a fair amount of discomfort, but I think it'd be
fair to call it pain. At that point, I felt
the pain.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Okay, so you're in this situation, you're aware enough to
try to stanch the bleeding. What's going through your mind?
How does the just Weaze song come along? And how
long till somebody gets to you.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah. So after I tried to put my arm back
in and it didn't work, I was able to do
I was now kind of in my EMT AMT mode
and did an assessment of quick assessment of situation. The
first thing to think about is mechanisms. Was there anything
else wrong with my body? No neck head, anything like that.

(19:22):
No good. So then what's glaringly obvious is that I'm bleeding.
And now I do some quick calculations more in my
clinical or trauma mode of how fast I'll bleed out
with that, Now there are arteries that we can sever
that will bleed out a lot faster. This one's pretty
in the top five, right, the one that runs down
your arm.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
And.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Particularly because I had a slightly accelerated heart rate at
this point, so leaning out and I remember thinking, I
think it might have about eight minutes, And that was
before I staunched the blood. Maybe eight minutes the blood
flow coming out and was able to to slow that down.
I said, okay, maybe I bought myself another couple three.
But point being in that first component, that first element

(20:06):
of the situation, I was in that full trauma mode,
and that was kind of the first component, it was okay,
interesting to say the least, there was a little bit
more to it. That's probably a good way to tie
off on that. What's then interesting is I flashed back
to all of my experience both Heinengel Rescue Rocky mountin

(20:27):
National Park and a volunteer fire and ambulance crew in
Northwest Colorado. Everything gunshot wounds too, meaning from hunting and
you name it. And almost every paramedic, every EMT has
their stick and they come up on you and you
probably if you've had this. Hey, Bob, my name is Andy,

(20:48):
I'm medically trained. I'm here to help you. I want
you to write and exactly.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
They're very calm, very direct.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
And usually that's to gain information quickly, including meds and
all that stuff. If you're AO time, alert, awake and oriented,
and in this case you issue somethings like Bob, I
wants you to just pay attention to me. All I
want you to do is breathe. Just breathe, man, that's
all you're going to do. Two reasons for that. Number One,

(21:17):
it gives in this case a person in a bad
place something to think about, which is good regardless of
where they are in terms of enjoying or enduring pain.
But number two, critically, the goal there is to keep
shock away because shock in and of itself is a
psycho psycho, somatic, psycho, what's the word I'm looking for.

(21:38):
It's a bodily reaction that is both mental, emotional as
well as physical to protect the body. And shock will
kill you. Shock kills so many times because it does
things to your heart rate, your blood and more. So
I went into this motive I have to keep shock away,
and that was part of the tail end of the
clinical side. And my whole thing is it's not uncommon.

(22:00):
It's probably seven out of ten empts and parameds have
just breathed. Bob, I just want you to breathe, and
just breathe came into my brain. I'm not kidney, but
I was like a meteor out of the heavens into
my brain. The tune came into my head that I
just was learning on the guitar a few months ago.
I was not aware of it till the Buck Brandaman

(22:22):
song or movie my good friend Buck, and it really
helped me a ton, because at that point there was
not much more I could do. I had stuffed my
fist underneath the humorous slowed down the bleeding as much
as I could, and then I was in waiting game
because I couldn't do anything else because my trouds were
caught up in the vines behind me and Marma's four.

(22:43):
I was sitting there and that song came to me.
And what's interesting is I was applying to myself these
words that I applied to one hundred and fifty other
people in rough spots, really tough spots, some of them.
I'll finish off on that tale with the helicopter. Make
it to the helicopter is a really important element. But

(23:05):
that tune came to me and which I can tell
you it's to me. It's remarkable and fascinating. I've never
had anything like this ever happened to me my entire life.
It was this convergence, the bland in my mind and
the first if you know the song, yes, I understand
every life must end, maybe not exactly, you know, kind

(23:28):
of mister Rogers, Disney Sesame Street happy words when you're
sitting there dying, And at this point, I think I'm think,
I'm pretty sure I had like a couple three minutes left,
but the words gave me something to think about, or
the words myself. But then the lyrics gave me something
to consider as I sit alone, I know someday we

(23:49):
must go and incredibly powerful stuff. Bob Man, I gotta
tell you I had never considered. I always knew about
the risk of Scott having done stuff, but never been
in this place. And I guess the punchline. The whole

(24:09):
thing is, I was certain I was going to die
of that. It was a clinical thing. It wasn't any
kind of It was just a clinical, straight up deal.
I'm not going to make it. There's nobody owhere near
because it's a d Day landing. Everybody scattered and nobody
knows I'm here in this vineyard. And those lyrics came
to me and Bob, they helped me come to peace

(24:31):
with something I had never even considered, and that was dying.
It helped me come to peace with death, and that
made everything perfect. And I was at peace in those
three four moments, three or four minutes, five minutes, and
that meant everything. Which I slowed down my breathing, deep breathing,

(24:55):
and I kept cycling through those lyrics, and I don't
I've listened to a couple of your podcasts, and I
tried to think most folks try to be polite and
try not to cuss a lot. But fucking amazing what
that song did that afternoon, because the song kept me alive,
and it did zeroed out in my mind because it

(25:16):
played a role on the psychology of trauma, psycho all
the psychological aspects of trauma, what it can do to people.
And it just stemmed from me saying just breathe because
that was my stick for being amt and didn't know
the song until the Buck movie, and gosh, I don't
twelve fifteen minutes later, a gaal named Amanda came to
me and she had not had any experience with trauma,

(25:39):
so I felt badly because she hadn't had any experience
with trauma, but I had asked her to kind of
coach her through for forming a tourniquet out of my
altimeter and that really helped a lot, because then I
was able to move my left fist out of my
armpit and then I don't know however, many minutes later,

(25:59):
ambulance came up. They somebody had already dispatched to Flight
for Life out of UC Davis and so I'll just
complete the story and you can unpack it as you
see fit manif shapes. This creates this tournique end up
getting backboarded. I also think it was a little bit

(26:19):
interesting because it was a volunteer crew from Lodike, California.
He was working on me, and I was somewhat coaching
them through this, which was kind of freaking some of
those guys out because they went to put oxygen on
me because I said, guys, I need some MO two
and they put a nasel caniola on me, and I said, guys,
I think I'm down quite a few quarts. Do you
think you could put a mask on me and crank
it to seven? And I remember the guy looking at

(26:40):
me like the hell, what the hell? And they went
to the sea collar on me. I said, look, there's
no mechanism on the neck, but it's cool put a
sea collar. And put a sea collar on me. I said, no, dude,
you're putting a size two on me. I'm not twelve.
And so I'm coaching the through again. I thought it
was funny, but maybe in retrospect itness. Then I hear

(27:02):
the turbines of the helicopter backboard me. Get me set
and it turns out they had to a rubber tire
vehicle in the ambulance to the landing zone for the helicopter.
And flash back to my days in Rock Ammant National Park.
There's lots of times we put people on overnight rescues
on Long Peak, Long's Peak and other climbs that honestly,

(27:24):
we would stabilize them, transport them, get them to a
good spot, and then package them up, get them on
the helicopter and then fly them down to Denver. And
there was three out of five times there are people
that there's like, no way they're going to make it.
I'm not kidding you, no way that tragically, that guy's
a goner. Too much trauma, blood loss, name it internal injuries.

(27:46):
And it's just amazing, amazing high five and the tip
of the hat. Any pyramids that are flying, the flight
nurses that are in these helicopters do amazing things. And
those three at all, those folks, most of them that
I know about, they live because of the flight nurses.
And so that came to me as things were. They
got the right sea color on me, got some O

(28:07):
two and I'm making my way and I kept singing
the tune. By this point, JT was on me and
he was giving me encouragement and he said, you kept
singing the song. We couldn't quite make it out to me.
I was singing it out loud. It was at vetter
song just breathe the entire thing, and couldn't meant so
much to me. At that point I realized how the

(28:27):
value of that song. But inside I was thinking about it.
If I can make it to the helicopter, I have
a shot, because I had done that so many times
with others. I might have a shot. Because at that
point I was starting to get the shroud, you know whatever.
The I was starting to go. I was starting to
go leave for good, one way trip. I'm bind strassa.

(28:50):
But I figured if I could make it to the helicopter,
there's a shot. And fucking amen made it to the helicopter.
They slammed the doors. I'll never forget my friend, and
asking the flight nurse who had his advisor down, I
think he'll make it, and the guy goes like this,
he shook his head no, and I looked up and
I said, I'm right here. I'm sitting right here, and

(29:13):
they slammed the door. They crank up the turbines, blinding
lights from the sun, and I was like, I looked
up to the guy and I said, I put fucking
everything I could into getting here, and it's all on
you now. I got nothing left to give on this fight.
It was a fifteen to twenty minute fight to get
to that moment. Apparently I died about a minute and

(29:34):
something later, and this guy brought me back. Amazing, freaking amazing.
I just love it. So October thirteenth this year and
a couple of weeks, I'll be going out to Paris,
California and jumping to celebrate my ten year anniversary with
a couple of dear friends, including JT. Holmes. Another good
friend who's a Navy seal who stepped off about two

(29:57):
years ago, Zach Armstrong. And We're going to go celebrate
my a love day because I was dead and I'm
not and I'm alive and I have an arm.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Okay, a couple of things. Have you been jumping in
between this time? I haven't today. How good is your arm?

Speaker 2 (30:14):
It's exceptional because it's there. Took thirty two surgeries to reattach,
it rebuilt it. I left my bicep out there, I
don't have a bicep, my triceps got trashed. My hand
kind of Works's back to that little strip that was
still there. How good is it? I don't know how
to say other than it's there and it functions plenty,

(30:37):
good enough for me to do most everything.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Can you type yes?

Speaker 2 (30:42):
And I know this is a podcast, but yeah, by
the full motion here?

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Okay, It's like a doctor will say, most injuries are
caused by over use and a lot of bad situations
a result of bad judgment. Oh yeah, are you playing
this story? Was bad judgment involved?

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Absolutely? And the follow up question is how right I
mentioned earlier about confidence and competence, And when the condence
competence curve is largely in line right with any activity,
including jumping, you tend to be in a decent spot

(31:27):
because your confidence comes from training, experience, your confidence comes
from execution. Without going too much deeper into that, but
in this case, my confidence was probably outstripping and then
creating a deficit of judgment, and probably the major deficit
in judgment there. The problem was thinking I was too
cool for school and pulling love. Had I pulled it

(31:48):
four thousand, three thousand instead of one thousand because I
was jumping with all these other guys, probably would have
been able to rectify and remedy the situation in a
different situation. In other words, if I had been instead
of one thousand feet with a tailwind, I might have
been at four thousand feet with a tailwind or thirty
five hundred feet with a tailwind and been able to
make it over the power lines and not be a headline,

(32:09):
or choose some other landing area other than vineyards. But
I was presented with what I was presented with, and
in that case, it was not good judgment on my part.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Okay, Usually when something this traumatic happens, you get cancer,
you have a near death experience for a period of time,
you're so thrilled to be alive that it changes your perspective.
But that tends to wear off. So it's ten years
later and you have the anniversary. But how long did

(32:40):
this affect your outlook? Into what degree does it affect
your outlook today?

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Not surprisingly a very informed question. Spent it, Oh gosh,
I don't know, five months in the hospital something like that,
in and out of I CUS and whole bunch of
surgeries ended up having to replicate the first round of
surgeries that I had because they didn't take they took
veins out of my legs, inverted them, became my humorous

(33:09):
skin for my legs. My laps are taken out, rebuilt
the arm, all that kinds of stuff. And in that case,
it was just about trying to I mean, hell, I
don't know make it through that. So phase one was
glad to be here. What's going on now? And what's
the next surgery? What are we trying to get done
going I became quite good at surgery, as I have

(33:31):
a pretty good stick when it comes to the antiseesiologist.
Here's what to do, here's a size tube to intubate me.
Surgeries longer in eight hours, put goop in my eyes.
Because anyway, made it through that. Then getting out was
the next six months after hospital was in all kinds
of petea and my arm was still the size of
a rugby ball because swelling. I still had ongoing surgeries

(33:53):
went on for a little while, but it'd be fair
to say that I was pretty heavily medicated. Bob and
the meds were a mets on board with oxycotton oxy
coot on GABA penton, which is a nerve med, and
in that time frame, it was still about cool that
I'm here, great that I'm here, encouragement from friends, everybody,
from Jeremy Jones, J T. Holmes, famous people and not

(34:16):
famous people. I didn't care. I was encouraged, glad. But
then the darkness, you know, Tolkien fan, the darkness of
Mortar set in. And I don't know if it's probably
a combination of things, but the reality is I started
getting pretty down, pretty f and depressed. I came into
the Jump pretty fit. I was working out, running, traveling,

(34:38):
all kinds of stuff. But now is me. I was
one hundred and forty five pounds. I was weak, I
had no muscle, and I was working with one pt
guy who's outstanding. You said, Andy, I can see you're bummed,
But you know, there's a million things you can still do.
There's about seven things you used to do you can
no longer do. What are you going to focus on?
And that helped pick me up. But the long tail

(35:00):
be truthful is that for the next year to two years,
I had a pretty damned good excuse to ask for
some help with pain. And I had doctors that were excellent,
doctors who were prescribing me opiates to help with that pain,
and it'd be fair to say that I was. I
had a very difficult time stepping off of the opiate.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
So so how did you do it?

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Oh gosh, how did I do it? First was I
was at a meeting in Jackson, Hawayoming and I saw
this TV show And I didn't know this Bob. I
kind of lived in a bit of a cave in
some ways. I watched this network show, a news deal
on how if some of the heroin addicts, let's face it,

(35:45):
in the rural West, there's challenges everywhere, right, and that
includes this is kind of pre fentanyl, I guess in
some ways. But they talked about heroin addicts will get
oxyconton oxy cota and if they can't get heroin, and
to scare the shit out of me, I'm not done
drugs my entire life. I'm that guy. I wear wranglers,
I work with horses, all that kind of stuff. Copenhagen Tequila.

(36:09):
Never had any need to do drugs, never did In
this case, I was scared shitless and I stopped for
a bit, but then ended up a couple months later
a couple of bounds with pain, get back in them,
and basically was to help support the words of JT. JT.
Holmes and other folks around me to get off it.

(36:30):
And then there's all there two guys, they didn't know it.
Two guys at the time were with Navy Seal Team
four Troop two that remained very dear friends of mine
to this day, Commander Ryan Hall and Zach Armstrong, who's
stepped off, and they caught win through an interesting intersection
with those guys of what my circumstance was, and they basically,

(36:55):
without necessarily saying it, knowing it, they challenged me to
get off my ass and stop being a pussy and
stop being a victim, and get my shit together and
get fit again. And I couldn't use the word inspired,
but it was driven by those guys to get better,
and part of that was physically get physically fit again
and get off that off those meds. Different times here

(37:17):
and there, I found I realized that those things are
freaking powerful. And also was in that camp of it's
a lame version of the John Wayne thing. Why take
some oxy cato oxycodone without some Jack Daniels, right, So
Jack and O and so it was a bad deal truthfully.
So it was a couple three years in there where

(37:38):
I was in black bad spot, but I pulled out
the friend JT and others, and also pulled out with
the friends Commander Ryan Hall and Zach Armstrong got back
into riding my bike. First time I got on a bike.
I'd ridden bikes, race bikes for parts of my life.
I rode for two miles and was exhausted. It was

(37:58):
so like crap. You got to be kidney, but then
stuck with it because these guys got my shit together,
got off. Those had a couple more bouts, but I've
been able to step off without going to any other
clinics or anything like that. So that's how.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
So as we sit here right now, are you in pain? No?

Speaker 2 (38:16):
I can find it if you want me to, pretty easily,
but no. Okay, So where are you from? Originally I
am a product of the US Air Force. My dad
was a fighter pilot. I was born in West Germany,
back when there was a West and an East Germany, right,
you and I know this now there are folks under
the you know, reminding them, Hey, there used to be
a West. I'm not talking Western Germany. So West Germany

(38:39):
and then lived in Scotland. When my dad would go
over seas to fight in the war fly he flew's
flu F four phantoms. In fact, i'm burying him later
this week up in Montana. Your father just died, died
about a year and a half ago, and I have
his remains. His wishes were free for me as a
young new pilot to fly his ashes over the Grand

(39:00):
Titan National Park. So I'm doing that on Thursday afternoon,
and so yeah, I'm excited to do that and get
that to honor his wishes. But so son of fighter
pilot Scotland, Germany, Germany, Scotland. And then I think it
was about ten or so, moved to southern New Mexico.
Lived in southern New Mexico for a while Holloman Air
Force Base, and then we moved to Virginia Langley Air

(39:22):
Force Bace. And then my dad retired and we ended
up moving around. But I've been it was in Colorado
since seventy nine. Moved to Colorado, missourim.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
What year were you born? Sixty three? Okay, So typical
Air Force brats can get along with anybody because they've
been moving so much in the relatively self reliant. Would
that describe you?

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Yeah? The only thing is I resist the ever rebut
was the word to reject? The word brat? I was
a prideful son of a fighter pilot. He wasn't much
of a dad, but he was a kick ass air
combat warrior and I respect him greatly for that, and
I don't think he would have ever called me a brat.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Well that's what I say. Sorry for the judgment. Come on,
that's a you know, a term.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Totally kidding you, totally no, no problem, okay, But so
so the point being is I call it chameleon when
you're when you grew up in that environment, different cultures,
you learn how chameleon into different places in the answers, Yes,
I feel like I can fit in almost anywhere I can.
I may not look like I'm from there, but I
can usually figure it out. And I was spent a

(40:28):
year and a half in Saudi Arabia, Northwest Saudi Arabia
about two years ago and was great there. Comfortable there,
It was a little bit warm, but yeah, good to go. Okay, siblings,
I have an older sister. This is a big thing
for you, isn't it the family thing?

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Well, you want to know where someone comes from. We
got a lot of territory to cover up. I won't
exactly go into why I ask all those questions, but
you know, in birth order those things really matter. So
when was the first time you skied?

Speaker 2 (40:53):
When I was in we were in southern New Mexico
and there was a little scaria near due east of Almagordo.
At that time, it was called Sierra Blanca and it
was owned by the Muscalleo Apache Indian tribe. And learned
how to ski there as part of a you know,
I don't know, somebody grabbed me, I think id of

(41:16):
You know, no dads are on the air Force base.
It's all a tactical air command base, all the squadrons overseas,
and so I have no idea it took me, but
went skiing up near Ridoso in southern New Mexico for
a time as skid was air, but then really got
into it in college for Collins.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
When you get to college, was this the type of
thing you did once and the Heaven's opened, this is
my thing? Or did it take a while to be
that invested.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Somewhere in between? I couldn't say there was an epiphany
or a light bulb or heavens open, the clouds parting.
But at the same time, I was like, this is great.
Also keep in mind, although the desert is certainly fun
for a kid when you're ten chasing lizards and stuff,
you get up to this environment near upt mountains and
loved that. Right, spend some time in the mountains in

(42:02):
Scotland and Germany. But I did love it. I loved
being in that environment and I loved trying something new,
and so yeah, I did enjoy it, Okay, So tell
me about getting back into it seriously in college Colorado

(42:23):
State University, Go Rams was there, and it's just what
we did Port Collins, Colorado. If you know Colorado, which
I think you do, we would scheme winter Park Mary
Jane for the day, but then we would go to
Steamboat for the weekends because you kick a northerly route
through the Kashlipooter River down into Walden and a crossing
the steamboat. So I just totally dug on it, just

(42:46):
got way into it, and freshman year on just going
up with friends winter Park Marriage Jane for the day
and Steamboat for the weekend. Loved it, Okay. So you
ultimately work at Steamboat. You graduate from college, what are
your first jobs and how do you end up at Steamboat? Yeah?
Completely by accident. I was formative elements to answer that

(43:08):
question of critical I was a back country ranger in
Recommanded National Park. My grandfather ran in the National Park
Service for three presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. And I
grew up in a family where he was the patriarch
or the family. Conrad Worth, you know, respected, sorry, respected, veered,
remarkable man did incredible things post World War Two for

(43:31):
our national parks. And I grew up in that environment.
In fact, was reading the works of Eldo Leopold Santa
Sound County Almanac, and you know, certainly John Muir. I
mean I grew up in Some folks grew up in
households with football teams, religions. Mine was conservation preservation and
the works of John Muir and Elder Leopold and these
great people who established this culture and thinking of care

(43:56):
for the lands. Preservation conservation mean different things. But I
was aiming that direction. And UH couldn't quite pay for college,
uh doing the rock the ranger thing, So they shifted
gears to fighting wildland fire. On an initial attack Crew
Type one crew in New Mexico, and UH loved that.
I was a sawyer on a shock crew and made

(44:17):
a whole bunch of money doing that. I loved debt
work too. Love debt work, still miss it and the
crew that we was with, but couldn't see a career
developing out of either of those deals. But I certainly
loved the mountains. Was headed to grad school. Was actually
accepted to a really nice UH university up in northern
California to study what I was going to get my MBA. Yep,

(44:41):
I had shifted and took a whole bunch of business classes.
Took the LSATZ, figured I was I know you were
an attorney. I thought about becoming an attorney, went nah,
ended up getting my I was headed to get my
MBA applied to him. Was shocked to get accepted to
a very high end program. I freaking hate name dropping,
so I'm not going to say it, but it was
a really nice school in northern California. But then all

(45:03):
of a sudden, somebody told me I needed to my
counselor said, hey, by the way, you need to do
an internship to complete your undergraduate degree. And they're going
to need. You're going to have to have that be
where you start school at getting your MBA. It's like,
oh crap. At that time, I was on the crew
team rowing for this school. I had gone over to
Europe into a year in Scotland University of Edinburgh study

(45:24):
history and economics. There, worked for my uncle on weekends
up in the Highlands. Came back was now extended a
little bit because some of the credits and transfer. Long
story short is was head of that direction.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Crap.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
I got to do this internship. What the hell? And
just aircraft carriers slammed into an internship at Steamboat Ski
Area June two of nineteen eighty six. I started, and
I was quite by accident. It was completely velcrode and
duct taped together, and it was just to punch a

(45:57):
you know, to check off a box. And it turns
out dumb luck. A lot of my it's been good fortune,
dumb luck. But I can work pretty hard. But at
the same time, I'm never the smartest person in the room.
In this case, I was the only person in this
entire company at Steamboat who knew how to run these
new things called spreadsheets. It was lotus one point one
two X and I became as an intern because I

(46:21):
was there willing to do anything. It was an unpaid internship,
so I worked internship from eight thirty am to five.
I was racing road bikes two so I'd train and
then try and sleep for a few hours, and then
I'd work at midnight as a night time monitor at
a hotel in Steamboat to try and make some money
because internship didn't pay. But it was like hell bent

(46:42):
to get it done. A couple months and so go in.
But in that period of time was able to become welcomed,
I guess you could say by the CFO, the VP
of marketing, the president of the company, and through that
work with Excel, I ended up by the end of
the internship they said, hey, why don't you stay here
and work force for a couple of years, then go

(47:02):
get your MBA, into which case I'll never forget, thinking, well,
this is cool, I get to go right now at
least combine my love of living in the mountains, skiing,
and some kind of viable work in making money doing
something other than hengel rescue or fighting wild land fire.
And it was completely by accident, Bob, that I ended

(47:22):
up in the ski business. And that's how.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
Okay, needles say you never left for MBA school, That's right.
If you work in the ski business frequently, you don't
ski that much. So you're working at Steamboat. How many
years were you at Steamboat?

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Twenty just under twenty years?

Speaker 1 (47:41):
How much did you actually ski? If you're there for
twenty years, you were moved up the corporate ladder.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
It points extremely well made. And the answer is always
never as much as you want, and never as much
as people think. To your point, and gosh, I don't know.
I loved it. I loved Steamboat. I love champagne powder snow,
really light dry snow that falls very uniquely in a
few places. You were a little cottonwood guy at some point, right,

(48:06):
and there's very police places on the planet where snow
falls with that level that moisture content. Right, and go
techy on you if you want there. But loved it.
And I don't know, I'm probably skied twenty five thirty
five times a year, but I was definitely working hard.
And so I quickly ended up with a family and
a couple of step kids, and ended up with a

(48:30):
place north of Steamboat, a little horse ranch north of
steamboat about eighteen miles. So I ended up working two
sometimes three jobs just to pull things together. So I
didn't ski much because of that.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Oh well, if you're working for the corporation, what are
the other jobs you're doing.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
I was pretty handy with a chainsaw, so on weekends
i'd go help a fella who had a business where
he was clearing brush and clearing out places for people.
And I was kind of a hard worker and could
work a saw pretty well, so I did that. I
also would pick up pick up different kind of miniature,
many consulting jobs with folks using my spreadsheet skills and

(49:07):
some modeling quantitative analytics, and those weren't particularly taxing, but
they took a lot of time.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Okay, who owned steamboat when you started?

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Yeah? Great, great guy by the name Martin Hart in
a consortium of other owners, and that was in eighty six.
He ended up selling it in eighty nine to a
Japanese group called Kamori Kanko. And because of my spreadsheet
skills and the quantitative quant I was a bit of
a quant. I got pulled pretty quickly into the transaction

(49:39):
and running the analysis, sorry, running analysis in the like
to help facilitate that transaction. So yeah, it was Martin Hart.
Wonderful gentleman, great guy, deep roots in the Steamboat community.
He was on the board at Pepsi for instance, PepsiCo
and others. Just brilliant guy of a lot of roots
in Steamboat. And then Kamara Japanese group out of support

(50:01):
about it, and I'll stop there. I think I've answered
your question.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Okay, so you left. Who owned it.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
When I left? Yeah, oh that was okay, Now fastward,
So it's Kimora Kanko and then we bought Heavenly and
now I have to recreate this in my mind. And
then there's American Skiing Company less Hoten the Canyons, and
I had some responsibility for a bunch of resorts on that.

(50:30):
In that case you're from New England. Absolutely, So I
ended up pretty close to moving to Bethel, Maine to
work with American Ski Company. It was like, man, this
is pretty cool town nothing in my life had I
seen like it was like a TV movie set, like
town Square. And all ended up not going there but
American Skiing Company and we ended up, long story short,

(50:53):
ended up selling it to a group called Fortress Investment Group,
large pe firm they might have nowadays probably two three
hundred million billion under management. In that case, guy named
Wes Edens was one of the four founders of Fortress.
He was a skier. He went to Montana State undergraduate
ski racer, then he went to Harvard, got his MBA,
then off to the races. But he was held bent

(51:15):
for owning Steamboat. He also contemporaneously was working on a
transaction with Buying Interest, which was a Canadian owned company
sold on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the TSX. So he
bought Fortress, bought Interest the same rough time bought Steamboat.
I was a big part of that transaction and was
there for a little bit, and then it got pulled

(51:36):
up to Vancouver to work with the parent up there,
the parent company up in Vancouver, Canada. And had a
just great time up there because its forty eight or
an hour forty eight minutes away from Whistler. Skied got
up there as much as I possibly could, and went
back and forth between Steamboat and Vancouver, and I stepped
off Steamboat. Stepped out of Steamboat in twenty ten as

(51:59):
part of an eu nique circumstance with Squaw Valley to
acquire Squad Valley.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Okay, you worked at Squaw Valley for how many years total?

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Shoot? Seven I think?

Speaker 1 (52:13):
And when was the last year you were there?

Speaker 2 (52:15):
I believe it was twenty seventeen, but I reserved the
right to be wrong.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Okay. So there's been an incredible modernization in Olympic Valley.
There's been the gondola between Alpine and Squaw. H How
much of that was in place in terms of plans
before you got there?

Speaker 2 (52:32):
None?

Speaker 1 (52:34):
So that is something. Let's just talk about the link
between Alpine and Squad That has been something that's bandied
about for decades. How did you finally make that happen?

Speaker 2 (52:46):
I'll give you as brief an answer as I can.
So I took the role running as CEO of Squad Valley.
Prior to that, a year prior, I'd gone down to
Squad Valley with an asset manager from Fortress to buy it.
Got to know the asset. If you will allow me
to talk, not like a skier for a moment and
more like a pe guy for a moment. I have

(53:07):
as much passion for mountains as skiing as anybody, But
at the same time I had a role and got
to know the business pretty well at that time, the
widow of Alex Cushing kind of the kind of the founder.
One could argue that Polsons founded it. I think they'd
be right in that assertion, but Nancy Cushing was only
willing to sell that time forty two percent of the company,

(53:29):
which was a no go. But in the meantime I
learned a lot about it and it was WHOA, this
is a incredible mountain. Incredible mountain. A year later got
a call out of a clear blue sky from a
CEO that I knew from American Skiing Company. Instreingly enough,
and some family litigation had been settled and Nancy Kushing

(53:50):
no longer had controlling interest of the company. Part of
the settlement was that she was now a minority shareholder
and I was asked to come out and be CEO
of Squad Valley at that time, and this is not
necessarily a scoop, but first time really discussed this publicly.
Some of the family members had us, what's it take

(54:12):
to get you here? And I said, really, this is
a place where careers go to die. And I love
the mountain and I love the area. Such incredible mountain,
but from a career perspective. I'm on a pretty good track.
I know the asset really well. I know what could
happen here. Boy, I am going to do this, And
they said, what's it taken said, well, honestly, this place

(54:33):
needs new ownership more than anything else. And they said,
can you help us with that? I said, yeah, past
ten years, I've been working in the strategic side of things,
or George Bush would say the strategicy side of things.
So in this case, I said, yeah, if you guys
want me to line up a transaction with this place,
I guarantee you I can line it up. So before

(54:53):
taking the role and just on a handshake, I lined
up transaction A perspective buyer turns out was a group
called the KSL Capital Partners based out of Cherry Creek, Colorado.
They were number two behind Fortress and acquiring Steamboat, so
I knew them pretty well. A couple former Veil guys

(55:14):
were running the show. Three Veil guys were Veiled associates
guys running the show down there, and knew them pretty well.
And I started August two, and I think it was
by September tenth, I had an exclusive letter of intent
in hand from KSL interested in acquiring Squad Valley. Ended
up a very sophisticated financial a group on one side

(55:37):
and something not that on the other side. With Squad Valley.
I was brand new. I didn't know much frankly, but
was able to push that transaction through where we closed
on the transaction I think October fifteenth, October twentieth, so
in about thirty forty five days, closed on the transaction,
which is lightning speed in almost any case, and the
one hundred and seventy three million bucks on that transaction,

(55:59):
and celebrated for about fifteen minutes, went for a few turns,
then immediately turned my attention to Alpine Meadows. Turned on
my heels, started reaching out to the PE Group small
PE group out of California called JMA JMA based out
of San Francisco to inquire about buying Alpine Meadows, and

(56:21):
so was able to line up a transaction to acquire
Alpine Meadows about a year and changed later November fifteenth
see eleven. Yeah, twenty eleven, arranged that transaction for that transaction,
I think we closed on December two, and now we
have Squad Valley Alpine Meadows, and in that meantime, in

(56:41):
the meantime, part of the investment thesis and the analytics
and the transaction is to the why included. Yeah, connecting
these two mountains is something that would be desirable. We
were definitely not and yours truly was definitely not the
first person to consider that. Right, There'd been lots and
lots and lots of stuff that had happened prior a
lot because mister Cushing and some of the ire he

(57:03):
had raised with folks have pretty substantial hold sway in
northern California, including Hewlett's anyway, So yeah, that's uh, there's
a little bit more to it, but that's the most
the samets, right.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
Okay, for years, you have this guy who owns a
piece of land white Wolf, bought a lift, the towers
are installed. I've been hearing about it for years. That
is in the area between Alpine and Squaw. Why was
that not rolled into the expansion connection?

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Troy Caldwell, this guy's name is good pal, good friend,
and before I closed on, before I closed on buying
Alpine Meadows, had quite a few meetings with him and
said Troy just literally over his place with Troy and
Suzy makes ZUZI makes great bunt cake by the way,
and we're going to complete this transaction, it's really unlikely

(58:04):
it doesn't go through. Without going into too much detail,
and the next conversation is a real serious conversation about
what's it take to work with you on some means
by which can connect the two resorts. It turns out
that how Troy ended up getting the land is a
fascinating story associated with the I can't remember the name
of the railway companies used to own most of the

(58:26):
land in the West, particularly this area. He ended up
buying it from the CEO of this railway train company.
I can't remember how much he paid for it, but
it was a below market deal and it was a
pretty key piece of land. But he was clearly, and

(58:46):
I say this very respectfully, not interested in selling. Wasn't
interested in being part of the transaction. Like he said,
He'd put up on his own accord a couple of
lift towers and had intent to make a go of
it himself. And how could you not freaking respect that
guys got some key land that he has, he acquired,
he put his heart and soul into it. He became
a good friend and so we But we had also initiated, well,

(59:09):
there's not going to be a transaction here for us
to acquire this land, which it looked like for us
to establish long term lease. And we started on that
in earnest summer of eleven I think was our fall
of eleven, and it took a little while to design it,
but it came to pass. I guess December this last winter, right, yeah, December,
this last winter. I go into that in great detail,

(59:31):
more detail if you'd like.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Well, I just don't know. The guy's not going to
live forever, and now people can't ski on it. I mean,
isn't it inevitable that it becomes part of Alpine's bois
now called Palisads.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
You know what's interesting is, you know I left before
I had negotiated over many years and executed a great
many contracts, but many of those were probably modified or
new agreements, and I don't have visibility into those, but
I can tell you the conversations that Troy and I
had were respectful. They weren't any kind of we want

(01:00:06):
to acquire you and all that kind of stuff. It's
sent how I roll, who I am. It's not how
we would do it. It was clearly not how anything
good was going to happen anyway, So useful on forefronts
in this case, by those conversations where Troy, you know,
we're not going to be around forever. We all die,
taxes and death right, and what do you want to

(01:00:28):
have happened to that through this land, like we're just
you know, you want to put in a foundation trust.
I'm here to help you, right, And you got to
keep in mind that my background and my upbringing now
is playing a role. And I there was turns out
there was an original essays in Danger Species ACTIUDY that
indicated that there was a potential impact of soon to

(01:00:51):
be listed frog and the habitat was a part of
this land, and I'd say, well, we're going to design
around it. My grandfather would reach out of the grave
and strangle me like a horror movie if I did
anything to impact any endangered species listed or not. And
we did that, and that was the tone and nature

(01:01:11):
of those conversations. And with Troy and him, you know,
the answer question is, I don't know. I don't think so.
If Troy kept his same demeanor, he's established a trust
or something for that land to advance through. But I
don't know. Actually, as to this day, I can tell
you in twenty seventeen, the answer would have been, no,

(01:01:32):
it's not at all inevitable based on what Troy's disposition was.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Okay, so how does it end with you at Palisades? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
You know, I was in a point where I had
played a role in helping build Altair Mountain company. We
now know it was a passholders called the Icon. We
didn't call Altera at that time. Interestingly enough, that whole
transaction started with West Edens. And I was on the
board of USKI team, as was Air Resnik, who was

(01:02:01):
the president of KSL Capital Partners. And we were at
the New York City gala, a huge fundraiser for the
USK team. And who's also involved this sk USK team
as Wes Edens on the board of trustees. And he
walks up to Eric and me and I know him
quite well and Eric does him pretty well, and he says,
I'm getting long in the tooth on interest. I think
it might actually be putting putting a book out on

(01:02:23):
that and selling it. Are you guys interested in it?
To say it cut off, cut off offt guard would
be an understatement. Hit pause six months earlier Mammoth Barry Sternlock,
the guy had forty two percent of Mammoth and their
other holdings, had put a book out on a book
meaning a confidential information memorandum or kind of book out

(01:02:44):
on Mammoth, but had wanted a really high multiple, very
high number for that asset. Great Mountain, incredible Mountain, incredible holdings.
What they built was incredible there, but just not worth that.
So we passed. And then when west Edents walked away,
Eric and I spent the next two hours talking about, okay, well,

(01:03:07):
hold on interest in this current form. Was it no
longer had Whistler's part of the asset base, but had
a lot of great skirias And quickly went into the
easy side of this critical word easy part of this,
and that is, if you take all these great ski
areas including Steamboat winter Park and others with interest, and

(01:03:30):
do you have Mammoth and these other resorts, and do
you have squad Valley as this point, squad Valley Ski
Holdings the parent of squad Valley out by Meadows. Maybe
there's a different perspective and now there's potentially a critical mass.
If you can make this all makes sense enough, critical
mass to actually be competitive with Vail Resorts, a very

(01:03:51):
successful company based out of Broomfield, Colorado. And so that's
I ended up playing a role in the role up strategy,
pulling that together, some of the negotiations, some of the
trips to all the assets, the presentations, the warming presentations
that take place in that classic situation, and yes, skiing
these mountains, which I had a great day at skiing everywhere,

(01:04:14):
these places, including my hometown resort, Steamboat right which, by
the way, ironically I was in Steamboat in the same
very room that we had given so many management presentations
to prospective owners, but now it was being presented Steamboat
and all the other assets were being presented to me.
I thought that was ironic. Ended up playing role and
putting that together. And at that stage, Bob, I just

(01:04:37):
was at a point in my career. You know a
lot of stuff had gone on in Squad Valley, Alpine Meadows.
I you know, by now had a few years under
my belt with the ARM and I just had a
different perspective on life and hit hit the punch out button,
flew to ever and told those guys, said, hey, we
want you to come run this company. We're building. I said,

(01:04:59):
you know, I love I love these guys at KSL Capital.
They're so good, they're so solid. But I'm just not
it's not in the cards. It's not in the cards
for me. I Yeah, So I punched out. And I
also had recently been married to a wonderful lady who
runs a company down here in southern part of Orange County.

(01:05:20):
And I just I just had kind of worked hard,
really hard like many people, like most people do, and
it was time to find a different path. And so
I punched out at that time.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
And when you punched out, as you put it, did
you have enough money to get you to the end
or did you?

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
I did, Bob, And you know, I mean it seriously.
You don't mean it cliche. I know how to work hard,
and I think I might have learned that fighting fire.
But I'm barely the smartest guy in the room, if ever.
And so good fortune and hard work kind of got
me to a place where, Yeah, things worked out pretty well.
The transaction associated with the evaluation of squad Elly Ski

(01:06:01):
Holdings and had three tranchas of equity, and things worked
out pretty really well for me financially.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
Okay, let's talk about the ski industry in general. So
you know, skiing is a mature sport, and we've had consolidation,
just like in the live music business and in the
recorded music business. But in the sixties, that's when skiing
originally blew up. Skiing was hip. Certainly wealthy people skied,

(01:06:35):
but pretty much everybody skied. It was more of a
blue collar thing. Ultimately, in the late eighties we had
the transition to high speed lifts, which took really got
traction in the nineties. Certainly by the twenty first century,
those lists were so expensive that they raised tickets, and

(01:06:57):
therefore conventional wisdom is that it out a lot of
people who didn't want to spend that money. It was
seen as more of the wealthy person's sport. Then, of course,
Veil Associates is purchased by Apollo. Rob Katz comes in
and runs it after he wants to leave New York

(01:07:17):
City in two thousand and one and before the decade
is out. He comes up with this concept of the
epic pass. So instead of a season's pass at Veil
Only or Veil and Beaver Creek costing between two and
three thousand dollars for at the initial price in the

(01:07:38):
two thousand and eight, it was far under one thousand dollars.
So there are a lot of things going on. The
plan with American Ski Company with less odd and the
plan with Interest was a real estate play, whereas Veil
flipped the script. They said, no, we're going to make

(01:07:59):
the money on the lift tickets, the ancillary, the skiing.
What's on the hill? Of course, most people don't know.
In most of the town's where Vail is, they own
a lot of the branded shops see the Patagonia shops,
see Solomon and they are evolved, involved a little in
real estate. It's inevitable, but that is not their main focus.

(01:08:20):
Now Epic comes along, cleans up and without going through
the transition going to the ultimate point you make, we
end up getting the Icon Pass, such as we have
two major players. Icon Pass is a little bit more
expensive than the Epic Pass, but not dramatically a couple
hundred dollars. It's irrelevant if those are the skiers you're
going to go to what do we know skier days

(01:08:44):
And for those who don't know, that's when one person
goes to a hill one day, that's a skier day.
So if a person skis sixty days a year. It's
sixty days. So we're not talking about the quantity of skiers,
but the number of times people go on the hill.
It's stable and went up, whereas before it had been
you know, it had gone down, it matured, et cetera. However,

(01:09:08):
there it's an interesting thing because there's backlash. You and
me both know there's always backlash with any change. If
you want to change we slow lift, fixed grip lift
to a high speed lift in a bowl area, you
always have the traditionally saying don't do that. They want
to add a new lift in Jackson right now, same
thing is happening. But the reason I mention all this

(01:09:31):
to give a little bit of history. Take a snapshot
of the industry. Now, okay, what is it mature? Can
we have more excuse? I also wanted to talk one
step further about the experience. Certainly on the Epic Pass,
there are very few restrictions. There are a few more
on the Icon Pass. This has resulted in a lot

(01:09:54):
of publicity about crowding. A lot of it is not true.
They'll show a picture a powdered day, people lining up
where the lift opens. They'll show people when not that
much of the ski area is open. It is nowhere
near as crowded as the publicity, but this is seen
as a factor. In addition, because of the law on
the economics, you essentially can't build a new ski area.

(01:10:19):
So what's gonna happen? Where are we and where we going?

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
So you know, as an attorney, you just asked about
a sixteenfold question, right, the sixteen elements here question me.
I appreciate everything you just said. I'm serious, by the way,
and I'll address every point that I possibly can. There's
one key element you missed on the roll up on that,
and that is the cheap pass. The buddy pass thing

(01:10:45):
came about. I know for a fact because I was.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
There right in the front range of Colorado.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
It was Gary Defranz running when a park. He couldn't
make payroll, and he came up with this idea to
try and get cash in the door quick. And that
was for every four people that I had passed, you
get it for super cheap. And at that time it
was Adam Aaron who came in from United Airlines, and
Adam was running bail. Adam and I would contend, I

(01:11:11):
know this to be true, would contend I would contend
that his background of the United and the airline business
was a little bit more commodity based pricing, where you
lose share if you don't match on price. It is
a simplistic way to put it, commodity being something that's
only different siated by price. He ends up on Friday
afternoon of Gary Defranz announcing this by Saturday afternoon during

(01:11:33):
the Sneograb sale, which is a labor day sale in Denver, matching,
and next thing, you know, the cheap passes born. I
can't remember how many years later, maybe five, five, six,
seven years later, after Adam Aaron leaves and shortly thereafter
robcast leaves the board as a representative of the group

(01:11:55):
you mentioned. I think they had large component of bail
associations at that time. This is post bankruptcy Right Veils
bankrupt in ninety two ninety three under Jillette because cross collateralization,
all that jazz. But interestingly enough, the KSL guys picked
it up, fixed it up, and took it public. But
now it's Rob Cats coming in and he takes something

(01:12:17):
that was the cheap pass. Thing happened completely by accident.
It was a knee jerk like you read about. I'm
not kidding you. It's kind of the I know this
to be true because I was there so expand upon
that time happens. Well, it was Garied French needed to
make payroll for winter Park running. Oh you mean the original, Yeah,
the original.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
But then Rob Cats came along said there's something more here,
and he took what was a complete aircraft carrier landing
type knee jerk and made it into something a great
deal more sophisticated, branded it called the Epic Pass, and
here we are. Your point about business models is particularly relevant.

(01:12:59):
I had my career responsibility for real estate, real estate development, brokerages,
scary operations, you know, you name it. Pretty pretty understanding
of that space. By the way, there's a pretty good
analog with the music industry. In addition to these things
that happened, there's also the maturation exactly just like in

(01:13:21):
the music business, right when BGP gets acquired by I
can't remember what group.

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):
And THENXX turns into absolutely and so there was that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
There was also the maturation and the people running the businesses.
I'm not saying for better or worse, it was just
more mature, more people. You know, like mentioned in that email,
Bill and Peter Barsodi, I learned from them from BGP.
This is after Bill died concert with them, and I
know the business a little bit. And you know, those
guys were Gen one at BGP and the Gen two,

(01:13:52):
three four, And I don't know the companies like you do.
You worked for them, with them and helped lead them
in this case, but you saw that first and in
this case I saw firsthand the maturation of those working
inside the key business. So it was a little bit
more than you mentioned. But the point being is relative
to real estate and what drives businesses, it's the going
concerned principle they teach you in first year business school.

(01:14:16):
Is really simple. You can't build the business on a
long term basis just on real estate. It will fail
because you're number one, run out of real estate. Number two.
The evolution or the undulations associated with that. And there
were those of us who is an old friend of mine,
a boss of mine who went to Middlebury's also Christyman,
said stick to our knitting. We're going to do this.

(01:14:37):
We can do this other real estate element. But the
real estate, for instance in Steamboat was meant to be
was a means to an end and see what we
had done tons of studies and research understand that we
knew there's two three key factors to our success. Number
one airline seats got to have these NonStop heats and
from lax Smo, Dallas, Fort Worth all accounts of the

(01:15:00):
other one is the proper running of the ski area,
pricing the name. But the third one is available nightly
rental pillows and we had a dearth of those. So
we ended up getting into call it real estate only
because it was a means to an end, not because
it was a long term effort. There there were companies
like Interest who were built largely upon that and they

(01:15:21):
weren't successful in the long run. You mentioned another one
American Skiing, a skiing company, they had their grand summit size.
We ended up doing the steamboat. Grand was over hotel
and conference center. Who doggie, you're stumbling back into some
memories here, man, and you know your stuff. Not surprisingly,
but there was a darkness and steamboat when less was there.

(01:15:44):
There's bumper stickers and you name it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
Just stop for one second. Yeah, how long are those
grand some of hotels going to last? Depends on which
one I've heard some of them are quite flimsy.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
It'd be fair to say that the ones and I
get friends still running these resorts are going to fly
out to Montana and beat me up or something that
I don't know. The ones back east are pretty well veed,
value engineered steamboat grant. We spent a lot of effort
in securing viable, solid set up. Now, the design, physical

(01:16:18):
plant design could have been better, but that one's solid.
The canyons grand pretty darn good. So it depends on
which one. It sounds to me like you've stayed in
some of the ways.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
All I've read. I have some people that have ownership interests.
It's a fascinating thing. Just to stop an American skiing
company less Odd has been trying to get back into
the balsips for years now. Did it fail because of
the macroeconomic situation in America or was it inherently flawed plan?
Was it too much spending too soon? Was it to

(01:16:51):
focus on real estate or all of that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
It was even more simple than that, Bob. I can
tell you from the inside out, straight up, straightforward. There's
an experienced CFO who ended up cross collateralizing assets and
put the company in a very very very difficult position
when it came to structuring acquisition or securing companies ski

(01:17:15):
areas and land with capital that was secured through cross
collateralized loans, which can feel good for a couple three days,
but as you know from your business experience, we'll catch
up to your ass and those Our ass was caught
up and it was covenants blown through and it was bad.
It was really bad. So it was actually a number

(01:17:37):
of factors. But I would I could make a very
very strong salient. I sometimes I'm asked to speak, can
do guest lecturing at business schools. It's really fun. I
enjoy the heck out of that. But in this case,
you can look at these three, four or five layers
a little bit like my skyde accidents. Usually there's this
one prevailing thing. In this case, one prevailing thing is

(01:18:00):
I had an inexperienced CFO who and uh willingly or
knowingly or unknowingly and unwillingly uh less signed off on this.
But it was cross colateralized loans debt that brought that
company to its heels, to its excuse me, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
So today, where is the industry that is their growth?
Is there any consolidation I mean, yeah, give me your take.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Sure. So inside looking out, I hear the phrase. I've
heard the phrase during and after my career and the
running ski resorts of consolidation, and honestly, it was there
since eighty six and it's ebbed and flowed, and the
trend towards consolidation. I'm like, well, which you know, this
is about the sixth one I've seen. You can call
it a trend. And truthfully, it's just like the music industry,

(01:18:48):
right kind of. You can say the music industry just
like you say the ski industry. But inside there, your
view of this is very unique and informed. There's pockets
of those who succeed and pockets of those who do
okay and those who don't. And it has to do
with their business acumen, their business model. They're thinking, you know,
there's so many things to it. Ski industry is the

(01:19:09):
same way highlight that they're those who have the shit
together and those who don't, and those who rely on
phrases like if you have snow it, you do well,
if you don't, you don't. That's that's a false premise,
entirely false premise. Or if we spend a whole bunch
of money on share lips big metals. Spending money on

(01:19:30):
big metals easy. The hard part is having it makes
sense from a finite capital outlay perspective. My answer to
your question is the industry has shed the intensity of
focus on real estate being such a key part of
seeing to the p and l their profitability. Thankfully, those
who figured that out didn't take long. There's a lot

(01:19:53):
of roadkill on that one in the past twenty years.
And those who stuck to the netting, they are doing things,
good things, whether they be Wachusetts Mountain, I think in Massachusetts, right, yeah,
all the way up to the big guys. There's some
smart people that still have passion for the sport that
are good business people running these mountains.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
So well, let's just look at the two major players.
There are some even Snowbrains. Today is listing the largest
ski areas that are not aligned. You have White Water,
you have a few in Canada, but most of these
companies are aligned with one of the two major operations.
So every year, at this time of year, Veil announces
its capital projects. So at Veil Mountain, literally every lift

(01:20:36):
is a high speed lift other than a couple of
beginner lifts. Really the infrastructures improved this year at Steamboat
mazing upgrades in infrastructure. So what we know is the
business model is to get the capital in the spring,
so you're not weather reliant. Okay. People want people to
buy the pass, which breaks even usually between five and

(01:20:59):
six visits. You have that money. Whether they go or not,
you're at least set. So is that base of pass
buyers And of course Epic two years ago actually lower
the price, right, Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
Is there a ceiling on that?

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
You know, if you want to talk surfing, you got
to be near waves, right, Okay, there's an inherently limited market.
And in addition with surfing, there's in the water on
the beach where's a lot of these skiaras you can
actually entertain yourself if you never even go on the hill.
And as a result of the high speed lifts, almost

(01:21:38):
nobody skis from bell to bell every day few so
you have these resort areas. What is the ceiling? Knowing
that we I mean, it appears we can't build any
more infrastructure in terms of new mountains, what's going to
happen here?

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
Yeah, Bob, I'm not trying to pivot or do the
Sunday Morning, Meet the Press, politician pivot. I'm not I
stepped off that business world, that world about five years ago.
I don't have a good contemporary answer for you. But
let me, just as President Obama said, I loved his interstitials,

(01:22:15):
let me say this about that. In this case, I
would say, I completely understand the center point of your
question and all of the iterations. I get it. That
could be said that that's one of the reasons I
wanted to step off, and I'd be a hypocrite to
not point out my contradiction there. The contradiction self evident.

(01:22:39):
The very thing that I helped build is a very
thing you're talking about, right, But at the same time
I realized it wasn't. I had built a good career,
I had done well. I was pleased and proud of
some of the things I'd done look back and wish
but this case, I was like, Okay, I'm not too
sure I want to be a part of this particular

(01:23:00):
circumstances going forward. And that was great. That was a
personal But the answer question from a strategicy perspective, is
the last time I use that reference. Is it the
goal to set up a competitor for Vail we felt
was a good one, and the onw O Resorts by
Altara Mountain Company, and then there's the on O Resorts,

(01:23:21):
and then there's affiliates, right, which are part of it.
I think it's like forty eight or something now something
like that. We built those with Mountain Collective Partners and more.
Is extremely competitive and it's a competitive environment. And by
the way, the research we did with McKenzie and others,
we came out of the gates price higher than the
Epic Pass very much on purpose, very much on purpose.
And I'm thrilled to see the Foliot on purpose based

(01:23:44):
on the numbers, based on the numbers, based on the views,
and you know, the fundamental premises with Alterra and the
icon it was, I would think it remains this is
not a commodity product. We don't compete based on price.
We compete based on price and many other things in
some cases are precursors and other cases or epilogues to

(01:24:05):
that whole discussion and the consumer's mind. And it's not complex,
but it's nuanced. I could tell you this caliber since
we're here in California. California is the battleground because you
have in the market for the market high volume high
visitation with Squad Valley, Alpine Meadows and Mammoth in the
al Terra resorts. They also have vail resorts with north Star,

(01:24:27):
Heavenly and the like. But California was it, and it's
also a market that travels to Ski, to Utah, to Wyoming,
to Montana, Colorado of course, so it is a big
deal and it was the battleground as part of the
roll ups. The initial quantitative analytics we did on this
stand ups pointing is I don't know exactly where it goes.

(01:24:48):
I do know this that scheme has become a little
bit more affordable, and that's the good news. The other
news is it's become more affordable and that's brought a
lot more people to the sport and trying to find
that equilibrium, that balance, I mean, it's it's with a
great deal of pain and oh type kind of like
geez seeing the lines on those high demand days. The

(01:25:10):
compaction that we talk about, you know, to our lines
at this resort and this resort, everybody gets them. And
it doesn't matter how many gondolas high speed h you
put out of a base. When you have twelve thousand
people that want to go skiing in between nine am
and nine thirty am. There's not a lift system on
the planet that can move them out because squad we had,
even with the base base which is at fourteen hundred hours,

(01:25:33):
so twenty fourth there's I think out of base lift
capacity might be six thousand something like that skiers per hour,
and then you put nine thousand people that want to
get up, mostly on KT understandably because fricking soul center
of skiing universe right there, the incredible hill can't be done,
so that compaction issue has been augmented by passes. I

(01:25:57):
don't know where it goes from here. I don't have
a crystal ball on that, but I do understand that
I can say the obvious restate blinding clash the obvious
it has become more affordable good news. The other news
is it's become more affordable and it's invited more people
to the sport. I'm not trying to avoid your question.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
No, no, I think you got it. But the reason
we have to lay that groundwork is you are on
the hard goods side of the equation now with peak skis,
So what do we know about the hard goods. And
according to your documentation, there's nine hundred thousand pairs of
skis sold in a year worldwide. What do we know?

(01:26:35):
The number has come down. So if we look historically,
skis were not that well built. Skis are much better
built than they used to. If you were a regular skier,
you know you would be. We're best friends with the
warranty department and I can talk from experience. Whereas the skis,
the skis would just fall apart, never mind the residents,

(01:26:57):
et cetera. Secondly, because of airline prices for baggage, there's
a whole new paradigm which always existed. There was always
a rental business. Then we went into the high end
rental business and now there are plenty of people who

(01:27:19):
travel without skis. There's a big issue of well, how
many skis can be sold in the market, and we
look at these individual companies. K two starts out as
a private company in Vashon Island, Washington. The two Kirchen
brothers owner for a long time. Then it goes to
a couple of owners and nobody wanted it. Okay, it

(01:27:41):
was successful. We have Rosignol sold to Quicksilver, a disaster
repurchased by the original company. We have Solomon been through
a few changes, goes to a mayor. We have a
lot of companies that go out of business, Knisol, etc.
On and on. Then we have the Nordica Group who

(01:28:04):
builds a factory. Everyone says this is the stupidest thing
of all time. And now Blizard is a dominant ski brand.
Having said all of that, and you were talking about
the value of Squad Valley, which is a large physical asset,
there's not that many zeros. There's not that much money
in the scheme. So if you go back decades, never

(01:28:26):
mind opening your own ski area, you'd open your own
drug store. That's all changed now. Okay. Even medical groups
if you can find a doctor. Certainly in Los Angeles
there are doctors, not parts of group. They don't take insurance.
They might file. That's it. It's a very thin layer
of the business. In addition, as I say, the skis

(01:28:49):
last longer because of the quiver paradigm. Active skiers have
more than one pair of skis. Yep, Okay, there may
be a paer they don't use. We have the whole
back entry thing. Terms of powder skis. If you have
a pair ten years is good enough, even if the
technology changes a little bit. So why go into the

(01:29:09):
physical goods business?

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
Now beyond a great question. But before I answer it,
you went to Middlebury. Were you a ski racer or
free I was.

Speaker 1 (01:29:21):
I was on a ski team once. Let's be clear,
I was never of that caliber in terms of racer.
I was on the team once I got hurt. Then
after I went to Middlebury, I lived in Little Cottonwood
Canyon and at the time, in the seventies, that was
the epicenter of freestyle skiing. I did not know when
I moved there, but it was I competed on the

(01:29:42):
freestyle circuit. I wasn't a I mean I skied Scott
Brooks Banks, all the guy skiving these people every day. Okay,
but in terms of my results not good. And then
you realize, okay, you know, people don't understand it any
elite level of physical competition. It's sports. There are psychological

(01:30:03):
elements in experium and this guy, Scott Brooks bake. I
would ski with him every day. He would be just
as good, if not better, in competition. The average person chokes,
and an educated person would realize there's only a limited
amount of money in this sport. Then a friend of ours,
Dirk Douglas, got hurt on an inverted. They took the
inverteds out of freestyle and it crashed the business. Now,

(01:30:26):
ultimately Moguls were in the Olympics in renaissance. But that's
a long answer to your brief question.

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
Got it. But you know how to ski?

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
Oh, believe me.

Speaker 2 (01:30:36):
I know how to ski, Gero Dow. Based on that,
I go deep on the freestyle community. Not as a
free see skier, but Park Smalley might have been.

Speaker 1 (01:30:45):
I used to skid. I ski with Park Smallly in
Mammoth in nineteen seventy five. He came out and stayed
with us long before he was a coach.

Speaker 2 (01:30:53):
He's a very very dear friend of mine from Steamboat College.
Steamboat Yeah and yeah, we did a truckload of stuff.
In fact, hosted a bunch of freestyle World Cups. One
of them I named a whole freestyle complex after him,
the Perks Freestyle Complex. I'm surprised him. It was really
cool that night. But go deep in that space. In fact,
very dear friend Johnny Moseley ninety eight Gold and Travis

(01:31:16):
Mayor and other Steamboat kids mostly go deep in that space,
but have a lot of respect. The other thing, by
the way, terms of I don't know what your injuries were,
but in the seventies and the early eighties, no, but
you guys were doing some crazy stuff in the air
and landing on hard pack. And now we put groups
of choppers on the hill below the bumps, the airs
on the bump courses, and certainly the aerials and stuff.

(01:31:37):
You guys didn't have that, So I.

Speaker 1 (01:31:38):
Know, a vast improvement. I'm interrupting, but just to make
this point in that that the ski business was driven
by my air quotes racing skis for decades. Then you
had K two that got out of the racing business,
and certainly in America, racing skis don't mean that much. Ironically,

(01:31:59):
skinny the skis still are sold in Europe much more
than in the United States. However, we've gotten to a point,
and this is just my own personal beef, that once
you start making the moguls, it's become so profetd it's
not the same way such that other than moguls, the

(01:32:21):
best giers and you're working with buddy, the best skiers
are the racers. Just to go one step further front
of mine to instructor and Aspen, and there was a
video of someone analyzing the technique of Marcel Herscher who
was literally breaking every rule. Yeh okay, So there's different
schools of thought. When I lived in Utah, the worst
thing you could be, and you would laugh. You didn't

(01:32:41):
want to be an instructor. We laughed at those people.
By the same token, in most ski areas, the racers
are off in their own hill, their own paradigm. No
one even cares about those people. Then we had big
mountain skiing. You know, we have the different album, but
the average person is skiing in bounds, and an incredible

(01:33:02):
percentage of people if it's a storm, won't even go
out right.

Speaker 2 (01:33:08):
You know, you were in little Cottonwood. You were probably
on two fours, two of sevens, two eleven's, probably raise skis,
straight sticks, and you were hammering down on some of
the bigger bumps. Totally pick up that scene. I would, well, we.

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
Would laugh because people started to ski on one seventy
zold and mark four that you're in seventy and the
bombs come on.

Speaker 2 (01:33:27):
Oh yeah, totally look down on him appropriately so so
Mary Jane, it was the same way Colorado in the
mid eighties. It was like, you know you do not.
In fact, I think they had signs up there they
said anything less than a two four, literally you can't
ski here, right right? Get it? So that's really cool.
You have that background, that heritage and park's great guy,

(01:33:48):
great friend. The answer your question comes back to something
I didn't answer. Your first question was how do I
know body? But it relates to this. So when I
retired body, and I let me answer straight up, it
makes no sense to be in the hard good side
of the business when I came back from a Middle

(01:34:09):
East Well, let me back up step. So I think
I purchased probably five hundred to million pairs of skis
in my career for different ski areas, and knowing a
fair amount about the business, models would probably consistently think
to myself, why would you ever want to be in
that business? Because all the things you mentioned about ski

(01:34:31):
resorts and the hard good side of the ski skis
is right. In fact, we looked at a book on
K two Mark or Vocal gosh, the thing was sixteen
or something like that, rubber Maid and can't remember the
different groups, but it'd be fair to say that the
ski resorts side of business, even if you have somewhat
of a clue, you're you're okay. Regardless of the market

(01:34:52):
dynamics we've talked about, you're okay. You're probably doing twenty
twenty five percent EBITDA margin on bad years and thirty
thirty five percent EBITDA margin on decent years. And there
are those who exceed that on an ongoing basis, and
that's ebitdah right net operating cash call. It's not exactly that.
Bullet's call it that for the time being, hard you
goes side of the business different tale out of any
ten years of any ski company you mentioned, it's not

(01:35:15):
even a capital intensive business either, but because of the
retail distribution model and more, and it's largely driven by
Europeans save K two and their intensity of focus on racing.
Be fair to say that any ten year period, you
can take a snapshot and say two of those years
they might pull down five to seven percent margin three

(01:35:39):
or four of those ten years on I'm talking trailing
ten years. Of any ten years, they're barely breaking even
in those other two to three years. Remnant on this
math is they're getting crushed like a bug on a
windshield and knowing that, why would you want to do that? Right,
Passion drives a lot of people, and in some cases

(01:36:01):
I compared to some of the great folks I knew
that used to run airlines Delta Continental and like there's
times where they would not be doing well.

Speaker 1 (01:36:09):
I find it, We're going to buy an airline stock
you know the history of airlines.

Speaker 2 (01:36:13):
I did do that, and we could talk an awful
lot about that. That's also how it cut my teeth
in the business and SKI was through all the analytics
around the air program.

Speaker 1 (01:36:22):
What people don't know is those are subsidized flights into
ski areas, so you guarantee a certain amount to the
airline and if you don't hit that, the ski area
makes up the shortfall.

Speaker 2 (01:36:32):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Called minimum revenue guarantees, And right
out of in my internship, I was running models on that,
which made no sense because I had no freaking earthly
clue what I was doing. But I learned a lot
in that process on those revenue guarantees. So back to
the point, it's it didn't make sense. But when after

(01:36:53):
I had retired, I got to know body really well.
At this time, I was on the USK team board
of directors and we I was living with my wife
in San Juan Capistrano, California, and he was just up
the road in Coda Kotakuta, Coda Dekaza, Coda Dekaza, the
neighborhood down there in Orne.

Speaker 1 (01:37:11):
I know it's down by ranchall Sam Bernardo.

Speaker 2 (01:37:12):
Yeah, I don't know. Everything around here is a rancho
or a. But we'd hang out, and at that time,
most of it was, Hey, how do we fix the
USK team. We're having some challenges again and again again.
How do we stop this maddening cycle? Tragically in that
we knew each other, we were friends. I pulled I'd

(01:37:33):
been asked a long time ago, fourteen or thirteen to
buy Governor Sandoval of Nevada and Governor Brown at the
time of California to help bring the Olympics back to
like Tahoe from nineteen sixty and I called him and
pulled him into some of the initial discussions on that
targeting twenty twenty two. So I knew him pretty well,
and I knew him as a friend. And one of

(01:37:56):
the other tales of Bodie this I think worth telling,
is I was lining up to buy a whole bunch
of skis for Squad Valley Alpai Metos, I know, like
ten fifteen, twenty thousand pairs of skis, restock and head.
He was on head at the time, but he was
injured and he just basically didn't have a right foot
that he could have put any pressure on. If you
remember that injury, I think was thirteen something like that

(01:38:16):
port right, and so Head to try and influence me, says, hey,
we're going to bring Boddy Miller and hang out with him.
They're like, okay, cool, And we ended up skiing for
the day, just the two of us, him on one
foot and me on both feet. I was able because
of that to somewhat keep up with him, but we
didn't talk about skis or skiing at all all day
long because at that time he was going through a

(01:38:38):
very public challenge with his daughter. And it was when,
as you know, you have many very famous people on
the show, with stuff like that happens, it ends up
in freaking People magazine, and it's hard enough going through
challenges with kids and a split family. Anyway, For those who.

Speaker 1 (01:38:58):
Don't know, he had a young daughter drown and a
swimming pool well, just.

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):
About to get to that, and this case it's his
older daughter. At that time, we all we did was
talk about because I had three kids from a divorced family,
and how to put yourself in your own interests behind
those of the interests of your kid. All we talked
about we skied and we were chair lifts, and that's
all we talked about. We hardly and I was like,
this guy's there's nothing like the persona many thought of,

(01:39:25):
you know, showing up to start kits buel for the
Hona khoum with a hangover, drunk or whatever. This solid
guy inside I could see it. We ride chair lips
with people. You get to get to see that if
you know how to pay attention. I did. I was impressed,
bookmark that. Then we were living near each other, were

(01:39:48):
hanging out. We're the two guys that are retired, that
have too much time on her hands, drifting a conversation
at the coffee shop doing and then and then tragically
his daughter Emmy died, And I do anything to undo that.
I would take five rounds. I would do anything to
undo the pain that that caused him and his wife, Morgan.
It's just fucking heartbreaking, and I was amazed at how

(01:40:12):
solid he was through that circumstance. I gave him a
couple and gave him. I called him and said, I
don't know, I don't have any words for you. I
can't help you out. All I could do is be
a wingman. And he called me too three days later
and started off, did you know that drowning is the
number one cause of infant death? Buddy had no idea.

(01:40:33):
That's how he let off, Hey, Buddy, how you doing?
Did you know that? And I was so from that
point forward, I can't remember how to I don't even
know how to describe that error. But became better friends,
Like I said, do anything to freaking undo that shitty
way to become better friends. But then we ended up

(01:40:56):
drifting back into conversation about you a ski team, their
business ventures and alike, and a lot of stuff in
between there here and there. But then on an entirely
different realm of work, line of work that I do,
I was over the Middle East for about a year
and change came back and I had by that time.

Speaker 1 (01:41:14):
We were up in Montana, this time out for one
saying what were you doing in the Middle East?

Speaker 2 (01:41:17):
A couple of things. I was working for the Crown
Prints of Saudi Arabia Mohammed Ben Solomon, and I don't
have anything at all good to say about that person.
He is everything you read about except worse. And so
I was doing a couple of different things over there,

(01:41:39):
and probably not something I talked about in great detail
on air. But it was an entirely different sector in
space I had to do with entirely nothing to do
with skiing at all.

Speaker 1 (01:41:54):
What did it have to do with.

Speaker 2 (01:41:58):
A threat and risk assessment and mitigation and in some
cases training with assets of our country that might be
could be special way for operators working with their Ministry
of Defense to help them improve their capabilities.

Speaker 1 (01:42:15):
How does one get that gig? It's a long story, Okay,
then let's forget it. Yeah, comes from the Middle East.

Speaker 2 (01:42:21):
I come back from the Middle East and I have
time on my hands. And at this point body says, hey,
I want to help me out with this little project
he's working on and it was with a hard goods company.
It was a ski company, and he asked me to
help do some work with this try and fix it up,
remedy some of the challenges they were having. And at

(01:42:42):
one point I said, body, I sure, I'll be doing
anything for you, no problem at all. And it was
fair to be fair to say that Warren Buffett couldn't
fix this deal up. But in the meantime I had
learned a lot. I learned a bit about manufacturing of skis,
which I didn't know much, and I learned about some
of the stuff that was in his mind mind that
he never had a chance to put in place, because

(01:43:05):
and that's actually part of the ethos of our company
is this is what we've done, is take all the noise,
all the egos, all the stuff, all the people in
between his mind and the skis, and there's nothing in
between the right what is in his mind is on
the skis that you ski on hard stop. But in
that process learned and then, oh gosh, I don't know,

(01:43:25):
six months into it, said give me a second, and
I crawled back into my rusty quantitative analytics mode cave
and it ran a whole bunch of analysis, whole bunch
of research, you know, kind of going back to my
old days, and built some models and came out of
that said here's the deal. Let's go do this. But
we're going to have change the model because neither of

(01:43:46):
us want to be in the hard goods business because
of what we described earlier. What you described earlier to
be true is true. But the only means by which
to make this work is with these three, four or
five tenants. And we're classic business planning stage stages of concept,
proof of concept, developed business plan. We're in proof of concept,
developing the business plan. And in this case we need

(01:44:09):
to go direct consumer. Have e com only be our
deal because the distribution system of ski shops and broker
the broker groups, the buying groups were killing margin. And
that's why you have that circumstance. Make a pair of
skis for two hundred dollars a pair, right, sell them
for eight hundred whatever the MSRP is or even the
most available the most commonly available pricing. But then you're

(01:44:32):
selling them to those resellers. It's not somewhat self evident.

Speaker 1 (01:44:35):
Right, they're selling them for like five hundred dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:44:38):
Yeah, yeah, but the manufacturing manufacturers are actually netting quite
a bit less. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:44:43):
Well, what I'm trying to say is that coster two
hundred wholesale is four to five hundred. The retailer may
sell seven to eight So if they can sell them,
they're making as much as the manufacturer.

Speaker 2 (01:44:53):
Yeah, and if it's four to five hundred on wholesale,
that's a very good number. Suffice to say that we're
not going to be able to do that. And now
it's whatever it was twenty twenty one or twenty two.
I would think so in that zone, and it might
be the last industry to move into DTCEE con direct
to consumer econ. Others sell skis smaller, great companies Jay

(01:45:15):
Leventhal and they're great, and they've kind of had that model,
but we're contemplating something a little bit bigger scale. And
so that was our the business model, which sounds easier
than it sounds easier to it's easy to say it
out loud than it is to actually put it in place.
But because you have a tradition, you have a history

(01:45:36):
in ski business, and we respect that. There was more
to it than that, but that was the key thing
in terms of U saying we're going to do this,
We're gonna have could go DTC com. I call the
buddy of mine who ran Canyon Bikes, Great Bikes. He
brought Canyon to the States in twenty sixteen and industry.
That's a strong analog because bikes, bike shops and alike.

(01:45:57):
But they had great success, and he was nice enought
to open up his playbook and share with me. But
it was basically three or four Harvard Business School case studies,
full of notes, notepads, and adopted a lot of policies
thinking approach the canyon. They fed straight into our business model.
And when we announced Peak Ski Company April sixth, I

(01:46:19):
think it was last year.

Speaker 1 (01:46:28):
So body Body retires and then of course he makes
a deal with Bomber Skis, which ultimately became an elite ski.
He leaves Bomber, but elite in terms of price, small
market ski.

Speaker 2 (01:46:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:46:41):
Then he goes with a Pacific Northwest company Cross and
he really says he's invested in that company. Then he
leaves that to go to Peak. Now for the once again,
every business is small at the top. However, skiing is
a it is relatively small compared to software, cars, whatever.

(01:47:04):
So within the business one can argue quite strongly based
on conversation, that he hurt his image by jumping from
company to company. Yeah, and therefore, to what degree is
that a factor? It's almost like well now I'm starting over,
but it's like the third time.

Speaker 2 (01:47:23):
Yeah, yeah, your point's really well made, particularly in the
consumer market view of things. It's very well made, particularly
those who are fishonados in the sport and follow and
track that that's not many, to be honest with you.
But at the same time, your points well made. In
this case, he was kind of indifferent to it. And frankly,
I was two, and we had the benefit of being

(01:47:45):
of being indifferent to that and saying okay, got it.
But I knew on the inside. He knew on the
inside what had and had not happened at all ski companies,
including those two that you mentioned, and that was fundamentally
his ability to take what is you have to understand.
I know he's been on your show. I equated him

(01:48:05):
because I grew up in the Air Force to the
right stuff, General Chuck Yeager, you would go to the
skunk works is when that was first developed, and hang
out with the flight engineers all day long, months and months,
and then you get a cup of coffee, jump in
a flight suit and go fly the damn thing. Come
back feed input to the engineers, saying it mock point nine.

(01:48:28):
And I know this because he's a friend of my father's.
He was an experimental pilot too at some point, and
held General Dieger in great esteem. He was unlike anybody
else because he could make how the X one happened.
He didn't just fly the damn thing. He played a
role in its development. I realized a bodie's like that.
I also really realized that his mind is very different

(01:48:50):
than many think. He's got a creativity. There's times I've
been on hundreds of hours of calls with him, Bob,
with engineers, some of the best engineers at Design Skis,
and it's just times I'll hang up and go, when
did you get your Masters in engineering from MIT? He's
got this brilliant mind. What's that great movie with Robin

(01:49:10):
Williams about the guy running calculus? He's a janitor. He's
doing calculus on the chalkboard in between wiping floors. Oh God,
was that movie. I can't remember the name of that
one right now. It escapes me. But he's got this
mental level brilliance, creative brilliance.

Speaker 1 (01:49:26):
Well, for those who follow, and as you say, it's
a limited number. Body and Marcel Herscher were known as
the most terms of tinkerers. Yep, Marcel Herscher was more
focusing a lot of times. I'mlike, what was the ramp angle?
And is the grinding of his boots? Not that body
wasn't into that either, But just to stop with Marcel
for a minute, Marcel has his own company, Van Deere.

(01:49:50):
Red Bull is a heavy component of that. Van Deer
is also in racing, which you know is a crazy thing,
but you can't make any money. They are coming Garth
Select will be stocking their skis at a very high
race point two thousand. What do you think of that.

Speaker 2 (01:50:11):
Legendary skier body? And I to a lesser extent that
to the extent of that matters have a great deal
of respect for that gentleman and what they're taking on
in red Bull Holy crap, I mean Red Bull Media
house and what they do. They hunt butterflies with howitzers,
not shotguns, and they're forced to be contented. We specifically
are choosing, to your point, not to engage in the

(01:50:33):
race community. To get deep into the World Cup level
racing is a commitment that are that we chose to
not take on as part of our business model. It
is a very European centric approach and that's understandable, as
you well know, alpine ski racing doesn't have nearly the

(01:50:53):
traction in the US that it does in Europe. We're
just I'm going over to sold in here in three weeks,
we're going to the first World Cup race. Yeah, and
we're going to launch Peak over the EU and as
part of the lead up to that EU UK we
call it and not we, but it's called And in
this case everybody have interacted. Well, you guys know that

(01:51:15):
Marcel is doing stuff right, yeah, and God bless them.
This comes back to your point earlier. You mentioned that
there's about nine hundred thousand, two million pairs of skis
every year in the US. Sold in Europe, it's two
point two millions total available market, total accessible market, and
we're taking on very very small components of that. Thoughtfully,

(01:51:35):
we think in terms of what we're trying to take on,
where we're seeking to accomplish with our small but high
impact company, we think, and in this case a lot
of respect from oursel he's got great skis. The price point,
the distribution system, the manner, you know, the simple aspect
is what's going to be your price point? Establish it
how's it going to appeal to what consumer? Price is

(01:51:56):
as much part of brand as anything, both by pushing
people away from your product, but also in some cases
attracting them. Right, folks want to have the most expensive
ski with gold leaf on the top sheet and all
that stuff. That's not my deal, it's not bodies deal.
It's not worry about. And so we have a different

(01:52:16):
offering a different value and expressing the quality of the
skis and skiing experience. So we have a lot of
respect from ourselves what he's got going on for such family,
great operation. We're direct to consumer eCOM and.

Speaker 1 (01:52:28):
Okay, but let's go to the other side. The reason
I bring Van Deere is it's the only small company
that seems to be playing on a relatively realistic competing
with the other brands. Because in addition to that, more
than ever, they're these boutique companies. Yeah, the biggest, the
one of the best reputation is Wagner out of tel
your Ride Yep. The reason I mentioned Wagner is if

(01:52:51):
you buy a pair of Wagner skis which are one
hundred percent custom I mean gore such will sell you
and off the rack Wagner etc. But generally speaking, you call,
you talk to them. However, they ask you for your
boots sole length, right, and they mount the binding. There's
this point of friction. Okay, So you are selling a

(01:53:16):
product that is direct to consumer, but inherently the person
has to take it to retail to get the skis mounted.
You sell bindings, whether they buy bindings there or whatever.
When they get the ski, it is not sciable.

Speaker 2 (01:53:32):
Right, that is correct? Is there a question there? Yes,
so I know your question, Bob, I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:53:38):
Sorry, okay, and also you know do you see yourself? Okay, Wagner,
let me let me have okay, go, let me address
your point. I didn't mean to be contankerous on that,
but your forget the business model that I built did
not contemplate. I spent thirty years, and I say this

(01:53:59):
for effectfully everybody with a JD at some point in
their academic career, working in a risk intense environment in
different states, different countries, Colorado, Utah, California, British Columbia. And
the amount of time, effort, money we put into defense
against PI attorneys, they circle they have a role. I

(01:54:21):
don't deny that. Also, in some cases it'd be.

Speaker 2 (01:54:25):
Long story but a fair amount of time, effort, money
gone into that. I built this business model in a
fashion that did not contemplate taking on that type of liability.
And the only liability risk that is associated with our
business in that case exists when we get into mounting bindings.
And you know as well as I do anybody who's

(01:54:46):
a listener rols releases of liability only goes so far.
You can't disclaim gross negligence, and of course PI attorneys
feed off of that, and so we've chosen to not
engage in mounting.

Speaker 1 (01:55:01):
So quite consciously because of liability issues, you're not doing that,
that is correct.

Speaker 2 (01:55:05):
We have built, just like Canyon did, many service oriented
workarounds for the customer. We consult with people one on
one if they have interest. You folks live in Chicago, Dallas,
Fort Worth, they have ski shops and what's become more
common even through backcountry dot Com, people buy skis without

(01:55:27):
bindings and they take those skis down to their ski
shop in Dallas and they pay the tech seventy five
dollars to mount these TYROLA binding zone good to go.
So yeah, we consciously choose this path for those reasons,
and more so Bob, it's critical, and I can't tell
you how sincere I am. You come up These phrases
maybe seen as cliches. Most of the time, we co

(01:55:50):
opt them. In this case, this is mine for my life,
my career, my experiences. I've never met a horse, a mountain,
a dog, or a pair of skis I don't like.
And that's more than just respect. I'm not Body Miller,
I'm not you. I know how to ski, and I
can ski kind of almost anywhere. How well I do
it is probably up for grabs. But I say that respectfully.

(01:56:13):
I've been on the people that run these companies, the
people that have built skis, love them all. They're my friends.
Everything we're doing is respectful but taken in the past.
But we have a different approach. We have a different
take on things. The why Body and Andy came out
of retirement to do this is really predicated upon this
other statement as phrase of the least important thing about

(01:56:33):
our company or the skis. But they're critical, a very
purposeful my trying to channel Yogi Berra. The skis are
quite good, quite prideful in what we've developed. The business
around it is, as I've mentioned, includes taking the noise
and the people and the pride and the egos out
of in between Bodie's mind and the skis. But there's

(01:56:56):
other things where we have going on with Peak Ski Company,
including these strategic initiatives, technology integration. We announced Peak Locate.

Speaker 1 (01:57:04):
Okay, Wall, let's let's leave those. We'll come back to
this second. But let's just talk about the ski.

Speaker 2 (01:57:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57:10):
Yeah, So in a perfect world, Yeah, something like Wagner,
that's boutique Jay Skis, the guy started line. He's got
a certain market, but he's within his own niche. Sure,
do you see Peak as a niche company or do
you want to have enough traction to compete against the
traditional majors.

Speaker 2 (01:57:30):
We know for a fact that we have enough traction
to compete against the majors now at a much lower
the volume. And I'll put in context. We'll make sell
probably hundred pairs of skis this year. That's very small
compared to Fisher, Solomon and the other big brands you've mentioned,

(01:57:51):
And keep in mind, and we take on ten thousand
pairs of skis. Say it was just the US. It's
not exactly trying to take on the taxi industry like
Uber did, Right, You know do quick math, and it's
less than one percent of total available market, So one
could say, wow, set in the bar pretty low, and
that'd be a fair statement. So we know we can compete.

(01:58:15):
How fast we grow is going to be a very thoughtful,
conscious effort, guided by a whole bunch of research, response
and response from the customer. But it's unlikely that with
wild success that we grow that number beyond twenty thousand
and three years. And that's because that's not our intent.

(01:58:35):
Our intent really relates to the strategic initiatives. So we'll
continue to develop and make very good skis, and we
fold in some of the other elements of the strategic
innovation that we're doing, including locating devices, including advanced materials
development with Thermoplastics and alike with a group out of Idaho,

(01:58:56):
and even the entirely re engineering the manufacturing pers some skis.
I'm not trying to pivot out of your question, but
the reason why the intent Boddy and I came out
of retirement take this on. We've had covered the directed
consumer model, we've covered the margin, and we're not in
where we're conscious, we're aware we're not Gordon Gecko. At

(01:59:16):
the same time, We did not enter into this business
with nonprofit in mind. We have we're profit oriented and
we're doing well. With that said, the primary motivation is
too is a means to an end to fund and
get these strategic initiatives going, because that's where we get
true motivation. That's where I passionalized. And the answer your

(01:59:38):
question is again not trying to avoid it. But I
guess we're a niche. I don't know. I don't want
to try.

Speaker 1 (01:59:42):
You know, historically the business was based on hot skis.
You know, whether it's the sixties the ros and all
Strato and the DTA meet VR seventeen, whether in the
nineties it was the Rosie for us, in the turn
of the century it was Solomon Excreme. Now if you
go on the hill today, unlike in the other days,

(02:00:05):
you will never see one dominant brand, right Whereas it
used to be a majority of people would have that
particular thing. But since it is a word of mouth
business and companies go hot and cold, if you got traction,
one would think that you'd want to sell seventy thousand
pairs of skis.

Speaker 2 (02:00:26):
Sure, and that may take place. I think it's unlikely
for a bunch of different reasons, and it's hard to
summarize them as simple to still down points. But that's
not our goal. Maybe that takes place.

Speaker 1 (02:00:41):
I mean it is a skier, okay, there's a point
of pride in the equipment, like in any equipment intensive business,
auto racing, et cetera. And they are the people who
buy the zy skis, by the four thousand dollars skis,
and they want to be the one person on the
hill who has them. But a lot of skiers at
the elite level they want to be on what other
people are on. Yeah, okay, so if they see one

(02:01:05):
person out of ten being on peak skis, they say
that's a boutique skis. Sure, Like in Colorado you'll see
Wagner skis, which you know on a regular basis, so
you know they're expensive. This is not a mainstream thing.
Last year you saw peak skis were I skied not
that many. But let me just shift gears here a
little bit. Okay, I skied on one brand of skis

(02:01:31):
for the better part of ten years. I got many
peers of this brand. They used to as you know,
the cycles used to be brief for every three years.
The really change of skis. Other than the paint. Now
some people are going to four years, etc. But the
last two iterations have been somewhat less satisfying. So I

(02:01:51):
decided to go to the shop, the elite shop, and say,
you know, I'll ski everything you got, okay.

Speaker 2 (02:01:57):
And.

Speaker 1 (02:01:59):
I end up buying a brand that I hadn't brought
for fifty years. Okay, because I bought the K twos.
I haven't had a K two for fifty years.

Speaker 2 (02:02:10):
Sweet, Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:02:12):
Just to go very specifically, everybody's hot on the storm Writer.
Storm Writer is the very smooth skies. But if you
want to go in the bumps or whatever, you know,
it's relatively stiff. It's not that quick. The bona fide
used to be a complete truck, a joke in my

(02:02:34):
but it'll plow through anything that's got no life. They
made vast improvements. You could own that ski. I would
have a hard time rationalizing that ski. I'm a person.

Speaker 2 (02:02:44):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:02:44):
These characteristics have changed. But it used to be that
the French ski was a very lively, fast turning ski,
whereas the Austrian and German skis were the opposite. There's
been a trend towards the Austrian and German skis. I
am more of a friend ski person. I got a
million pairs of Dina Stars, and I even skied the

(02:03:06):
new Dina Stars before I bought them. They turn much
better than the K twos. Okay, however, they do not
hold on the herds no, right, you know? And you
know why right, Well they made them for a year
without metal, which was a joke. And now if they
have the exact opposite of K two where the rocket frame,
where they have less in the front. But I'm interested

(02:03:27):
in your theory why they don't hold.

Speaker 2 (02:03:29):
Torsional rigidity in the waste. It's that simple. Most skis
have the same trait or characteristic from tip to tail.
And I got to know that there's in between thirteen
and fifteen million skiers in the US, and none of
them are the same, like any industry, like any product,

(02:03:51):
and in this case, everybody has different expectations. You have
a level of experience and knowledge that you can feel
stuff in skis. Frankly, very few people can You can
feel it and you can even articulate it, which is
even fewer people. The Enforcer series great skis.

Speaker 1 (02:04:12):
Well, well wait, you know I'm on the opposite. That's
that's a ski that I think people are buying on reputation,
right if they ski it and they skied other things,
I think a lot of people on Enforcers would not
buy that ski, and.

Speaker 2 (02:04:24):
I, you know, respect your view. There's a lot of
things we buy, whether it be phones, glasses, you know,
that are based on what others are saying. Of course,
in this case, I've been on them, the Enforcer Unlimited.
I love it. It's a nice lightweight ski that's kind
of does backcountry pretty well and light light.

Speaker 1 (02:04:44):
Yeah, I'm talking about the traditional ninety four one hundred
with two layers of metal zach et cetera.

Speaker 2 (02:04:50):
By the way, remind me to talk about Titanol, which
I didn't learn about until a year and a half ago.
It's a funny story on that. So all of your
points were well made. Everybody has a different perspect actives
on this and their viewpoints what they're looking to skip.
But back to the point of the skis. The torsial
legidity is something you can find and get quickly, so

(02:05:10):
you'll hear, oh, they're really great skis. We got to
really stand on them, right. You hear that constantly for
the thirty years over thirty years or it's a really
gumby soft powder ski, right, why and so get that
on hard pack good luck, because it's a it's a
noodle right torsally not very rigid. Everybody has different purposes.

(02:05:30):
You're used to be an East Coast guy a long
time ago, but now you're kind of Sierra's guy, right,
so you're probably gonna wider underfoot ski.

Speaker 1 (02:05:37):
I got a lot of skis. I got my seventy
two is my eighty six billion in the nineties, got
my one aweight. It's got my one eighteens it. You've
got to have the right tool for the right day.

Speaker 2 (02:05:45):
For many reasons. You're way more like I saw ed
Vetter and this guy's over the weekend and I just
saw a Guitarists used to be a little bit better
than I am nowadays, but I guitar envy. I mean,
I saw some Fender strap being played. I'm like, I
want that guitar, that guitar, that guitar. I'm a less Paul.
I'm a Gibson less Paul. Custom guy. Just loved this

(02:06:07):
sound that came out of Dickey Betts. When I was young.
It was like, I want that sound, that about a
sixty three Fender basement amp to go with it. It's
like three quarters or at least a quarter of the
great songs have been written on the Fender nineteen fifty
nine Gibson Less Paul custom plugged into a Fenders right
basement amp. I want that sound right, Maybe you or
like that. I want that out of performance of a

(02:06:28):
ski and still plenty of room for people want to
play strats or telecasters or less Paul's or you name it.
It's the way I see it, and a bit of
a reach on an analog, but I hope you appreciate
the point of the effort there. Point being is back
to the skis. It's not magic, but the key hole
allows the best of both worlds. It's a little bit

(02:06:49):
of a bipolar situation, and you'll appreciate this. It's obviously
a podcast so Kim visually, but the front third of
the ski, from the tip to the unlike other skis,
they have the same trait orcharacteristic from tip to tail.
It's soft and forgiving on the front third, and so
turn initiation is shockingly there and easy. And I remember

(02:07:10):
the first time being on the prototypes December two, two
years ago and I noticed it. I'm not as good
as ski as you were, body, but I can ski
in a holy crap. I mean this the first time
on these skis, the turn initiation, this case eighty eighths
of the first boards out. I couldn't believe. It's like,
this makes no sense, and I was waiting for it
to be gumby once I loaded it up, got into

(02:07:31):
a turn, but because soft on the front turn initiation.
But then all of this is not by accident. This
is stuff that does not happen by accident. Once you
start loading up the ski, all of the weight pressure
of the physics pull pull everything to the midwaist of
the ski, and now it's torsionally rigid underfoot. And that's
why you have this Unlike other ski designs, the turn

(02:07:55):
initiations there, whether it be the eighty eighths or the
one tens, but then it's Stiffen's up on her foot
once you loaded up, and it's tortially rigid underfoot, and
that's why it holds me.

Speaker 1 (02:08:05):
Let me more to than that, But let me just
stop here on the point that I was making so
in veil my friend at a pair of the peaks,
he thought that the guy gave in to him was
an investor lived in the let's that's irrelevant. Sure, but
he said, okay, you know, go out on him. But

(02:08:25):
I'm doing my own thing. And then he said, O,
I passed them to somebody at Beaver Creek, so I
didn't get on them. Let's be point blank sure, okay,
bring it. In the ski industry, the people who were
in the traditional retail business, they are down on peak

(02:08:45):
for a number of reasons. Bodies jumping from company to company,
and two they don't sell them and they want to
do retail. Then there are some elite places they want
to sell things that are not footballed. But let's not
get into that, okay. So the reason I brought up
the demo of the skis, I could have gotten anything

(02:09:07):
at below wholesale, and I said, okay, I'm skiing so much,
let me go demo and whatever. And I ended up
buying what I never would have bought, Okay, which those
K twos. I bought a couple of pairs, the ninety nine.
The one aweight is an unbelievable ski that's better than
the ninety nine. But whatever, My point being, this is

(02:09:31):
a business of people who are buying traditional, top of
the line skis. I'm not talking about custom skis. I'm
not talking about two thousand dollars skis. Skis at usually
MSRPs like seven ninety nine. An incredible percentage of those
people want to ski on that ski before they buy it,
sure now more than ever. But I can't ski on

(02:09:52):
the peak. So what do you have to say that
as peak? I mean I basically have to blindly buy it.

Speaker 2 (02:10:00):
Mm hmm blindly and then if you don't like them
after thirty days urn and no questions asked. Now here's
the point points well made. The key is traditional in
ski industry. We are not traditional, and we're really in
the industry by default, but we just don't see it
that way. In this case, Canyon bikes have the same exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:10:23):
Yeah, I know canyon bikes, but if I were to
bike and bike, I don't know. When it comes to
my door, does it have to be assembled?

Speaker 2 (02:10:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:10:31):
And who assembles it.

Speaker 2 (02:10:32):
That you can if you don't know how to gear
it and wrench it. You they have a company that
comes helps you put it together. But it's pretty pretty good.
But let me do let me just so I know,
because I'm interested. So someone comes to your door like
Wilson Speakers, and you pay them one hundred dollars and
they you're not bringing it to a retail shop, right, Okay,

(02:10:52):
that is correct, But the point being is go to
a ski shop, go to a bike shop. That's the analog.
What do people do at the bike shop. They get
on that bike and they ride around the parking lot,
turn it and say, oh, buy it or not. But
up into that point, it's been shaped and formed by
what the Tour de France guys are on, what everybody
else is saying. They are local bike club guys, you

(02:11:13):
name strap, all kinds of stuff. Much the same as
if you were to demo a pair of peaks, you
would trade your driver's license at at ten by ten
ten and get ninety minutes on that ski. Now, a
guy like you could probably probably have a good chance of,
no matter what the conditions are in that ninety minutes,
figure out that ski pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (02:11:32):
I think one or two runs I found is usually enough.

Speaker 2 (02:11:34):
Yeah, I'm going to point out that you are atypical.
Not to believe me.

Speaker 1 (02:11:38):
I know most people this has been a joke for
sixty years. They paid them they love them. You're right,
they all do you like those skis? You never get
someone who says, hey, they're not that good.

Speaker 2 (02:11:49):
Exactly the ability to demo skis. We bludgeon that barrier
by saying, no questions asked, thirty days, give us your money,
send them back, no questions asked, We'll pay for the
shipping back. All learned by from Canyon in this case scam.
Thirty days. You can put sixteen different pair of bindings
on them. You can skim every minute of every day

(02:12:10):
for those thirty in all kinds of conditions. You choose
where and how and when you ski those, send them
back to us. Done deal.

Speaker 1 (02:12:16):
So what percentage of people send them back?

Speaker 2 (02:12:18):
Two point eight percent? Do you want to know? Why?

Speaker 1 (02:12:22):
Okay? Why?

Speaker 2 (02:12:23):
Mostly because they think they wanted a wider underfoot or
narrower underfoot model. Very I think maybe a granted we're small, right,
but maybe for thirty forty pair of skis came back
because they just didn't like them. That's cool, and we
learned from those folks.

Speaker 1 (02:12:41):
Okay, but let's say I was one of those people.
I returned the skis. Yeah, you're going to say, absolutely,
give them the money back. But Why what am I
going to find out? If I turn you? Am I
going to get any reluctance? You're gonna give me credit
on my credit card? Immediately?

Speaker 2 (02:12:53):
Yes, credit? The latter of this two a credit card credit.

Speaker 1 (02:12:57):
What did you learn from the people who didn't want
them at all?

Speaker 2 (02:13:00):
They didn't like how they turn them. Many of them
were very very high performance skiers, former ski racers. Many
I couldn't tell you empirically, but the vast majority were
high end skiers racers really wanting something more with a
consistent trait of tip to tail. They wanted torsal rigidity
all the way through or something else. But in some

(02:13:21):
cases they weren't too sure how to articulate. Interestingly, I
found that folks can know they like or don't like
a ski, but it's also tough for them to articulate.
Why so that bike shop thing? But right right right,
going to a bike into store, what's the first thing
that happens to go to a ski shop? Tac too?
A guy, you have some perspective shaped by the outside

(02:13:42):
magazine gear guy that just came out, and what do
they do? They grab pair of skis and they bend them. Right,
guy like you knows how what he's feeling. Guy like
body knows. Of the fifteen million skiers in this country,
about fourteen point nine million have no idea what they're
feeling when they bend those skis.

Speaker 1 (02:13:57):
I would say, you're right, so.

Speaker 2 (02:14:02):
Respectfully, of all the great ski shops and ski technicians
and the people that sell skis, how much value they
add in that transaction is varying. In our case, we
have a straight up direct line of communication with the
customer prospects as well as customers. And you know, we
contend that ride and bike around a parking lot like canyon,
not doing it, getting on the skis for third days,

(02:14:24):
bang them, test them, drive them, send them back to them.
If you don't like us. It's that simple. It's a
pretty It's kind of Nordstroms has that deal from back
in the nineties. Remember when Nordstroms had that classic service
story of guy comes back with four pairs of tire
a four sets for tires and says, I want to
return them. Nor from person said sure, Well, then the
course the services story is that they don't sell tires.

(02:14:47):
In this case, we're in that same mode because why
because in this case it's a mitigan against the business
planning process, going to call it B school type of
course stuff. It's a mitigan against the resistance, the consumer resistance,
because there's a history of people buying skis a certain
way and doing them sort of including demo tents. The
scariest say, we get that, we're we're acknowledging the past.

(02:15:10):
At the same time, we have some mitigants to help
people get to and through that. And thankfully that's going.
It's going pretty well.

Speaker 1 (02:15:18):
Okay, if you go on your websites, you were selling
one brand of binding. Look now the conventional price, you
can get them from anywhere. Yeah, why Look, why sell
bindings at all?

Speaker 2 (02:15:29):
Yeah, we are agnostic to bindings people have. And maybe
I'm applying bindings to religion. Maybe I shouldn't do that,
But there are people that are tied to a certain
style or type of binding, right, And there's the whole
thing of Fundamentally, folks that are skiers see bindings as
either retention devices or release devices. Right, a guy like you,
maybe it's more retention.

Speaker 1 (02:15:49):
Oh, believe me, I've only been hurt with the bindings
of released exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:15:53):
And I learned that when I was skiing over in
Japan with a guy who's really good skier, and he
used to take those old Look bindings and take the
coil out, take a section of ski pole and put
it in there, and says, I just want the ski
to stay on my feet. Right, Not that many people
think that way. Right Back to bindings in this case,
in the absence of a preference, we sell Look. Well,

(02:16:14):
we'll also be selling ATK bindings here shortly and other bindings.
So first year out of the gates, yeah, we Look
in the absence of a you know.

Speaker 1 (02:16:21):
I'm a Look guy.

Speaker 2 (02:16:22):
Oh yeah, okay, so I have to ask why Look.
Simply put, how they're made. They're very durable. Number two,
the Look pivot binding in particular has a small bass
plate on the toe, small bass plate on the heel
on a relative basis, and because of that it doesn't
impinge the flex of the ski as much. Is are

(02:16:45):
two basic answers. It just depends on what folks like.

Speaker 1 (02:16:49):
Yeah, you know, I buy all those things. I'm a
little guy, and a funny thing. Just to go back,
I had a switch from Look in the seventies because
they didn't have shock absorption forward and backward, which of
course they have now Now it's the freestyle of dining.
Your true used to be the Solomon. Okay, so let's
get into the skis. You sell an eighty eight, sell
a ninety eight, sell a one o four, you sell

(02:17:09):
a one ten. Yep, someone comes in also, although you
saw a one seventy eight, you have to solo one
sixty eight instead of a one to seventy, and you
go up to one ninety, which a lot of people don't.
Can someone call and say, hey, give me advice which
one to buy?

Speaker 2 (02:17:25):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (02:17:26):
And what are you going to say relative to those skis?

Speaker 2 (02:17:29):
First thing we do is go through the good old
questions of where do you ski? What are the primary conditions?
Give us a mountain, where do you like to ski
most of the time? What are the conditions you abhor
and avoid? What are the conditions you thrive in, What
are the conditions you find yourself in between, background, history, frequency,
all those kind of things, and what are the skis

(02:17:50):
you're on? First thing, I do this all the time.
We're a small company with twenty one people up there
in Bozeman, Montana, where we're headquartered, and I end up
on conversations all the time, which I love our perspective
customers and a lot of business. What are you skiing
on right now? What ski do you dig on? What
are the skis do you not like? And that by
the time we get through those questions in conversation, it's

(02:18:12):
not like we're telephone what it call them TSRs from
the nineties. You know, we're after the scripted kind of
flow chart of stuff. It's more just conversation with the
folks and we can help figure out pretty quickly what
they're looking for in terms of with underfoot and then length.
One thing about the peak skis is they tend to
It's not just the keyhole, but because the other elements

(02:18:33):
of the geometry absence relative apps and subsidecut comparatively for
the kind of turns you can pull off in these
deals on these skis, but also the rise on the front.
It's not a full rocker, but it's a rise. They
tend to ski about four to five centimeters shorter the
most conventional skis. I think it's fair to say these
are not conventional skis because the key hole and more

(02:18:56):
so we take that into account. But we will get
a conversation with folks because we know our skis and
we'd like to know more about what they're looking for,
and then we match them and we do it with
human beings, not with AI, not with bots.

Speaker 1 (02:19:08):
Okay, let's go to the strategic initiatives. One is the
UH homing device, the location device. Tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (02:19:18):
So we had gosh when I got back it before
Saudi Arabia, I think it was I was training for
Denali and I had gotten up. This is back when
I was talking to Bodie doing a whole bunch of
different stuff, and I had this has shocked some of
my good friends from the business and you maybe I'd
skied fifty sixty days but had not ridden a chairlift
once because I was training for Denali. A pack on

(02:19:40):
my back, slide on my back, and it's a lot
of boun country work. Loved it. I had a wild
here one day and Strap literally duct taped some Apple
layer tags onto my skis. I just want to see
what would happen. Quickly found out the dark sides, the
blind spots of the Apple air tag, form factor, limitations,
battery life and all that kind of stuff. But then

(02:20:01):
bookmarked that and said, still there's something here right in
terms of being able to find your skis come fast forward.
So one of the three strategic initiatives prior to our
announcement of Peak Locate was technology integration. We think there's
a better way to integrate technology in a real way,
not just in a whiz bang zippity due to a
led light crap way right, true innovation that does stuff.

(02:20:24):
We found a development partner called Pebbleby and they have
a unique position in that they have a locating tracking
capability that worked with both Apple iOS as well as
Android platform Google Android platforms. Unique nobody else can do that.
It's also a device that's externally rechargeable. With it in

(02:20:46):
the Apple world is the Apple mag Say technology. It's
called technically a g charger and the battery life is
three months right out of gates. There's more to it,
but then we were able to work with us and
customize in the form factor, make it very small, very thin.
It's roughly gosh. I think it's a neighborhood of eight

(02:21:08):
millimeters by eleven millimeters and about the thickness of a
credit card. And last three months worked with both platforms
and so in externally rechargeable. So we announced this in
March of this last year this year, excuse me. And
we're working on integrating against all of our skis for

(02:21:29):
twenty four to twenty five. And it's basically a tracking
locating device and Simplicity does simple stuff really well. And
I would argue the following I learned from the ski
resort side of things. The spectrum of people that are
skiers in the US A good pick on the US
you have and Epic is a good example. Epic Mix.
Remember when Bail came out with Epic Mix. A lot

(02:21:50):
of folks still use that, but there's initial adopters that
were kind of very technically tech oriented. They have used it,
continue to use it right out of the well. Those
people don't know these track your vertical, your runs, et cetera.
Very technology tech oriented to say the least. And then
the other end of spectrum is leave my ski experience alone.

(02:22:12):
I don't want any technology. I just want to freaking
ski right. And then the vast majority of American skiers
are in between. And I equate it to four wheel drive.
I live in the mountains, and I use my four
wheel drive on when I have to, maybe fifteen to
twenty percent of every day every year. But when I
need it. I really need it, right. This device is

(02:22:33):
really simple, it's elegant. If you're you don't want technology
invading your ski experience, great, don't use it if you
If you're a techie guy, you want to know it here.
You can light it up all day long, but it
goes as a device that goes underneath the top sheet,
so you can't see it. And for the vast majority
of people that want to locate their skis in deep snow,
they are at fail and there's three thousand pairs of

(02:22:54):
skis outside the lodge and they can't remember where they
put them. It is a device that is a theft
deterrent right because hard to defeed it without ruining the ski.
It's also tracking locating device from traveling. So it's a simple,
straightforward ability, a deal that works with Apple find My
as well as androids.

Speaker 1 (02:23:13):
Okay, just a little bit slower.

Speaker 2 (02:23:14):
Sorry.

Speaker 1 (02:23:15):
Find My works on Wi Fi and then every other
phone in the area. Yeah, it doesn't work with Wi Fi.
But yeah, okay, if I'm in deep powder and I
lose my ski, there might not be any other phones there.
How's it going to find my ski with?

Speaker 2 (02:23:31):
We have combination Bluetooth and NFC nearfield.

Speaker 1 (02:23:34):
And what's the range of that.

Speaker 2 (02:23:36):
We've tested it at forty meters we put a ski
forty meters. Yeah, we put a ski in January forty
meters away and one meter deep snow, so called three
feet deep in snow forty meters away, a little bit
you know, call it, you know, forty yards away one
hundred twenty feet. Found the ski within about thirty eight seconds.

Speaker 1 (02:23:56):
Okay. Two questions. One, Hey, the tracking device is not
in this year's skis correct? Is this a business? Is
this something you're going to license to other companies?

Speaker 2 (02:24:08):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (02:24:10):
What are the barriers to entry for competitors?

Speaker 2 (02:24:16):
On the pure technology side, competitors of a very very
difficult time finding somebody who can develop this technology that
works with both Apple and Android. The relevance of that
is the US, sixty four percent of Americans use Apple
iOS largely, the balance use Google Android. Those metrics almost
perfectly invert for Europe, where Google androids the dominant platform.

(02:24:38):
I think it's at sixty two percent last year, and
the balance are Apple iOS. They'll a very difficult time
finding somebody can make this kind of technology work with
both platforms and have a device that is externally rechargeable.
So those are the primary technology barriers to entry, and
that's we have some exceptional IP attorneys. One guy, our

(02:25:01):
primary IP attorney, worked with a little technology company in
Coup Patino called Apple for sixteen years. He knows stuff,
and so we have a exclusivity in this sector globally
for this device that does all everything I just mentioned.

Speaker 1 (02:25:16):
Okay, let's switch to materials. Yeah, I've lived long enough
to go. When they took the metal out of the skis,
then they went to foam cores, then they put the
metal back in. Dina Stars now putting a foam stringer
for in their skis. Yeah, and you talk about something
that's a new material. You were talking about titanyl earlier.

(02:25:37):
Tell me about this new material.

Speaker 2 (02:25:39):
Sure, titanol. I made reference to it twice so far.
But Tino I had personally and ski resorts bought skis
since nineteen ninety two that had the name of the
ski in ti or titanium. And I didn't find out
until about two years ago that titinol is less than
one point two percent titanium in it, right, I think
that's I think that's deceptive.

Speaker 1 (02:25:59):
Oh, it's I already deceptive.

Speaker 2 (02:26:01):
And I'm like, uh so, hey, look we're guys carbon
fiber and titanium and must be good. Right, that's bullshit.
I mean, let's just call it like it is. That's bullshit.

Speaker 1 (02:26:11):
Mean college, especially now that Apple is selling a phone
with titanium exterior. It it implies that these skis have titanium,
which they don't.

Speaker 2 (02:26:19):
They don't. It's an elementum alloy made by a group
in Austria. MG walcked it down ninety two, and since
ninety two we've been seeing that, right right. I didn't
know that until a year and a half could fell.
I'm gonna say it was a sucker, but I was like,
I kind of believed it. When I saw TI and titanium.
I was like, that's not true. That's really not true.
And so relative of the materials switching gears, I also

(02:26:44):
came to find out and understand that carbon fiber has
been to use in many skis and is a less
than desirable material. Now I did know that, but I
didn't know the way I do by way of body.
And that is because fundamentally, without getting too deep into
my modern level of engineering and physics understanding, is how
it receives energy and returns energy is very spiky. So

(02:27:07):
you've been on skis that have a substantial amount of
carbon fibers. Somehow in this construction they receive energy and
returns energy in a way that for a skier like
you would be probably not very desirable. Chattery. You can
got lots of different descriptions, but it doesn't work well,
but it achieves the outcome desired the people making the

(02:27:27):
ski light and stiff, but doesn't theoretically.

Speaker 1 (02:27:31):
They charge more for a carbon fiber ski. Is carbon
more expensive?

Speaker 2 (02:27:35):
No, it depends on the braiding, It depends on all
kinds of stuff. But I'm not saying it's bad because
in some skis you're getting what you want, which is light, stiff,
and you're not necessarily looking for performance on a turn right,
backcountry touring, all kinds of side country stuff. You want
skis that are primarily lightweight, right and stiff ish. But

(02:28:00):
this trait and characteristic carbon fiber and how it sieves
turns energy is a absolute core part in the pun
of what we're talking about. So in describing this to
this group we're working within. Their clients include the Department
of Defense, NASA, Boeing. They're working with Amazon on the
Blue Origin space shuttle. The we're small ski industry is

(02:28:23):
really small compared to what they're taking on, but we've
been able to work our way in and we're working
with this group at the molecular level to develop. As
the mag group did in Austria developed Titanle, we're working
at the molecular molecular level developing our own thermoplastic that
has a tracing characteristics that we desire, which is to

(02:28:43):
receive and return energy in a fashion more similar to
what we know to be wood rite, a more smooth
distribution curve of energy return, but we still want to
get the lightness and stiffness out of the material. So
we're at the early stages, incipient stages of that work
and very encouraging what we're doing right now. But I
emphasize we're not looking at a different type of braiding

(02:29:04):
of carbon fiber. We're literally starting at the molecular level
of developing our own thermopas.

Speaker 1 (02:29:09):
Okay, so this is also something that you as you
reference Titanel on the group overseas, that you would like
to see this as a standard throughout the industry, and
therefore it's profit potential.

Speaker 2 (02:29:22):
Yeah, so much the same. You asked the question straight
up with peak Locate. We're going to We've already we're
already waist deep in discussion of use of licensing Peak
Locate to other manufacturers, many of whom you've already mentioned
on your show or on this podcast with we're not
nearly as far down the path with the materials we're

(02:29:44):
developing the thermoplastics, but be fair to say that we
anticipate developing this material and being in probably a similar
situation as MG has been to Titanol, and licensing it
to other manufacturers.

Speaker 1 (02:29:57):
Okay, the third component of your strategic indition is the
actual manufacturing process. Presently, skis are pressed. If anyone has
seen the video, and it's funny because they have how
you make this video. These are essentially made by end
to this day, and it's the aquatic of drills light

(02:30:17):
years better than it used to be. But anybody who's
really into knows that every pair of ski is going
to ski a little bit differently. So tell us about
your manufacturing.

Speaker 2 (02:30:26):
Initiative again, stuff I didn't know until two years ago.
Ska presses are basically a Panini maker, right, you have
a form, you have a mold, layers that have been
specified designed, all that kind of stuff go into this
large machine. We have one of them in Montana laying
zwn skip Press, the best one on the planet and

(02:30:47):
basically a bit of pressure or a bit of heat,
not a ton of pressure in a very specifically oriented way.
Takes a sandwich construction which involves a pockey's glues, resins,
some heat and this impresses it pull them out your
points well made. Every pair of skis is handmade. They
just are made too through them.

Speaker 1 (02:31:05):
I mean literally they personally got they lay the fiberglass.

Speaker 2 (02:31:08):
Yes, incredible, it's it's actually the equivalent if you know
what a mimeograph machine is. But it would be as
if the laser printer had yet to be made and
we were still using mimiograph machines. That is what a
ski press is.

Speaker 1 (02:31:22):
Verse.

Speaker 2 (02:31:23):
But if you attach a computer the mimeograph machine, it's
still a mimeograph machine. Right. Get a point. So body
has some contacts in public Germany group called Beeler BI
H l E R. And they have nothing to do
with ski business and their clients include Mercedes, benz Bosch
and others. They are exceptionally good at fully automated, high precision,

(02:31:46):
multi material elements coming into a machinery process. To automate
skis in manufacturing, basically take us out of the mimiograph
era and do what maybe the Healtt Packard group did
developed laser printer. We're well down the path on that
working with this group, and be fair to we call

(02:32:07):
it Project Treadstone because it's I thought that was kind
of a funny reference. Obviously, with the absence of your smiling,
it wasn't funny enough. Maybe you can help me owe
a new name. But we're getting pretty far down the
path to basically re engineer the entire process by which
skis are made, and it has to do with materials
coming in, the components, how they come together and come out.

(02:32:28):
The other elements are probably not It's not going to
look much in a year to maybe nine months to
twelve months from now. We'll help a prototype over in
Germany and be fair to say that it won't look
anything like how skis are made today.

Speaker 1 (02:32:42):
And that would also theoretically be a business. You would
sell that to other manufacturers.

Speaker 2 (02:32:46):
Yeah, we would, We would see ourselves.

Speaker 1 (02:32:48):
Okay, now, these three strategic initiatives. Were they there at
the advent where you started to make skis and you
came up with this other stuff?

Speaker 2 (02:32:57):
They were, But today we have a much clearer line
of sight than we did a year and a half
ago on all three of them, because we've advanced. On
the same time, we were standing up the business in
a very fast moving basis, launching it going meaning peak
skis and getting in the marketplace. But then we really
started going pedal down on these with this great team member.

(02:33:18):
We have a guy named Darren Hougan who's our chief
product officer in engineer, brilliant guy. We're boeing for a
little bit. Master's and engineering work with K two for
quite a while. You knows skiing. He's a passionate skier,
mountain guy, used to be a ski patroller for a
big sky. He gets it and putting body together with Darren,
it's great, it's fantastic. I'll drop something on here in

(02:33:40):
a second new ski. It'll be a scoop if you will.
We're probably gonna launch in late October seventy eight Underfoot
for the European market and also the US skier primarily
East Coastkier that wants narrow underfoot ski. But Darren's been
really critical on advancing these initials, including the work with

(02:34:01):
Bealer and this engineering process. I have to make mention
that the reliance on glues, residents and epoxyes on this
current process skis when they get retired, where do they go? Right?
And not as bad as lithium ion batteries, But if
they don't become atirontic chairs or fences around some people's backyards,

(02:34:23):
they end up in a dump and those gluz residents
and epoxyas are not good for the environment. In our case.
One of the five primary development criteria include the same
process by which we make the skis, the same materials
of processes by we're able to deconstruct those exact skis
after they're retired and retask those materials.

Speaker 1 (02:34:42):
What do you think of the rosi recyclable ski?

Speaker 2 (02:34:45):
Good stuff? More the better? Okay, great, great stuff, a
brilliant minds good stuff. This is different.

Speaker 1 (02:34:52):
Who actually makes peak skis.

Speaker 2 (02:34:56):
Right now? It's a lawn outside of Bluebliana and Slovenia.
We might be diversifying our manufacturing sources going.

Speaker 1 (02:35:05):
Forward, diversifying meaning multiple manufacturers.

Speaker 2 (02:35:09):
Yes, what would be The reason to do that d
risk any business when you have a single source supplier
or a single point of failure. You know, Fisher had
a factory burned down was about two and a half
three years ago. We don't have a single point of
failure if for some reason something were to happen in Liviana.

(02:35:29):
Elon we have a single point of existence right now
until we get Treadstone built. I don't want to come
back to treadchtone in a second, but yeah, right now,
it's guys in Slovenia.

Speaker 1 (02:35:40):
Okay, they're making the skis, but they're also in the
business themselves. Yeah, what is their incentives to do as
well for you? And you actually have someone on site
when the skis are made.

Speaker 2 (02:35:53):
So they have these huge factories. Their incentive is basically
they have production capability. I can't speak on their behalf,
but if I'm the CEO of Elon and other companies
that do this, including Fisher and Kessley and others, many
do it, oem white label, whatever you want to call it.
They have capacity and their production facilities and they feasibly

(02:36:16):
or theoretically hit their head on the ceiling of demand
for their brand and their products. So they use capacity
and we buy skis from them. Very common Black Crows
make their skis at Elan. There's fact to do these
factory tours with all the manufacturers. I'm just amazed how
many skis. I thought, Wow, I never even thought about

(02:36:36):
who makes their skis, But they're made here. So it's
the vast majority of skis that you know of are
made by these big factories.

Speaker 1 (02:36:44):
Okay, so last year in the middle of the season,
there were incentives early, like you buy the skis, you
get a pair of binding something like that. But you
got to the point where you got two pairs of
skis for price of one.

Speaker 2 (02:36:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:36:59):
However, one words that it appears to be a sale,
and it makes many people might say, well, why should
I pay full price now, because I'll wait for them
to go on discount.

Speaker 2 (02:37:14):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:37:14):
There are certainly companies rolex at a lot of if
they have excess inventory, they bring it back, they destroy
it because they don't want to lower the value. What
was the thinking and why should I trust the price
going forward?

Speaker 2 (02:37:27):
Straight up? Or finished with the consumer view of get
that at times ten the simple nature of things. We
launched company in April. First batch of skis come in
and they come in in different Transas throughout the fall,
and some of those transfers, some batches of skis were
pretty late, so we were not We weren't fully i
would say inventoried until mid to late November early December.

(02:37:50):
Number one. Number two, we're brand new and as much
credibility and impact as body Miller's name has. It's a
brand new ski and a market full of traditionalists skeptics,
understandably skeptics, and so yeah, we did not have as
much pickup and traction and demand as we thought we

(02:38:13):
would in the September through November December timeframe. We turned
the corner on New Year's and so set that aside.
We're also a direct to consumer eCOM company. We have
some excellent strategists and tech. I have this Chief Marketing
Officer or I caller, our digital marketing assassin. So we
do a lot of testing. And our industry is small enough.

(02:38:34):
It's not like anhyder or cold companies or beer companies
have big enough market to go test demand at price
points and those kinds of things. We don't have that luxury.
So in this case we're doing recon as much as
anything to see what bundles, what offers move right. We've
done a lot of that, binding ski bundles, multiple bundles,

(02:38:56):
a lot of it's testing, and yeah, a lot of
it's to sell. This case, the two for one we
ran for ten days. I think it was in January,
and unlikely we will go back to that, but we
learned a lot through that process. Well to learn Number one,
I was called by a couple of friends saying, whoa
you guys desperate in a tough spot?

Speaker 1 (02:39:15):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (02:39:16):
No, we're testing and we're moving out product. It's year
one doing okay.

Speaker 1 (02:39:19):
No.

Speaker 2 (02:39:19):
By the way, our retention on revenue per ski is
still higher than yours. Think about that, we're selling skis
at eight ninety. Cut that in half. That's our take
per ski. On a two for one, we're still retaining
more revenue per ski. It was off model, off our
pro form and modeling, but at the same time it

(02:39:40):
was in and out and not a consistent and it
achieved a great deal success and movement inventory. But more importantly,
we had to get our skis under people's feet on
the mountain and we wanted to do that quickly. We
know the demand curve in the traditional sense of hard
goods and ski business labor day through mid January. But
running key resorts, I know that the forty two percent

(02:40:02):
of most revenue is made in between presidents in late March.
There's a lot more demand out there just the traditional
distribution system, and the ski business doesn't know how to
deal with that because they've already pushed all their product
through the retailers and they're barely able to know who's
buying what let alone. I mean that from a consumer perspective,
not volume, but there's a lot not known. In our case,

(02:40:25):
we learned a truckload through that sale and other bundles
and other packages we put out there, and yeah, it
went well.

Speaker 1 (02:40:32):
Okay. Many ski manufacturers don't change the construction but paint
the job every year and the skis are discounted at
some point during the season. Also, there are model cycles.
Will you follow the same situation where you will change
the paint shob discount? And when will we see other

(02:40:55):
than the tracking device? When will we see updates in
these models?

Speaker 2 (02:40:58):
Three questions? No, no, no, and twenty four twenty five?

Speaker 1 (02:41:03):
Okay, twenty four to twenty five? What is going to
be different about the skis other than the track.

Speaker 2 (02:41:07):
Well, I mean, don't need to be too truncated there
on the answers. We don't just change the paint job.
We're extremely porthright, very very honest, glaringly honest with what
has and hasn't changed. For twenty three twenty four, we
have increased number of lengths and models. The skis are

(02:41:28):
largely unchanged in some ways, a couple of refinements here
and there. Most folks who are not at all categorizes overhauls.
But we nor have we represented to anybody that we've
overhauled the skis or it's a whole new model. Twenty
four to twenty five there will be a host of
changes for the design of the skis, some of them substantial,
some of them not. One of them will be the

(02:41:49):
high likelihood of integration of peak located into every pair
of skis.

Speaker 1 (02:41:55):
Okay, I think we've covered. Is there anything you need
to say about this that we haven't spoken about out?

Speaker 2 (02:42:00):
Holy crap? No, I mean, geez, line of questions. Man,
I feel like I'm in a deposition.

Speaker 1 (02:42:05):
Well, you know, as I said, great, believe me, I
have more, but I won't ask them because as you
get in I mean, listen, they're so you know, some
of this shit is marketing. Give you look at Blizard
and I'm not a fan of their skis. First they
talked about flip core, then they change their core again
in terms of now they're talking about and they're not
the only company. Well, everybody else just makes the same

(02:42:28):
ski in different lengths. We make it just for these lengths,
and then other people there are certain skis identical, but
everyone knows no, you've got to buy it in this length,
not that length. So there's a lot of variables. And
as you say, uh, okay, Amazon, I'm a big Amazon fan.

(02:42:48):
Customer service is amazing as long as you don't abuse it.
If you send back four fifty five inch TVs, they
will say we're not going to sell anything anywhere.

Speaker 2 (02:42:58):
Yeah, hey wait a minute, right.

Speaker 1 (02:43:00):
Right, but shy of that, they'll work with you. You
never get whereas I've had, So you buy something on
eBay because it's unavailable, it's out of production. A lot
of those people they don't want to take well you're sure,
blah blah blah blah blah. So you know, I think
just getting peopled over the hurdle knowing that hey, you'll
take them back is important.

Speaker 2 (02:43:19):
In two seconds without any questions. They think. There's a
couple of things I'd thrown that you hit on in
those comments, and that is number one. We have this
internal deal. We're not here to do what's been done before.
And that's not disrespectful of the past. It is, in
fact respectful of the past. There's just not much about
our company team what we do that has any trait

(02:43:43):
or characteristic that has a tracer bull of going back
to the traditional ski industry in any way, shape or form.
And it's just not necessarily anything other than our chosen path.
That said, we have this patentable, patentable cut out that
we call the Keel. I was dragged kicking and screaming

(02:44:05):
into naming it. I didn't want to, and the main
reason being upon Titanol and other things. The industry has
been void of real true hardcore innovation. It's been a
whole bunch of really nifty, tricky names flipping this and that,
core this, you know, Titanum, all that stuff, And I
wouldn't say it feel like a sucker, but we came
into this bob as contrarian's skeptics. That has fed our

(02:44:30):
development of our business model that includes I don't want
to name it because it sounded like yet another iteration
of nifty sizzly crap that doesn't necessarily but we had
to name it, so like, okay, we'll call it keel
because we have to. We have to name it something,
and it makes a difference. And now we have a

(02:44:51):
patent in place and we're in a good spot. But
everything about our company is straight up. We don't speak
in hipster's talk. In fact, inside our company there's a
ten dollars fine anytime you use the words like disruptor
or that kind of hipster talk, that these are words
that used to mean something as a Middlebury graduate or
I would be shocked if you don't have an appreciation
for how the English language has been diluted in this case.

(02:45:13):
These are words you used to mean something. Now they've
been so abused by many in the industry, including advertising folks,
that they don't have any value. In our case, we
just say say things extremely straight up, fashion, blunt, force, trauma,
like you said about ten minutes ago, point plank. Everything

(02:45:34):
about our company is straight up. How we communicate the customers,
the truth matters. We're not like, we're not going to
be pulling out stuff that is sisily marketing bs and
trying to convince people to buy our skis based on that.
It's a different deal. We just hey, look man, Body
and I are retired guys. We have a lot of
time on our hands. We have some experience, and we
think we can do this pretty well, including the strategic initiatives.

(02:45:58):
But that's just a no bullshit coach to how we
come into this world of making skis and selling skis.
And good news is we've done well in some of
the ski ratings and write ups and we're prideful in that.
But there's we're just getting started. Body's got a notebook
full of ideas and there's more to come on the

(02:46:20):
skis themselves, as well as these other initiatives.

Speaker 1 (02:46:25):
Well, I'm kind of speechless because this is my passion.
But in any of Andy, Andy, I want to thank
you so much for taking the time to speak with
me and my audience.

Speaker 2 (02:46:33):
Oh yeah, this is great. I mean, I love the history.
I got to say it. I'm intensely honored, particularly honored
to be here because you have had books like Leiwikie
Buying Rate, one of my guitar heroes, on the show
and I'm just a I'm just a retired guy in
Montana that rides horses a lot, and to be on
the show and have questions, your passion is welcomed and

(02:46:55):
I'll really appreciate the chance.

Speaker 1 (02:46:57):
Okay, till next time. This is Bob Left sets