Shopping for skis or soft goods at Powder7 in Golden, Colorado, feels different than at a traditional retailer.
For one, there’s not much product on display. The building houses a retail showroom with a “sampler platter” of new and used skis, soft goods, and accessories, but the business carries much more product in its adjacent warehouse that also serves the company’s robust online site.
While the majority of Powder7’s business comes from e-commerce, the company prides itself on in-person customer service as well. Appointments are recommended for shopping and required for boot fittings.
When a customer arrives at their appointment, a staff member comes out to greet them. If the customer needs a ski jacket, for example, the staff will direct the shopper to a nearby computer kiosk to pull up the Powder7 website.
After a discussion and a customer selection, the staff goes in the back and grabs the jacket. The shopper tries it on and goes from there.
That’s part of the experience. The other draw for shoppers to visit Powder7 is the dedicated boot fitting room.
The Daily stopped by Powder7 to talk about its business model and check in on snow industry trends, including which ski and boot brands are selling well.
Expanding Footprint
In November, Powder7 celebrated its 16th anniversary. Founders Amy Dannwolf and Jordan Jones started the business by selling used skis online out of their garage. They moved Powder7 into a corner of a commercial building in Golden in 2009.
Now, the business occupies all 19,000 square feet of the building, which includes the e-commerce warehouse and retail store. About 90 employees work at Powder7. The dedicated boot-fitting area is a new addition this year.
Annabelle Cooper, customer service supervisor and events and outreach coordinator for Powder7. Photo by Casey Day.
There’s also a waiting room for people who have appointments or just walked in, a tech shop for service including ski tune-ups, repairs, and binding mounting, and a customer service office.
Aside from the in-store customer service, Powder7 will also have in-depth conversations with shoppers over the phone. Boot fitting, however, is too difficult to do well remotely, according to Matt McDonald, creative marketing manager at Powder7.
Boot Fitting Business
In recent years, Powder7 has honed its boot-fitting expertise, and requires everyone to make a two-hour appointment when they shop at the store for boots. During that appointment, a staffer runs through a checklist to make sure the boot is the right one, including measuring the shopper’s foot and testing foot dexterity.
“If you have a weird foot, or you’ve struggled with ski boots, our answer is ‘there’s a pair of ski boots for every skier. We just have to work on the boot,’” McDonald said. He emphasized the importance of having a boot that fits well for the customer to have an enjoyable experience on the mountain.
Powder7’s Matt McDonald. Photo courtesy of Powder7.
Customers who buy boots and custom footbeds from Powder7 and have their boots fitted in the store receive a one-year guarantee that covers molding, punching, and grinding to make sure the boots perform correctly.
“You date your skis, but you marry your boots,” McDonald said.
Appointment-based Shopping
Aside from the time-slot requirement for boot fitting, Powder7 also recommends appointments for all shopping. The store had been suggesting that during COVID-19, then dropped it as the virus eased. However, they brought it back to ensure a high level of customer service. They’ll still help walk-in customers, but they don’t guarantee immediate attention.
“When we’re super busy in this space and we open the floodgates, the average experience of our customers goes way down,” McDonald said.
As a value proposition for the business, quality customer service from avid, knowledgeable skiers is how Powder7 can set itself apart, he added.
That’s one reason why Powder7 added a brick-and-mortar store to its online business.
“It’s higher touch and more time, but it’s easier to provide a great experience in-store,” McDonald said.
To keep the staff educated, Powder7 partners with Loveland Ski Resort and brings the staff members to the mountain during the year for demo days.
“That’s why people like to shop with us,” McDonald said. “We very clearly ski on all the stuff we talk about.”
In March, they’ll do a ski test at Loveland with 2025 models and track their impressions of the skis. They’ll compile the information for content marketing and reviews to create a buyer’s guide for e-commerce customers.
Ski Sales Trends
The main trend in ski gear in recent years has been to make equipment that’s more accessible and easier to use, according to McDonald.
“Everybody just got pretty good at engineering skis for someone who skis only 10 times a year,” he said. “Skis that they’ll be able to ski right out of the box.”
Not only can they have fun with those skis right away, but they can also get better on those skis, and the skis will still perform as their expertise increases.
Skis on display at Powder7. Photo by The Daily.
Powder7 said popular styles include metal laminate skis with a 100-millimeter waist, like the Nordica Enforcer and Blizzard Rustler. Other brands have followed suit and made similar skis in recent years, McDonald said.
He also pointed to the popularity of Salomon’s QST line, which has a little more rocker and a tweaked sidecut and taper. DPS’s carbon fiber skis are also selling well.
The V-shaped construction of skis has become standard, and skis with rocker in the tip and tail have also become customary. Freeride rocker skis that are intermediate or beginner friendly are popular, according to McDonald.
Other hot brands include Stockli, especially the brand’s Laser AX ski. McDonald said there’s a lot of brand loyalty and affinity for Stockl in the skiing community. Kastle and Black Crows skis inspire a similar amount of loyalty among Powder7 customers.
Beyond that, Powder7 is also a fan of Icelantic Skis, which is a Colorado brand also based in Golden, McDonald said.
BOA Boots
Salomon, K2, Fischer, and Atomic all added BOA’s technology to their ski boots this year, but McDonald doesn’t see that as a threat to their boot fitting business.
Powder7 is focused on the geometry of the foot and footbed, and BOA is a closure system that adds more settings for tightness and is easy to release, which is “really functional and cool,” McDonald said.
Accessories on display at Powder7. Photo by The Daily.
The BOA boots have been selling well, he added.
Fischer’s new RC4 boot collection with BOA is the type of product that “people will pay whatever for,” McDonald said. They sell for $799.99 – $1099.99 at retail.
Powder7 reordered more after seeing how popular they were.
Online Push
As far as overall business this year, keeping pace with sales during the COVID-19 years has been “hard,” McDonald said. But compared to pre-pandemic sales, the company has continued to grow.
The supply chain issues of the pandemic have “leveled out,” according to McDonald.
With the limitations of the in-store appointment model, the company has been trying to push growth on the e-commerce side.
Working on skis at Powder7. Photo by Mitch Warnick.
The company’s summer project was to implement a new backend purchasing system for the website to keep up with the increase in business, including Shopify features to enhance the user experience.
Although the in-store portion of the business is the fastest-growing segment, online sales make up more than half of sales, McDonald said.
“We started as an online business selling used skis. That’s still our bread and butter,” he added.
Bart Schaneman can be reached at bart@ordaily.outdoorretailer.com.
