I worked for 7 years at K2 Sports. In 1995 I started Line skis and in 2006 I started Full Tilt boots while working for K2 Sports. So I've done everything from building skis in my garage, to operating a small and medium size private ski company, and now have gone back to a startup boutique ski company selling exclusively direct at
Jskis.com. So over the past 20 years I've worked on every side and for every size ski business. My biggest take away from all of it is that winter sports brands never have, and never will match a public company's financial goals due to their seasonality and limited market size. This is a fact!
Public companies exist for one simple reason... to make more money every year. As an investor in wallstreet or shareholder you can't disagree with this. Reality is the ski industry is not growing, it's shrinking so the only way to accomplish annual growth is by spending less while selling the same. In a flat business this can only be accomplished by making cheaper product, reducing the number of employees, reducing athlete and media support, less marketing, ultimately investing less and less of the money made back into the brand and the sport. This leads to an automatic death spiral driving sales down, thus requiring more cutting and so on. Eventually the public company comes to the conclusion that they are done squeezing blood from a rock and it's time to sell it and look for the the next brand to purchase to do the same. Successful public companies know that the best brands sell the same product year round for decades to 100% of the population, everywhere on earth (paper towels, shoes, toothpics, etc.). The ski industry sells to a tiny nitche of consumers, for only 5 months a year... and only if it snows!
That said as you all know, the passion of winter sports consumers is second to none and is the reason that these brands do have a strong future and can be very profitable IF managed correctly and most importantly are privately owned. For this reason selling these brands is inevitable and an amazing opportunity for the brands and the ski industry. The problem however is that Newel's goal is to sell it as as one giant conglomerate for efficiency and cost savings of doing one deal. I've talked to Newel directly in the past week inquiring about the potential to buy Line and FT and they confirmed it will only be sold all as a whole, no option for someone to buy a single brand/brands.
Unfortunately this means it must be purchased by giant corporation that can afford it. Thus it's unlikely the brands will be in any better hands than now and likely worse similar to when Quicksilver bought Rossignol and ran them into the ground before a private equity firm bought them back and got them back on track to where they are today. My guess is whoever buys it will either immediately break them up and sell individually or bleed to death for a couple of years trying to live the ski industry dream and eventually give in to re-sell separately or as a whole again down the road for even less.
I truly believe each and every brand has amazing potential to be sustainable stand alone or part of the right group of brands if owned & operated by the right people. The industry can be rejuvenated with the profit made, being reinvested back into the sport (instead of wallstreet) so we actually have a chance of our sport not only surviving but growing. So if anyone has access to a couple hundred million dollars, hit me up and we can take a crack at saving 30% of the ski industries brands, with the power to fix a lot of what's broken in skiing and snowboarding...
