Except when the OEMs have to produce a silly number of ski models (not to mention sizes within the models) and expect shops to inventory them. Guess who is left holding the bag when all those variations don't sell. Now I can't speak for ski shops, but in the golf world the retailer doesn't get cash back from having to carry and now drastically slash prices when the stock is "old news" but instead they get "net backs" on the purchase of future equipment which doesn't directly address the stale inventory they have on the shelves.
As a consumer, it's great to pick up "new old gear" at steep discounts, but don't think this has any significant benefit to the industry overall. Again looking at the golf equipment market as an example, pretty much zero hard good equipment manufactures break even....most all are underwater as far as profits go. They remain in business because ancillary businesses or other businesses in the company conglomerate have profits to offset. E.g. Ping is privately held so we don't know exact figures but also know the family's main line of business revolves around engineering for department of defense contracts, Titleist only has a hard goods presence which they lose money on in order to help them sell more golf balls which are better margin, Callaway just plain out loses money like a sieve, Taylormade [or I should say Adidas their parent company is trying to get rid of them] has been shopping for a buyer with little known interest because of horrible profit figures, Nike just killed their hard goods business because it was such a drag on overall profits....staying in clothing however, Mizuno loses money on golf but makes up for it with their other sporting good lines, and those are the big players....we haven't even address the countless smaller operations which are now out of business.
Then when we get to the retail side, effectively the business practice (short product cycles, lots of inventory choice for consumers) have driven pretty much all the mom and pop golf shops out of business and paved the way for the big box golf stores to take over (who else can afford to carry all the inventory, live with the net backs, etc.) but now we are seeing many of those giants struggle as well. Also no coincidence we are seeing much more apparel dominating the golf shops (and ski shops as well) because of margins. Golf like skiing isn't exactly a growing industry......and interesting to see as an observer how that industry went from 2 year product cycles to 6 month cycles at one point and the ultimate knock on effect to the equipment side of the industry. Lots of parallels to skiing so interesting to see how it plays out for skiing.
