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You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio. From Utah to California, ski resorts across the West to laid their opening days. This due to a lack of natural snow as well as temps that were too warm to make snow. So we're talking about Jackson Hole and Wyoming Park City and Dear Valley in Utah, Chweitzer Mountain Resort in Idaho, Heavenly and North Star in California. They all opened later than originally planned.
I'm going to let you keep going because you've been so excited about this.
This has serious economic implications in the towns and states where these resorts operate. According to the Bureau of Economic Research, it came out last year and it said that snow activities in the economy for the US was a seven point seven billion dollar business in twenty twenty three, and that in Colorado, Utah, and California it was the quote largest conventional activity.
It's a big deal.
It's a very big deal. Yeah, for more ski industry and how this season is looking. We welcome Bob sha he's founder and CEO of Surefoot. Surefoot is the biggest custom ski boot company in the world. They've got twenty nine locations in North America, Canada, and Europe. Bob joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. Welcome, How are you?
Thank you good? I'm really good.
So for people who aren't familiar having step foot into a Surefoot, explain the process, because I think people understand ski boots, but then Surefoot takes the shell and then customizes it. What do you guys do?
I mean, basically, a person comes in the door and then there's some conversation with them to find out their history of skiing and how much they've skied, what level they're at and everything, and then they're kind of evaluating. But then the technical part starts. We put your foot onto a three D imaging machine which makes an orthotic for underneath your foot the first step in there, and then we put you onto another image that takes a scan of your foot. So really what we do with
that scan is we match that to the shell. So we basically have a visual of your foot exactly and we match it into we find the right shell for you. So now that shell matches your ability, your history and skiing, what you enjoy about the sport, and then we put it together with a custom liner that we make, and we have numerous different ones, about five or six one, so we you know, looking at your foot to side from there, which one's going to work best for you
in the sport. And that whole process, because we've sort of packaged all together on the same roof, just takes about an hour where we can go from you walking in the door to walking out with a boot that's totally custom fit for your foot, ready to ski in.
You've done this, yeah, I did this back in twenty twenty one. I finally got my first pair of Surefoot boots. I mean I've lived in places where Surefoot has had locations and finally I was like, you know what, I'm getting to my late thirties. I don't get ski boots very much. It's time for me to have like a really comfortable pair of boots. And I've wanted a pair of surefoots.
And they haven't always been comfortable, No, they haven't.
And you know the thing is is and you know I had a scan done in like two thousand and let's say two thousand and seven maybe for a pair of orthotics for cycling shoes, and they were able to tell when I went to the store that my foot had actually changed. Yeah, since that so they had to make a They did rescan and and do a new pair of orthotics based on the new scan. Because I guess that's what happens when you age.
Yeah, well, I think it's it's most feet do that, you know, if you have some flexibility mobility in.
Your footwear too, right, Yeah, but go ahead.
Yeah, yeah, over time, it really you know, your foot's going to change a bit, and the scans are extremely precise, so it's you know, we can be talking to my minute difference. But that minute difference is a big deal. It's a big deal in biking shoes if you're really into it, and it's a big deal in ski boots.
Bob, how did you get to this point?
Because it to me, it makes a lot of sense. And I'll be honest with you, I wear orthotics in just general and it just makes such a difference in shoes and sneakers and what have you.
How did you get to this point?
You know, really it starts. I grew up skiing and ski racing and boots always just killed my feet, Like really, I have very wide fore foot and boots. You know, when you're trying to jam into a ski racing boot, it's just there's a lot of pain. And I really took time off the slope. I couldn't stay out as long as I wanted to as a kid, and so over time it just started developing ways to make it a little better. And then as I got done with ski racing in college, I was like, I don't want
to leave this sport. I love the sport. I can make a difference in it. So that was really the impetus for it, you know, thinking about it. And then then a lot of trial and error, I mean crazy trial and error.
What was the tell us? What was some of the error?
I don't remember. One of my first employees is that John Higgins was you know, he was on the US ski team and collegiate ski racer, and we were together were trying to make a pair of boots for me with a new this foam material that we had found, so we we injected into my foot and he gets it all over his hands everything, and then I'm standing there and it feels like it's going to break the bones in my foot. I'm like, John, you you got to get this off. You gotta get this off my foot.
It's breaking the bones. And a guy was walking by, kind of through the back corner of the space that we were in, and he was a chemic clean's journey. He looks at John and goes, if you don't get that off your hand in the next like thirty seconds, it's never coming off. So now John takes off to get that off his hands, and I've got this on
my foot. I think it's breaking the bones in my foot, and I'm like, but luckily it didn't, and he got it off his hand, and we probably took a step back for a couple of years from that, but that's really how it began.
So we're going to talk more about the origin story in a few minutes, and before we get there, one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you is because you serve this higher end consumer, and we talk a lot about what the economy looks like right now, and just when you talk about skiing in general, you're already talking about a segment of the consumer that can afford to travel to a ski area, pay for expensive lift ticket, oftentimes stay in an expensive area and then
do something that requires expensive equipment. Give us an idea. And you're a private company, so it's you know, we don't have access to a ton of your own data. But how how is the consumer you're dealing with right now? How are sales? What are some numbers you can give us?
I mean, I think all of us are always a little you know, you're just kind of have this tendency when you're in business. You know you're a little worried. But right now things are actually going along pretty well. You know, we've business, we're up a little. But then as you were talking around about just before how we didn't have snow, we take a dip you know with
that when when it's early. But in general terms, we see the consumer is fairly strong, you know, coming in and you know, you know what's really happened to him. I think that people recreation is just a bigger part of our lives. We all have, you know, we want to do that. We want to be out there and luckily we're in the sport that people really love.
Bob, have you seen that coming off the pandemic of people even like kind of that. Obviously after the pandemic, it was like I got to get out in the world because I couldn't for so long.
But do you see it kind of lasting.
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I see it my own company. How many people aren't in there. I think it became more important for everybody. You know, it's like you're out of the office a bit, you got outside and it just it seems healthy and that's good to me. It seems like half in to the mountains. We look at it like it's a healthy place to be to exercise and stuff, and so I think it's good for the it's good for my business, good for the sport, my life.
Well, people in New York City know that you have a store in New York City. But it's kind of a unique store because it's it's not near a ski mountain. Every I think every other store that you have, maybe save for Vancouver or more London. Yeah, you know is right at the base of a ski mountain is New York. You're you're like the biggest location in terms of what it does in sales.
It was the first it was the first city store. It's not our biggest volume store. You know, we have that in the mountains, but many of our stores are very similar in size. But really why we put them here is because you know, there's just people who want to there's different percenalities. They want to get it done before they go to you know, on their trip, and those there and now you can get the exact same thing. So really early season, our city stores flourish.
I mean, how busy are you right now? Is it crazy?
Really? Yeah? You know, honestly, it's the most fun part of my job. I was in the New York store this morning, for you know, and it's just I love when it's just busy in there and everyone's talking about sport and skiing and enjoying it.
Very briefly, you bought a company back in twenty twelve that is not a winter company. Yeah, and now that's attached to the store in New York City. In terms of running, how big of a growth area is running for you?
You know that that's I mean the reason we got into running was because we were runners to stay in shape for skiing. I mean, you know, we all run, and you know, it's part part of it. And then because of the orthotics that we make the custom you know, the basis of the ski boot is used by so many athletes and runners like Boston Marathon winners and so many people. That's where came from, is that we knew a lot about feet and running and what we could do with that. It's great for us.
So we talked about your story of you starting this company with your brother. I mean, you've been doing this for more than forty years at this point, completely bootstrapped, no investors. You also don't franchise at all. I'm sure this has come up when people have come, hey, you should franchise this. Why not?
You know, we get asked once a week about the franchising thing at least. But you know, it's just that we wanted to have better quality control over it, and we want to give our employees opportunity. And that's what really comes down to is that we in order to open more stores, we train people and when they're ready to go to store. Like our most recent story, we opened in Big Sky. Crisciardo, the manager there worked for us a long long time and he wanted to move there. We opened the store there.
That's pretty cool.
I think that's pretty cool.
I mean, I'm also assuming that folks have reached out to either invest in you buy you.
Up like, and you just you're you want to continue to go it alone.
Yeah, you know, I think it's it's we've had you know, we have my have had minority investors and stuff in there. But we've also had some hard knocks with those. And so as long as we control the business and we enjoy what we're doing, and you know, we have my daughter is in the business, my you know, we have family in the business. I want to do it for a long time. Please go ahead.
And what's your supply chain?
Like?
Is everything done in the you and I in the US?
You have to I wish it was all done in the US. That's you know, it's I really wish that it was done here, but we're not able to. There's just things that or not. So, yeah, we've had challenges with the supply chain right now, we try to mitigate them. And the costs and and the.
Territory costs have gone up.
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's a tough It's been a tough thing too. And I really think I look back and say, wow, I was I'm glad this didn't happen when we're in business five years or something. I don't I don't know how a small business gets through it. You know, we're a little able to manage it a little better.
But yeah, there the biggest story in the ski industry obviously is snow and making sure that people can actually get on mountains. The second biggest story in pretty much any ski town that you go to is the cost of living. Yeah, and I'm wondering. You are known for having these long tenured employees who live in the communities where you have stores, and these are very transient communities because they're ski areas where people come for the season
and then leave. How do you make sure that you can have employees that can actually live somewhere like attracting and retaining a long term employee in a place where truly nobody can afford to live.
Yeah, it really has. I mean, you know, we talk about it being so hard right now, but you know, there's been many points where it has been. But are What we've always tried to do is make our employees really productive the whole system that they do, and then pay them the best that we can in there. But it is a challenge, you know, in there, and you
have to Yeah, we have to deal with that. I mean, look at some of these markets are crazy, crazy expensive now, so we have some employee housing, but the real thing is how we keep people. Employee housing, yeah, yeah, we do. We have employee housing all the big markets, but that's more for new new employees that are you know, coming into the company, to help them get settled and yeah, yeah,
you know, their first second year. But all of our you know, management and everything, we've always wanted the company, you know, I always say, if we're not going up, we're going out. We have to go up to give employees opportunity to keep growing, keep growing there. And that gives employees opportunity their stores keep growing bigger. They can be rewarded more for that and compensated. But no doubt, it's it's a big challenge.
Where's the growth in your industry?
Like how do you think, I mean, forty years you've been doing this, Like it sounds like you still look for new opportunities constantly.
I mean, really, what it comes down to is we're still a small percentage. You know, we're probably somewhere around three or four percent of the dollar volume of ski boots sold in the world, and so we have a lot of room to grow in that.
Would you ever consider making your own skiboot? Just to remind everybody, the shell, you buy the shell from a company that makes the ski boot, and then you do the liner and kind of everything else. But would you ever make an actual surefoot ski boot?
Yeah? I mean we have right now. We have three D technology that we're working on and with boots and everything. But I think as long as we can get the shell that we think is really great for a customer in the market, then we'll keep doing that. So what we really do is we buy the shell without the liner, so it saves the consumer money and then we have a great shell in the outside and the interior we've made.
But we are always working on so if I come up with a great idea about a shell, you'll see it. I like that.
But in terms of growth, like, okay, no offense, but I'm like thinking, we I got our thoughtics, but these sound.
Better, like can you?
In terms of the medical market, are people who go to foot doctors? What's the percentage like through your machine like that.
You have, It's a percentage even in that it's small. Yeah, we're small, even we're one of the largest makers of ourthotics in the United States, like, actually kind of a long shot, we are, but we make so many in our stores. If you combine what we do in our stores and what we do in our factory, we're by far the largest. But there's lots of room because a lot of people don't really know how beneficial they are
to you. So if something happens to you, if all Sydney have planner fasciitis, your foot's hurting, you're aching from running, that's when you start seeking us out.
So, Bob, if.
Somebody comes in and gets an orthotic through you, I mean, is it covered by insurance?
It is if a doctor, you know, if they have a prescription for it. Majority of what we sell are not. That's not really true. In our medical division, it's mostly prescription, and then in our consumer it's not. But you know, they are covered and they're the same scan, so we can make we can do anything with that.
You know this it just seems like a mass market, like it's major.
It is a big market.
Well, the reason you have that market is because you bought this company and fit the Orthotics Company based in Vancouver, Washington, back in twenty twenty three. You bought super Runner shops back in twenty twelve. Any more acquisitions on the horizon.
You know, right now we're doing something really big that we're about to introduce our own line of footwear. And the footwear is made specifically for orthotics to fit your orthotics in it, so you have a perfect platform. Like right now in ski boots, you have a perfect platform when we make the boot whole thing so you're standing totally aligned.
But a pair of shoes you pull out the insul, the athotic's going to be bigger than the insula.
It doesn't doesn't fit quite right, and you can't get it, you know, in there. So we are late in a few weeks, we're about to introduce a line of shoes that is just for that. So when you get a line scan your body's put into alignment. You put it to our shoes, You're going to stand in a very balanced, comfortable position.
You guys are doing this on your own or is it a collaboration?
We're doing on our own.
I think we're breaking some news here, you know.
I've debated whether I should even say say the sun here. But it's a big deal. We've been working on it for years and it's really cool. I have some. I was just at the World Cup and Veil and I had on a pair of the winter boots and I had like four or five people asked me about them. What are those? Where are they? Like? Oh? Nice. We have a little little luck here with the product men and women. Yeah, we have men and women. Yeah, of course we have men and women's tea, run everything,