In Part I of our interview with Andy Gerlach we talked about how he got into the ski business, the Factory Team, and the products he carries. We continue our interview with a broader view of Gerlach’s mission to change the mindset of cross-country skiers in America and the way you think about skiing, buying skis, and racing.
FasterSkier: Your backstory is interesting. You’re a mechanical engineer and have a master’s in economics. You wrote your thesis about the price theory of ski lift ticket pricing. Can you summarize your thesis about ski lift pricing?
Andy Gerlach: My thesis analyzed why you still pay for a day of skiing rather than per ride. In a perfectly competitive industry, the economic models say you should be paying per ride. I argued the reason you pay for a one day lift ticket, is that they’re monopolistic. I showed that the skier who pays the most is a local, the person who pays the least is a tourist who has competition and can ski anywhere, so the areas package their lift tickets and give discounts to the far off skiers, so the locals pays the most. So, there is no competition at the local level. It’s more monopolistic the closer you are to the ski area. Lift area pricing is unique and only an economist would care about it.
FasterSkier: So, given your background, do you have conversations with cross-country ski trail operators about their pricing?
Andy Gerlach: No. But the one thing I’m hearing over and over is we want to be selling skiing, not groomed trails … trying to sell skiing as a lifestyle, maybe selling memberships instead of trail passes. Cross-country skiing is a complicated sport. It’s very scary to get into because of the amount of gear involved, from the consumer perspective. We don’t do enough to make it simple. We need to package it in a better manner so we’re selling the sport and the lifestyle rather than individual products.
FasterSkier: Does that argue for an all in one venue where you ski, buy equipment, and stay in one place?
Andy Gerlach: Areas like that are fabulous, but many of our skiers don’t need them. If you live in Minneapolis, you stay at your home, but they still need to be able to happen across cross-country ski equipment. We make it difficult for a person to get into the sport. In the 1970s there were sporting goods stores that sold cross-country ski equipment everywhere. You could buy ski equipment even at Dayton’s (a former department store). Now you have to know about the shops. Compare it to snowshoeing, which sells a limited proposition … you look at it (the snowshoe) and it says it will work for you and fit you. You can impulse buy snowshoeing. It’s difficult in America to impulse buy cross-country skiing.
FasterSkier: How do you get that to happen?
Andy Gerlach. My next goal is to simplify cross-country ski purchasing to find ways to make it more readily accessible to the masses.
FasterSkier: Do you have ideas on how to implement that?
Andy Gerlach: Yes, but I can’t go sharing them (laughing). Everyone asks if the sport is growing or shrinking? Covid helped grow the sport, it was a boom sport, and has now receded. This past winter was terrible because of the lack of snow. I’d like to find ways to make everything about selling the sport, rather than selling the equipment. We want to sell solutions. Remember those pocket guides?
FasterSkier: Yes, I still have them.
Andy Gerlach: I plan to relaunch those and am relaunching the Factory Team.
FasterSkier: What is the need to bring back the Factory team?
Andy Gerlach: Since we closed the Factory Team, most every Loppet in America has coincidentally shrunk in size, in the last 15 years, other than the Birkebeiner. I’m not saying that caused it. But bringing it back can help. I’m also bringing it back because too much in American ski racing has been about “how did you do; rather than how do you do?” We want the Factory Team to be about “how do you do?” our athletes meeting other skiers, and about skiing rather than what place did you get.
FasterSkier: Personally, I’ve grown frustrated with the how did you do mentality, and the injury reports everyone seems to give you when you say hello?
Andy Gerlach: Of course they do! Because if all we can discuss is how did you do, then you have to make your explanations of why you didn’t do it. But if you can sell the sport for the joy of gliding across snow, and the winter landscape, then we’re selling the spirit that most of us are really in it for. I felt some of it at the Birkie this past year. People didn’t think there was going to be a Birkebeiner, and when there was one with barely any timing— everyone was so overjoyed— they were thankful to be able to ski with their buddies, get together, and have their goal they could still accomplish with even less pressure. They weren’t really being timed so they could just go ski it for their joy. Like skiing was way back when.
Annika Landis— who was our first athlete on the Factory Team relaunch— came on board with the proposition of racing with skiers instead of against skiers. We also want skiers to realize that there are great races and tours all over America. You can see this joy of cross-country skiing rather than this “how did you do?” Last year we relaunched the team with one skier, Annika Landis. This year there will be two, with Simon Zink joining her. It will be called EnjoyWinter-NTS Factory Team. The NTS is Nordic training solutions run by Andy Newell. His company is the co-title sponsor. NTS is the training technique expert. We hope to keep doubling the size, but you have to start by putting one foot in front of the other. Back in the day I had 14 athletes on the Factory Team. The goal of the athletes is allowing them to chase their athletic dreams but with the passion of skiing with skiers rather than against them.
FasterSkier: You see it as more than just a brand building mechanism, but more of a way to change the mindset of participants?
Andy Gerlach: It’s to be more engaged with the community of skiers, dealers, and clubs, and sharing expertise and passion. Racing gets the attention, but there are more people who don’t race than do race. Also, look at the Ski Classic racing in Europe, there are the top teams whose names you know, but there are like 60 teams! What I’d love to do, is to do American Ski Classics. The exciting thing isn’t the top team, but the 60th, team like Sven’s Welding shop (I just made that up). They’re not trying to compete with the winners, they’re just people who love ski racing, and employees can join our team. Wouldn’t it be great if at the Birkie, or Tour of Anchorage, had five businesses where the owners love skiing, or want to market to skiers could say hey this is our business and we’re sponsoring this race team run by our employees?
FasterSkier: There’s a little bit of a chicken and the egg problem here though, right?
Andy Gerlach: Yes. One of my goals is to launch with a few marathons this coming winter and a few businesses; a way where a business can say we’re supporting our athletes and we’re going to start a team. Clubs are great for junior racing, but there should be ways where master skiers can feel enthused and training for a purpose. If you say you’re skiing the Birkie, you’re a hero at your local shop, at your work place for just doing the Birkie. People just say, “I’m skiing the Birkie, it’s like doing an Ironman— if you put the sticker on your car, you’re a hero. Skiing in America needs to have some accomplishment of doing a skiing adventure without having the pressure of how did you do? As soon as our Factory Team athletes start affecting the local Loppet community, then our competitors; they’ll start investing more again into their trade teams, and suddenly there will be a bit more energy and enthusiasm for Loppet racing. This ties in with a longer goal. How can you make cross-country skiing an impulse buy again, where someone could be in Costco and instead of grabbing a sled, they could instead again grab a pair of skis for themselves and their kids?
FasterSkier: If you can sell cross-country skiing equipment at Costco that would be amazing!
Andy Gerlach: That’s been a goal of mine for a long time. I’ve proposed it to every ski brand that I’ve worked with and there were always many reasons for why it can’t be done, rather than finding ways to do it. Our goal is to provide these simple solutions to selling skiing instead of selling skis. If we can do that, then larger merchants can sell skiing, rather the skis, we can make skiing more accessible.
FasterSkier: Isn’t some of that moving away from the model of very specific weight correlations for skis? If you’re selling at Costco, you need small, medium, and large sizes only, right?
Andy Gerlach: Yes, and we have that. You go to Europe and it’s much easier than it is here. Americans have been taught that every one kilogram on a ski matters, and in Europe they don’t. Skis are much more versatile than Americans are led to believe. For the majority of skiers, the fitting process isn’t as delicate as we’ve been told. We need to provide solutions that work at the basic level more, rather than what is necessary for a World Cup skier to make up two seconds in a 10-k. When it’s that complicated, you’re too scared to buy anything. We’re trying to get someone to walk into a store with their family during a big storm, and then you can go home and glide across snow in your backyard. We want them to think about skiing as a lifestyle rather than a piece of equipment.
FasterSkier: Anything else you want to talk about?
Andy Gerlach: If I read the tagline from the original Factory Team; I’m still using the same one today; “without ski equipment snow is something you shovel. With ski equipment snow is something you glide on. Wouldn’t you rather glide than shovel.”
FasterSkier: That’s a great tagline.
Andy Gerlach: For the skier we have the hard goods. But just selling equipment and not sharing the expertise and the joy doesn’t do much good. So, we have Ski Post, our email newsletter—which we’ve had for 30 years—that exists to share, and it’s not just about our new products, but how people are using the products. There’s a lot I want to accomplish, we are getting a little bit done, day by day, for the sport.
FasterSkier thanks Andy Gerlach for taking time to speak with us about EnjoyWinter and his goal to change the ski world.
