Numbers of alpine riders?

[skategoat]

Does anyone have any stats on the number of alpine snowboarders out there? What about sales stats for alpine boards? Do any of the mfgs release production volumes?

I'm trying to prove to a non-believer that alpine is not dying - it's maintaining a steady state.

[Guest Doug M]

I caused enough trouble for the year.I ain't going near this one ;)

Doug M

[Pat Donnelly]

Look for a quote from Sean Martin in the following article:

http://www.summitdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?SearchID=73163613200296&Avis=SD&Dato=20040224&Kategori=NEWS&Lopenr=402240104&Ref=AR&rs=1

[Jack M]

for one thing there are 960 members of this forum.

also I do believe Fin's sales are improving each year.

[gdboytyler]

I've spent $327 on alpine gear this season vs $50 for freestyle gear.

So in my sample population alpine spending is outstripping freestyle spending by a whopping 654%!

You'd probably want a bigger population sample to prove your point:)

[jtslalom]

There are enough hard riders to keep the indutry going. Don't worry about the numbers. There is NO possible way to get an accurate count, so why bother.

[skategoat]

I must bother because I have a marketing background and my training tells me I must size this market. Just for the hell of it.

960 members of this forum serves as a good starting data point. Now for some really convuluted projections.

First, let's round up and say 1000 hard booters on this forum.

Let's say 25% of the registered Bomberites are just curious soft boarders. 750 real hard booters here.

Let's say 90% are from the U.S or Canada. That leaves 675 N.A. riders.

Let's say at least 50% of plate riders know about Bomber and are registered here. So that's 1,350.

Let's muliply by 5 for a worldwide population.

6,750 hard booters in the world. How's my math? Too high?

[crucible]

That seems like a reasonable starting point, but bear in mind that the European market has probably three times the number of snow sports enthusiasts as North America.

Perhaps a more accurate way to measure it would be to total the % of alpine board to twin tipped board sales and extrapolate from there.

[Guest John]

I’d argue that the number is actually higher than that. I’d think a lot less than 50% of hardbooters are registered on bomber, I’d guess that only a small percentage of participants in any activity frequent on-line message boards devoted to that activity. Also, I’d be willing to bet that for every registered member there are five people reading the board who haven’t registered. For example: all of the guys I ride with know about bomber, but only one other than me is registered and none of them read it on a regular basis.

But anyway, those are just guesses, I do have another data point for you. Mid early season (a couple weeks before and after the holidays) my ebay search (linked from raceboarders) consistently generates about 100 items. Later in the season it falls to where it is now, about 50 items. So if there are 100 items, and we don’t consider things like asym boards, estimate that 60 actual alpine items are on ebay at any given time. Alpine stuff almost invariably sells if it doesn’t have an unreasonable reserve, and if we guess the average auction is 6 days, that means that 10 pieces of hardboot gear are sold every day during that month.

The market has got to be pretty big generate that many ebay listings. If you did a survey I’m sure you’d find that the percentage of bomber users actually selling a board on ebay right now is quite small. Obviously this is affected by people who sell boards on ebay for a living, but still, it implies a fairly large market.

Anyway, interesting thread, if anyone has some kind of actual numbers they’d be interesting to hear.

[mirror70]

Well, 2% of 7,691,000 is 153,820 alpine riders. Not a bad number.

Also, as Apple Computer has shown, even marketshare as low as 2% is plenty to sustain a few businesses and [flame suit on] even guide an industry.

[C5 Golfer]

As long as I can ride as an old guy and have money in the bank I will continue to buy more boards , boots, bindings than I really need. Since I will still hopefully ride when I am 80 years young - 23 yrs from now - I will support the industry for a long time to come, in fact my goal is to spend more on Alpine gear than I do in taxes. I also support the auto industry, kayak industry, fishing industry and actually have spent my kids inheritance on golf gear.

Scategoat- My bet is when you run the numbers in your marketing report you'll find you should have pulled the plug a couple of years ago. Thanks to many of the businesses who have stayed- Coiler, Prior, Bomber, Donek, Catek, so that we may enjoy a unique sport for years to come.

[sic t 2]

Man, that is a nice life you live there. But not a word about the C5 carving machine?

Sic t 2 (another old guy on a board with similar goals)

Its just a C4 but the B&M Ripper makes up for everything

You know, I could get a 157 snowboard in there by sticking the tail deep into the passenger footwell.

[C5 Golfer]

Originally posted by sic t 2

Man, that is a nice life you live there. But not a word about the C5 carving machine?

.

Well , I gotta tell you the C5 is not much of a carving machine with it being Flame Red and looking like it is going 60mph when it is parked. It is a red flag to all the cops out there so I don't drive it too fast these days. I think the fastest I have had it is 125 once which just about as fast as the the Volkl 178 I ride. Most of the time I keep it, the C5, under 80. If I want my road speed fix I take out my older silver blue Mercedes SL Roadster and go cuz it blends into the masses on Interstates.

All of us should live life to the fullest and when it comes time to slide into the grave your body should be worn out and all used up.:D

[philw]

I don't know, although there seem to be fewer every year. I just got back from some boarding at several resorts in France, and it seemed to me unscientifically:

(1) There are fewer boarders there than last year, or in the US/ Canada.

(2) 99% of the boarders are novices. That is, they sideslip all turns, can't ride fast, steeps, ice or moguls etc.

(3) I saw less than one other hard-booter each day.

(4) There didn't appear to be significant park/ pipe interest.

That's just what I saw; ymmv.

Personally I don't think Burton's "fashion industry" approach is good for the sport. If boarders are trivially burned-off in the pipe and on the piste by their skiing buddies because they're riding floppy gear and taught only sideslipping, then maybe they'll vote with their boards.

Still, nothing lasts for ever. To me snowboarding's always been something different. The rest of the world just came, had a look around and decided to sideslip away. Not a problem, so long as I can buy gear to ride.

[Baka Dasai]

Originally posted by skategoat

First, let's round up and say 1000 hard booters on this forum.

Let's say 25% of the registered Bomberites are just curious soft boarders. 750 real hard booters here.

Let's say 90% are from the U.S or Canada. That leaves 675 N.A. riders.

Let's say at least 50% of plate riders know about Bomber and are registered here. So that's 1,350.

Let's muliply by 5 for a worldwide population.

6,750 hard booters in the world. How's my math? Too high?

<i>Disclaimer: 90% of statistics are made up on the spot, and my assumptions are even less reliable.</i>

But I reckon you're underestimating. Starting with your figure of 675 registered NA users of Bomberonline, I reckon that's only 20% of the people who have read Bomber without ever registering. That gives us 3,375 people who have read Bomberonline.

And I reckon only 10% of hardbooters have ever read Bomberonline, so that gives us a figure of 33,750 NA hardbooters.

There's 3 times as many Euro hardbooters as Americans, and twice as many Japanese hardbooters as Americans, so the total figure for the whole world is <b>202,500</b>.

Which sounds <b>exactly</b> right.

[Chris Houghton]

I think that you may have missed something right at the start of this thread. What is a rider? I know a few that only get out once or twice a year, and others that have the equipment but have not used it for years. They are certainly not in the market to buy equipment, or even lift passes. Perhaps the definition should be alpine riders that make it to the hill at least 10 times a year? At least that's my thought if you're trying to define the amount of riders to ascertain the size of the market.

[skategoat]

Well I'm just trying to prove a point to a friend of mine who happens to rep ski equipment and refuses to carry snowboard gear of any kind. I'm trying to convince him that there's a big enough market for alpine gear to justify representing amount of gear.

My argument with him is that alpine snowboarding looks familiar enough to skiers that they would consider it if they could gain some education on the discipline. At the same time, it's sufficiently different from freeride and freestyle, that it will survive.

I'm telling him that skiers are more likely to try hardbooting than kids riding soft boarding gear - IF there was equipment available.

He's trying the Betamax/VHS argument on me and I'm telling him it's not the same. There was not enough clear advantage for Sony that they could hang onto the market, even as a niche product.

I think the Apple analogy works nicely. Apple fans are fanatics like hardbooters.

[Guest jeffnstefanie]

My math might be screwed up but here goes

there are 292,738,241 people in the USA according the census bureau

there are 7,691,000 snowboarders in the USA according to Kent and the American Sports Data Superstudy of Sport Participation.

So that means that 2.71% of the population are snowboarding and 2% of that would be a little more than .05% or as you said approximately 153,820 but you have to also figure that if

One birth every.................................. 8 seconds

One death every.................................. 11 seconds

One international migrant (net) every............ 24 seconds

Net gain of one person every..................... 12 seconds

and if I crunched the numbers correctly that means that we can assume that we are adding an alpine snowboarder every 24000 seconds or around 4 a Day !

Oh, I hate it when the snow melts................

[C5 Golfer]

Originally posted by jeffnstefanie

My math might be screwed up but here goes

there are 292,738,241 people in the USA according the census bureau

there are 7,691,000 snowboarders in the USA according to Kent and the American Sports Data Superstudy of Sport Participation.

So that means that 2.71% of the population are snowboarding and 2% of that would be a little more than .05% or as you said approximately 153,820 but you have to also figure that if

One birth every.................................. 8 seconds

One death every.................................. 11 seconds

One international migrant (net) every............ 24 seconds

Net gain of one person every..................... 12 seconds

and if I crunched the numbers correctly that means that we can assume that we are adding an alpine snowboarder every 24000 seconds or around 4 a Day !

Oh, I hate it when the snow melts................

So using your stat of one added person every 12 seconds... how long do we have before we have to build houses on the snowboarding slopes?

[outsider]

heres what i propose for next season. each day you get out and ride, count the other hardbooters you see each day. establish an "official counter" at your home resort so the numbers arent over inflated. count each person only once. this should give a basic idea of how many of us are out there...

[Guest Jagger]

Originally posted by outsider

heres what i propose for next season. each day you get out and ride, count the other hardbooters you see each day. establish an "official counter" at your home resort so the numbers arent over inflated. count each person only once. this should give a basic idea of how many of us are out there...

6, there are 6 alpine riders. I've seen 6 so that's how many there are!

Geez I've got too much time on my hands.:D

Now let's talk soft boot carving!!!

[Guest jeffnstefanie]

I have also seen six.

I think that we should tranquilize and tag as many as we can, then we can attach a radio collar so that we can track them from the helicopter.

[Guest Jagger]

:D Do I have to shoot myself? Don't let me fall outa the helicopter when the dart takes effect!

[Rusty]

(Aussie Accent)

Krikey!! I think I see one in my house right now....Easy now fella...

[Enzo]

Originally posted by outsider

heres what i propose for next season. each day you get out and ride, count the other hardbooters you see each day. establish an "official counter" at your home resort so the numbers arent over inflated. count each person only once. this should give a basic idea of how many of us are out there...

The idea of counting hard booters at your local hill isn't really that far fetched and would be the most statistically sound approach of accurately estimating the total carving population. Although this would be rather difficult to implement, hypothetically, if a hundred or so people from a variety of different sized mountains and from various regions around the country took part, they would keep track of the number of hard booters to the total number of skiers & snowboarders on the mountain for a number of days across a whole season. With these figures, you'd actually have a decent size sample set (~1000+ values) to work from. With basic statistical calculations, you could then estimate the population size to certain levels and degrees of accuracy.

Although my local hill may not be reflective of your local hill, here's an example of my approach with a rather unscientific surveying technique, some fudging, and a simplistic method of calculating. Obviously accuracy would drastically improve with more reliable data as mentioned above and by using more statistically sound methods.

This past winter, on the weekends I observed approximately 4 hardbooters (including myself). At max capacity, the local ski area has an uphill capacity of 11,865 people per hour. Say a person averages 3 runs per hour, then the approximate total number of skiers & snowboarders would be around 4,000 on the mountain for that particular weekend day. So that means hardbooters made up .001 (or .1%) of total participants on the mountain. According to this website: http://www.thesnowtrade.org/sia/media/industry_research/fact_sheet there were approximately 12,991,000 snow sport participants (alpine skiers & snowboarders) in the US in the year 2002. A snow sport participant is defined as a skier or snowboarder who is 7+ yrs old and who went at least once during the year. So .001 (.1%) of the total number of participants yields......drum roll.........12,991 hardbooters in the US based on 2002 figures.

In order to accurately estimate international figures, one would need data, like mentioned above, from ski areas in Europe, Asia, etc.