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Snow Excited

Fri, 9 May 2014 14:14:23 +1200

Maybe snow in May does stay when its sitting on top of April snow....

What's all this Jedi stuff?

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 15:43:34 +1200

When I hand over my business card & people look at my job title, they crack up pretty much immediately. You see my job title is "Jedi Master". Truly.

It's always a great conversation starter. I haven't always been a Jedi Master, far from it. I guess you can say I sort of grew into the role.

It all goes back to those heady days in 1980 when Derek Brown started up a small ski shop with his brother Nigel, in the back of their mum's antique shop. Derek had a great way of instilling pride in your job, in the company, making you feel part of the BROWNS FAMILY.

He had a policy to never hire anyone that he did not know - that had its limitations, but at the same time, in the early days, it meant that he was quite happy to give a sense of ownership of the company to all the staff. Derek was a real leader, we would have done anything for him, including working our butts off to ensure that his business was as successful as can be.

Years ago we sat down with our staff in a series of focus groups - a fancy name for a gathering where pizza & beer are distributed & where we chat. One of the questions that was raised at one of these gatherings was - "If Browns were a religion, what religion would it be?"

Almost unanimously the answer came back "Jedi" - now that might be a reflection of what was on at the movies at the time (no it was not 1977), however we like to think that there are similarities between the two – Jedi always strive for excellence, they fight against the Empire (any guesses there?), Jedi are honest & deal with people with respect, making a difference. They use the Force ...

& it's kept growing from there & as with anything at Browns, we have a lot of fun with it :-)

Guns Blazing

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:13:55 +1200

Just last week we were on a family holiday in the islands - 30 degree heat, blazing sunshine, lazy days... trying to charge the batteries & spend some quality family time with the kids to make up for winter's long hours.

The tan (what tan there was) faded extremely quickly - pretty much as soon as we stepped off the plane in QT, into a biting southerly and 6 degree temperature.

Winter is well and truly on its way, if it's not already here. Coronet turned on some of its guns today & will gradually turn on more over the next few days as conditions allow & create some of that white gold that we at Browns Ski Shop depend upon for our livelihoods. Snow has fallen across the country at most ski resorts - some of the crew even went up to the Peak this morning and put in a few turns, top to bottom, boot-top powder they reckon, & it looked it (I saw the video!).

Anyway, back to Raro - the time with family & friends was just awesome - holidays are all about quality time & creating memories that will stay with you forever - and even though living in Queenstown is like living in paradise, daddy works in a ski shop & at the height of the season will spend 60-70hrs per week in the shop, so this time is important.

Similarly for those of you out there - hard-working mums & dads, planning to spend some quality family time this winter on a ski/boarding holiday in Queenstown. Or those of you that are coming to spend time with friends. It's the rewards that make the work worthwhile - the planning, the excitement, the anticipation ...

A new season is about to descend on us, we start our interviews tomorrow, then into staff training & then it's all go - 24 days & counting.... another team of Browns Jedi will take shape over the coming weeks & by the time you get here, that new team of old & new faces will be doing its utmost to make your holiday in Queenstown as great as it can be.

It's all about the memories for you & your family, your friends , and not to sound too corny, but we hope to be part of those. See you soon!

Fourteen Degrees

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:31:58 +1200

It was 14 degrees inside our house this morning when we woke. FOURTEEN, INSIDE ...

With 75 days to go till Coronet opens & Daylight Saving not quite done, I am not ready to give up my shorts for jeans just yet, nor to turn on the heating in the house... sorry kids, just put on another jersey.

Thankfully today is a sunny day with wisps of cloud, and the hills all around us have a nice covering of snow from the weekend storm.

I know I know, it's early days yet & there is no need to get excited but still ...

As the leaves slowly start to turn & my shorts (eventually) get packed away, and with daylight saving finishing this weekend, we know that winter is only just around the corner.

For some it means miserable weather, icy roads, short days, frozen extremities... but those people will not be reading this blog, let alone visiting our website, so I am wasting my breath here. Moving on ...

If you're a keen skier like me, winter means Blue Skies; New snow squeaking under your ski boots. The cold air filled with glittering ice crystals.

The fresh mountain air. The swish of fresh snow under your skis. Taking the family up & watching the kids progress until they're better than you (one day I know, but not yet!).

Stealing mornings away from work, when the kids are at school, with my beloved, to get in a few runs & re-capture the magic (we met skiing in France many years ago).

Spending Tuesdays in Rocky Gully with your mates, hoping that this time I will put down the perfect Winter Classic run ... this time, or next time ...

So, 75 days to go. In the meantime, to get you all in the mood, we have loaded some images onto our website of goodies that we will have in-store this season...

Start dreaming ...

Kia Kaha Christchurch, one year on ...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:51:00 +1200

One year ago here at work, we were all glued to the internet, watching in horror as events unfolded in Christchurch. Quite a few of our ex-staff have settled in ChCh & many of our customers are from there & industry colleagues who have businesses there as well & we could only watch & hope...

Despite being far away we felt people's pain & grief as they lived & continue to live through mother nature's onslaught ...

Over the hours & days & weeks that followed I was immensely proud to be a Kiwi & see how Cantabrians pulled together & the rest of NZ pulled together in support of the victims. It was intensely emotional to hear & see the outporings of support from all over the world.

We have run a few collections at work & will continue to do so, for short of our emotional support, the only other way we know how is to donate money to various causes that are helping in the rebuild of Christchurch. We have also been priviliged to be able to host a few families from ChCh who escaped to recharge their batteries.

No longer front page news, nevertheless you are constantly in our thoughts & in our hearts Christchurch.

KIA KAHA

117 days to go and counting

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:42:45 +1200

Well, we just started the clock on our website with the countdown to the 2012 winter season. Thankfully it does not mean by a long shot that summer is over - still plenty of time left to enjoy the heat & the long sunny days.

Of which we have been having PLENTY here in Queenstown - not wanting to skite or anything, but we have had the most amazing summer down here. Very little rainfall, which is a problem that I will elaborate on later, lots of hot sunny days with lazy afternoon swims down by the lake. Town has been & still is busy, with a few concerts just finishing up & we just had the Highlanders & Chiefs battle out a pre-season warm-up in town.

Elaborating on the lack of rainfall - while it is nice to have blue-sky upon blue-sky day, it does mean that the district has been under a cloud of extreme fire danger, and because our bore at home has run dry a few times, we have been on water rations & the garden has suffered massively as a result. Even the native bush around us has literally wilted.

But back to winter of 2012 - funnily enough we are just finalising our clothing orders for the 2013 season - Fizz, our buyer, has been flitting over to OZ & around NZ, visiting suppliers, looking at the different ranges & comparing colour swatches & prices, to enable her to choose the best collection for Browns Ski Shop for next winter (2013). Another couple of weeks & that will be done & dusted.

In the meantime some of our gear for this year has started to trickle in, with our Auckland store having first dibs at winter 2012 clothing, with Kjus & Phenix landing a few weeks ago and already on the racks.

We have just started loading product info & images on our product pages. All the Salomon boots that we will have in-store this season are loaded now & keep coming back over the next few weeks as we load more & more product for 2012 onto our website. You'll have to excuse some of the blurb which has been taken directly off the official Salomon website:

"The construction of the World Cup model built with a more comfortable last shape and the latest Salomon fit technology Custom Shell"

- with descriptions like these how could you be tempted into buying one of their boots - don't get me wrong, their product is fantastic & I love Salomon to bits, but surely for the skier out there the description of the boot needs to be sexied up a bit? What does it all mean to me as a skier when I get up on the hill in that particular boot...?

I think I will have to be a bit more creative for our site ...

Till next time

Hasta La Vista

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:17:00 +1200

Hasta La Vista Season that was 2011. Mmmmmm and what a season it was.

In my 23 winters in Queenstown, of which 15 as a business owner, I cannot truly remember a winter more challenging.

Starting off with the Chilean clouds of ash, temperatures too mild in June for any snowmaking, followed by the record dumps & airport closures in July, finishing off with a soft September due to the Rugby World Cup, I for one am glad to see the back of Winter 2011 & I don't mind admitting that.

Still what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger :-) so we will put that winter away in a box & start focussing, as we usually do, on 2012.

We are busy stocktaking now in the rental & upstairs we are ordering all our goodies for 2012. Most of our clothing was already ordered back in February of this year, we are just filling in the gaps like accessories, goggles, gloves, helmets etc & also all the toys - like the new skis & boots & they look HOT.

Being in NZ we get first dibs at the new cosmetics & technology - what I mean by that is that ALL skis & the majority of boots we will stock next year will be 2013 product.

Once our stocktake is done Vertigo Bikes, our sister (or brother) company will move in ready for a summer of mountainbiking...

Our store in Auckland will be open all summer for those of you lucky enough to be heading up to the northern hemisphere for a few turns - who's going where this summer?

World Cup Fever

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 16:07:09 +1200

I am EXTREMELY Jealous of our Auckland crew - they are all finishing work early today to head out to the World Cup opening ceremony. Yeah that's right, the Browns Newmarket store closed at 3pm today, just so they could join the downtown mayhem.

The next few weeks will be a veritable feast of rugby - we will become a stadium of 4,000,000!

Did you know that the current AB's manager, many moons ago, spent time working on the rental benches downstairs, for a few seasons, on & off...? Not that we need a connection to get right behind the AB's; for the first time in my life I have dyed my hair & there is no guessing what colour it is now... the family will get fright when I get home tonight!

But in all seriousness, this is the biggest event ever to grace our shores, & it can only be good in the long-term for our industry although I do feel that in the short-term we will have a quieter September than normal.

More time for us to hit the slopes & enjoy the great conditions out there - September is usually a mix of longer mild days with some awesome spring snow interspersed with some nice wee dumps to give us some freshies. The best of both worlds!

Go the AB's tonight!

WINTER GAMES

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:53:00 +1200

The NZ Winter Games are here - the next couple of weeks will see some action-packed events on our local ski hills. While only the 2nd edition, some of the races will see the best fields that ever competed on our NZ shores, which has to be good thing for the grass-roots development of the sport here. Who will be the next Annelise or Claudia - who the next Jossi (the last one probably is easy to answer as there are 3 more Wells boys following in his footsteps...).

Here at Browns we have our own local heroes working on the shop floor - Tim Cafe, who competed for NZ at the Super G at the Olympics in Vancouver & who will hopefully compete again at Sochi in 2014. Toby Dickson, an up & coming Park Rat who is still so young that he has the role of "Grommet" at Browns but who will certainly pull some crowds in the not too distant future...

What events will you be attending?

Our mate Stu

Thu, 4 Aug 2011 21:16:40 +1200

We heard a few days ago that a good mate & former employee of Browns suddenly passed away at only age 37, leaving behind his young family. It's obviously rocked all of us here at work who knew Stu & worked with him. A few of us went up the hill & put in some turns for our mate.

I just felt that I should put down some words...

Stu worked for us for many years, in rental & workshop, before taking up a career as a chopper pilot. He was one of the first people Haggis & I hired after we took over the reins at Browns from Derek.

When he first started with us, we had an overnight trip in the backcountry for staff training & around the campfire at night one of the facilitators juggled fire pois. The only one willing enough to give it a try was this newbie, yet another pom, Stu Pybus. He got up & started swinging the fire pois & managed to set himself on fire almost immediately. Classic, vintage Browns.

It hurts & strangely this is why I love Browns - we have many staff that pass through our doors over the years, yet each one (ok well almost each one) becomes like family to us & a part of our story. At the start of each season we have a collection of individuals that we forge into a team & quite often life-long friendships are made - Stu was one such person.

He will not be forgotten.

Too much snow - is that even possible?

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:03:31 +1200

What a season we are having - first of all no snow, not even cold enough to make any, now we have just had this massive fall causing QT airport to shut for two days. What is going on with this weather? David Crow, any answers for us?

Australian school holidays are over, the mountains opened just in time & things were manic in the shop - we just about ran out of gear a few times, a great way to be, when it looked like the season might not bring anything at all.

Now we're in the midst of NZ school holidays & while the first week has been pretty full-on, the second week is a bit more mellow, probably because of all the flight interruptions.. anyone got any stories out there?

My first blog ever

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:43:16 +1200

So not sure where this thing is going to take me, & what purpose it will serve, but this blog may give you an insight into life as a ski shop owner here in Queenstown. At the same time some of our staff will be blogging too, to update you all on the goings on here in town, but more importantly what’s happening out there on the mountains & where the best riding is to be had, & hopefully we might get to make a few of you out there jealous & convince you into hopping on the next plane to come & visit.

At long last the snow is falling & has been falling for the last 2 days. Coronet Peak is just about fully open, Cardrona opened on Friday & Remarks need a bit more before they can open Shadow Basin. TC is almost there too.

It certainly has been a challenging start to the season for us – we have had worse winters, in fact I remember my first season here when Coronet was only open for 3 weeks, but that was before snowmaking.

Snowmaking has built up the expectation that we can get underway even when nature does not play fair, but as the past month has shown us, sometimes nature doesn’t even bother to show up to the game … an unseasonably warm May & June meant that even Coronet’s mighty snow guns could not bring winter to the Peak.

But then thankfully, when it looked like winter might never arrive, the weather did turn colder & with a bit of pixie dust, the snowmaking crew managed to get enough hours under their belt to enable Coronet to open on the last day of June.

& now nature or Ullr is playing its part too … bring it on! Time to go & play ….