These are among the revelations in the third edition of the biennial report. The retailer report indicates that the channel remains healthy — no small feat given the weather, economic and technological challenges outdoor specialty retailers faced in 2012. Sales at the typical participating retailer in the study, referred to as the median firm, grew 5.2 percent, enough to outpace inflation and result in pre-tax profit margin of 3.1 percent.

The high-profit firm, however, clocked in with nearly double the sales growth rate and triple the pre-tax profit margin, largely by doing a better job buying and controlling operating expenses.
Interestingly, employee costs, which make up the single largest expense on a retailer’s income statement, did not emerge as a significant differentiator. The median firm actually reported slightly higher sales per employee and significantly higher gross profit per employee. Employee compensation, however, appears to play a significant role, according to a new four-page section that breaks out salaries and bonus payments for three top executive and 16 other full-time positions.

High-profit retailers are slightly more likely to offer a bonus plan and set aside a bigger share of their profits when doing so. They are also more than five times more likely to pay commission only to sales people. More than half of high-profit firms describe their bonus programs as discretionary.

“We offer a monthly bonus to our web team for reaching growth targets, and quarterly bonuses for the in-store team based on store and personal growth, with incentives for reaching certain targets,” said Tony Gehman, who owns three TCO Fly Shop stores in Pennsylvania as well as tcoflyfishing.com. “This has helped increase our sales by 15 percent year-to-date.”
Darren Bush, who owns Rutabaga Paddlesports LLC in Wisconsin, said the report provides a good “gut check” that has prompted him to examine payroll costs.

Another trait of high-profit retailers is higher liquidity. They tend to keep a higher percentage of their assets in cash so their buyers can respond quickly to market and weather conditions. This capability enables high-profit retailers to generate nearly 90 cents in gross margin for every additional dollar they invest in inventory, or more than 2.5 times the median firm. These and other strategies help the high-profit firm attain a pre-tax profit margin nearly three times and a pre-tax return on assets nearly four times that of the median firm.

“The overall picture of profit performance in outdoor retailing is strong,” states the key findings section of the report. “The typical firm is producing a 3.1 percent bottom line, which is certainly adequate. However, the opportunity exists to do a lot better, not just a little better.”

For a copy of the full report, email mj@origindesign.ca

“The Wait for Winter” is the first of our 2013.14 Wonder Reels: a suite of seven videos shot and produced by Switchback Entertainment to be released over the winter season. Origin’s focus for the videos was a true and compelling story that would be resonant with Whistler Blackcomb’s various market segments, but our goal was to have them beautifully shot making the most of the moodiness and mystery of Whistler’s scenery, with its mists and frosts and muted colours.

The Wonder Reels are available on the Whistler Blackcomb website. Each one of the seven Reels will be promoted in turn through the winter. Banner ads and the Whistler Blackcomb social channels will drive viewers to the content.

These Wonder Reels support the larger Wonder campaign’s narrative around the question: “Wonder, is it a place or a state of mind?” The campaign invites viewers to discover the Wonder of Whistler Blackcomb for themselves. This winter’s Wonder Reels will build on the success of last winter’s Wonder Reels, which were some of the most viewed online video content in the industry.

Recently Inntopia has been working with clients—and suppliers like us—to improve their software. Curious about what’s going on, we contacted Trevor Crist for a chat. Trevor is a man of many hats: he’s Inntopia’s co-founder, and leads product development, as well sales and marketing guy. In addition, Trevor serves on the Central Reservation Association of Destination Resorts board and is a gubernatorial appointee to the Vermont Telecommunications Authority. He’s also a nice guy to have a beer with.

Origin: You recently launched an office in Europe. What differences in consumer behaviour have you noticed between North America and Europe?

The key difference is, of course, the need for a multi-lingual platform. In St. Moritz we are currently supporting five languages on the website: English, German, French, Italian and Spanish, with more on the way.

Customers shop and purchase differently in the European market too. European customers are accustomed to buying packages and European lodging providers are more restrictive with their properties. For example, the seven day, Saturday check-in stay is common. We also see wide variations in the percentage of vacations booked online, booking conversion rates, lead times, etc. Because of this, we continue to see value in allowing customization of the booking platform to meet the needs of their consumers.

The way Europeans plan their vacations is gradually converging with the way we do it here in North America. Booking.com has become such a dominant channel in Europe that it has pushed hoteliers and vacation managers to be less restrictive in what they offer consumers. Within a few years, we don’t expect consumer behaviour to vary much between North America and Europe.

Origin: At this year’s Destination Summit conference you mentioned working on improvements for a more seamless Inntopia integration. Can you fill us in on your process and are there any best-in-class sites we can check out?

We are in the process of rolling out a new version of our e-commerce platform. We’re taking a staged approach, focusing first on the check-out path. We’ll launch this within the next month.

After this comes a new version of our YieldView product, for activity sales. Then we’ll upgrade our “search pricing and availability” experience for lodging, flights, car rental and activities.

Mammoth Mountain Resort will be the first user to roll out many of the new features, but you’ll see them soon afterwards on many other partner sites. Since the entire platform is delivered in the cloud, it is simple for users to upgrade.

Origin: Would you tell us the detailed improvements of your e-commerce platform?

Our new platform will also include these improvements:

• An optimized check-out path to reduce shopping cart abandonment and improve conversion rate. This includes new API calls which allow you to plug in your email marketing systems and automatically send a follow up email when users abandon carts.
• The platform will be built using responsive design, so no additional work is needed to optimize for tablets and phones.
• A new “My Account” feature, which allows users to collect loyalty points, resort credits and more. This will work with loyalty programs managed in SiriusWare or RTP|ONE.
• Enhanced integration with SiriusWare and RTP|ONE and integration with Axxess, SkiData, e4Soft and Comptrol Point of Sale systems.
• Support for RFID lift pass reloads, so users can pay in advance for visits.
• The same Bootstrap framework as Twitter to allow users to easily change the look and feel with either off-the-shelf, or fully customized, libraries.
• Users who want to customize their UI can now choose from JSON API, or the existing XML API.
• A library of widgets so that users can easily embed the booking platform in their site. The widgets will be delivered as HTML, JSON or JQUERY libraries.
• Integrated mapping to allow users to view all search results in a map.
• Enhanced filtering and sorting capabilities.
• New tokenized payment gateways.

Mammoth Mountain Resort will be the first user to roll out many of these new features, though you will see them appear shortly thereafter on many other partner sites. Because the entire platform is delivered in the Cloud, it makes it simple for users to upgrade with the flip of a switch.

To talk about your website or what these features can mean for you, give me a shout mj@origindesign.ca.  For more on Inntopia, Trevor’s your man:  tcrist@inntopia.com.

The theory is that a demanding brand is the only way there is left to earn the respect of consumers. There are a few obvious places that make for meaningful demand. Not surprisingly, there’s the planet (brands that demand action that is good for the environment), there’s lifestyle (brands that create products or services that demand customers live healthy or well), society (demand action that is good for other people) and nonprofits.

Sincerity is everything. The trend report outlines that any brand being demanding had better be 100% transparent and be taking real, meaningful, painful positive action itself first. A couple examples of demanding brands:

 Packaging-free grocery stores

This is one obvious area where brands that are serious about reducing their environmental impact can demand their customers contribute. Unpackaged http://beunpackaged.com/ opened a new store in London where shoppers bring their own containers and can buy as much or as little food as they need, reducing wastage and packaging.

Plastic Bag Bans

Following San Francisco’s 2007 ban on plastic bags, a number of other cities around the world have also taken similar measures. In June 2013, Los Angeles became the largest city in the US to ban free plastic bags in grocery stores.

US Town bans sale of small water bottles

Concord, Massachussets banned the sale of bottled water in bottles less than one liter. Carbonated and flavoured drinks are excluded from the ban, which is designed to encourage residents to drink tap water instead of bottled water.

Vitoria : Soccer team changed uniform color until fans donated blood

To promote its charitable blood donation campaign, Brazilian soccer team Vitoria unveiled new player uniforms in July 2012. Although the team usually played in red and black, the team’s uniform was changed to white and blck (apparently a big deal with soccer fans in Brazil) and fans were told that to restore the shirts back to their regular colors, they would have to donate blood. Over 10 matches, the red stripes returned as blood donations increased.

One of the highlights of this piece for me was that demanding brands, almost by definition, will alienate some people. This rings true because we have seen it flourish with a client of ours, Jay Peak Resort. As a brand, they have been very comfortable in NOT pleasing everyone. This can be felt in some of the advertising language, many of the chosen visuals to represent the brand and certainly in their social channels.

Our Wind Still blows.

Pure Joy.

We’d love to hear about any examples of demanding brands. Let us know what you’ve seen.

We developed the Wonder Reels as a narrative formed around the question: “Wonder, is it a place or a state of mind?” The videos invite the viewer to discover the wonder of Whistler Blackcomb themselves. The Reels were, once again, shot and produced by our friends at Switchback Entertainment, who are proving themselves as industry leaders in branded digital content.

Last year’s Wonder Reels attracted huge numbers of views. Slopefillers ranked them as some of the most viewed YouTube content in the industry.

O: So how did you get those incredible results at Mountain Creek. You had 48 percent increase in beginner visits?

Joe: I’m always very careful to let people know that the 48 percent increase was only partially due to Terrain Based Learning. We did everything at Mountain Creek—from marketing, to arrivals, to rentals, to restaurants, to our sales program. We spent $22 million converting the beginner area to Terrain Based Learning: we put in a new beginner lift and a 55,000 square foot building. We also trained the instructors on the new Terrain Based Learning area. For a resort that size it’s a significant investment.

The rental shop was designed was inspired by Disney. When you walk in, you go into a darkened room where a video introduces you to the resort. Then you sit down and have somebody put on your boots, this person walks you through which products you need and scans a barcode to print a ticket in the back room that says “Joe needs a 150cm snowboard”. We used customized version of rental shop software.

Our partners, such as Burton Snowboards, streamlined other parts of the rental process too. Our snowboards are set up with both bindings centred at 9 degrees, and the boards are identical—so it doesn’t matter if you’re goofy or regular.

O: You also changed the pricing at Mountain Creek?

Joe: The beginner experience improves when you package it differently. At Mountain Creek we made the cheapest price $99 for a day, which included lift ticket, lessons and rentals. Then we took a risk and made beginner lift tickets open to the whole resort. We knew that most beginners would never leave the beginner area, so we could sell the same product to everyone. If you’re a beginner, you think: “Cool, that’s the best price, that’s what I want.” Other customers might say, “well I don’t need the lesson” and they’re told “it’s still a full-access lift ticket, it’s the best price”. The intermediates and experts are comfortable asking the right questions—and this system also helps get them into lessons.

O: Tell me about what you did at Jay Peak

Joe: At Jay Peak we worked with Burton Snowboards and Snow Park Technologies on a Burton Playtime Riglet Park, where the whole Terrain Based Learning area had a Toy Story theme. When you go into Buzz’s toy box, it was actually two banked turns. I love working with Jay, they are one of the most innovative groups of people I’ve ever worked with!

O: The skills you teach first-timers sound advanced.

Joe: We really use a bit of magic and smoke and mirrors in the learning process. I think our true purpose is to be entertainers, this is something that Disney does well. We tell beginners “we’re going to teach you to ollie”, rather than “we’re going to teach fore / aft movements and talk about toe and heel edges”. The process of doing an ollie teaches the four basic movements of snowboarding. The skills they need to will follow as long as they have a good time, then they’ll come back and we’ll retain them.

O: If a lot more people participate in skiing and snowboarding, what do you think the industry implications are?

Joe: I think it’ll diversity our marketplace a lot. At the moment 90 percent of people are pushed into our sport by friends and family. But with a better first time experience, there’ll be people skiing and snowboarding who’d never normally be in our market. This helps for all types of things: better skier numbers, higher equipment sales—which will result in more product innovation. I truly believe that growing the sport from the beginner level will lead everything to grow. Companies like Burton Snowboards are so forward-thinking, which has resulted in so many great innovations over the last few years. I think this, mixed with the strong passion of resorts like Jay Peak, will change the way we do everything in the next ten years.

Visit the new and improved Rocky Mountain Bicycles website at www.bikes.com.

THE CLIENT

Rocky Mountain Bicycles is one of the original North Shore Vancouver bike manufacturers, building and perfecting high-end mountain bikes for the last 30 years. With a distribution network that extends to over 30 countries, Rocky’s global presence continues to grow and, with this expansion, the need for an online presence that speaks to the brand’s past, present and future. With offices in Vancouver and Québec, and with a passionate group of mountain bikers on both sides, the fit between Rocky and Origin was a good one from the very start.

THE CHALLENGE


Rocky came to us with an existing website that was badly in need of a complete overhaul. The site had some major usability issues, making it challenging for visitors to complete basic tasks like finding different bikes; the visual design was dated, and needed to be revisited to match the direction of the brand; managing and creating content in the CMS was time consuming and difficult for administrators, and content was spread across multiple different microsites and social channels as a result.

The old bikes.com was outdated and off-brand, with usability issues.

We worked with the marketing and product development teams at Rocky to identify and focus on a handful of core objectives for the site, including:

• Making the site accessible to users on all devices and screen sizes; from phones, to tablets to a 27″ desktop monitor
• 
Making it easier for site visitors to find the right bike for their riding style and performance needs
• Delivering better, and more meaningful information about the individual bikes
• 
Providing a better platform for Rocky’s content creators to blog and post new videos and photos
• 
Supporting Rocky’s network of local bike shops, by encouraging and making it easier for users to find and contact dealers and demo centres
• Making it easier for Rocky and their international distributors to manage and choose which content to display across more than 30 different regions, in 3 languages
• Updating the graphic standards for the brand, using the website redesign as a catalyst

THE APPROACH

At Origin, our user-centered design process puts a lot of emphasis on solid strategy and planning upfront. This project was no different, and before we even got anywhere near Adobe Creative Suite, we fleshed out the details on a number key strategic points, including:

• A complete review and envisioning session with brand stakeholders to help define and articulate key brand elements and messages.
• Defining the core user-base of the website, segmenting the various user-profiles and outcomes, and creating use-cases for the new website prior to development.
• Auditing, analyzing and re-defining the format and structure of their content, particularly as it relates to individual bike platforms and models
• 
Digging in with their marketing team to define how each bike platform is categorized for different uses, and developing a process of sorting and finding bikes that works for all different user-types, from complete bike newbies to industry insiders
• 
The use of responsive web design to ensure a consistently strong user experience across all devices and platforms.

THE RESULTS


On Monday July 8th, in conjunction with the release of their brand new 2014 Instinct MSL bike, we launched Phase 1 of the new Bikes.com site.

We’re really happy with the outcome, and so is the client:

“I just wanted to say thank you guys for killing it on this and making this launch happen. Everything looks great and the good feedback is rolling in quickly.”
– Brian Park, Interactive Marketing Specialist

“We are very pleased with the final result of our new site and as well the detailed and systematic approach that was used throughout the discovery phase up until the final launch of the site. The end result is a product we are very proud of and the process was super smooth and not painful at all. Deliverables were met and the end result is outstanding.”
- Francis Argouin, Marketing Director

We’ve got plans for a second phase of launch coming up in the fall, but for now here are a few highlights of the final product that we’re most proud of:

Responsive Design

We’re strong believers in the fact that you can’t make inferences about a user’s context based on the device they’re using, so we employed responsive web design for an optimized user experience across all devices and screen sizes. We avoid hiding content or functionality from users just because they’re on a phone or tablet, but we do change the interface to optimize that content for those devices.

Interactive Bike Finder

Users can filter through over 30 different bike platforms to find the right bike for their needs in 1 of 2 ways, depending on their knowledge about bikes:

1. Knowledgeable users can filter the bikes by more technical characteristics such as intended use (all mountain vs. trail vs. xc and so on), wheel size, and suspension travel.

2. Users who are newer to the world of bikes are given the option “Need help choosing a bike?” which opens an interface to walk them through descriptions and images of the different types of bikes Rocky builds. Once they find the type of bike that suits their needs, they can choose to see only bikes within that category.

By separating these 2 filtering options, we can talk to both user types in language that makes sense to them, without alienating the other.

Consolidated Platform and Model Pages

While the old site asked users to first load a platform page (the base build of the bike), then load a model page (varying levels of components and specs built on top of the base platform) without any more information than a name, the new site consolidates the various models under a single platform page.

The user can make an informed decision (based on filtering, tags and descriptive text in the overview) to click through to a platform they are interested in, and once on the platform page, scroll through the various models within that platform, reducing the number of clicks/page loads and the removing the process of jumping around between model pages.

Also, technology details and videos, images and related content are pulled into Tech and Action tabs to further consolidate and organize the vast amount of content on these pages.

Stories and Video Gallery

The “Stories” section of the site was created to house ongoing editorial coverage of the new bike releases, trips, events, and updates from Rocky’s content creators. We know mountain bikers love bike porn, so we also created the Videos page with a large, immersive player to get users right into the video goodies with no distractions.

Google Maps based Dealer Finder

Using the Google Maps API, we built a Dealer Finder tool that automatically detects the users location and presents them with the nearest Rocky dealer for retail, service and demos.

Automated Region/Language Settings

Nobody likes getting rerouted to an annoying splash page to choose their region and language preferences when trying to visit a website. That’s why we used IP detection to recommend settings to a user based on their current location. Upon initial visit to the site, an unobtrusive (but deliberately noticeable) bar gives users the heads-up that we’ve set these preferences for them, and gives them the option to change them or dismiss them, never to be bothered again by those pesky region and language options (unless they need them later, in which case they are conveniently accessible from the navigation).