Gara Splitboarding Hardgoods 2024/25

Retail Buyers Guide: Splitboarding 2024/25 Retail Buyer’s Guide
Brand: Gara Split
Interviewee: Ota founder

How would you describe the current state of the snowboard market? What big developments, changes, challenges, and/or opportunities are you seeing and how is your brand navigating them?

Last year winter came very late and was short in Europe which made things very challenging for multi board shops. Gara is a small, specialized brand, so we were ok and we keep going. We have loyal customers who look for every opportunity to go out and from this is coming the demand for new gear or just service or parts. As I said, we are a community brand, which on one hand doesn’t help to get bigger volumes, but in times like this helps a lot.

And this is as well an answer to this question, we have to do own thing and don’t look at what others are doing.

For me is very surprising that the bigger brands didn’t learn anything from last season, and again start competition to overflow market already by the beginning of September, when outside its 30 C, glaciers remain closed at least two more months, and even loyal customers are still on the bike, hiking or climbing. As a result, stores have to start paying invoices for delivered goods that even customers haven’t touched, and since they don’t have cash flow yet, they start lowering prices to make products more attractive, even though customers don’t need them yet.

And the same will happen in the spring, when everyone starts to lower prices again for the second time in February, brands push shops to pre-order the new fall season, even though they still have full stocks and on top of that, bikes start to be delivered to the shop.

And then the splitboard season finally starts and customers find what they need, but shops are already fully in discount, don’t make any money and teach customers this new standard, so nobody will expect tol buy anything for full price.My opinion is that brands should push back their production and delivery calendars by at least two months.

Customers are thinking about what they will do tomorrow, not what they will do in the next 4 months. They shop for what they need now, not what they will need.

Following overall price increases, any positive developments with regards to manufacturing, sourcing, or logistics and the changes you’ve made? Are there any examples you can share of how your business pivoted effectively? What developments are you seeing with regards to product pricing?

In general, all raw materials are available again, yes it is much more expensive, but what went to the roof for us is the cost of labor and energy. The only answer to that, even I like handmade things, is that we have to work more with CNC. Splitboard is more complicated and needs more precise work compared to snowboard, so it is more challenging for us. Regarding product prices, yes again up, with less overall margins, which is bad, but I don’t see how to make it cheaper without effecting performance and quality.

Season 2022 – 2024 was a carry-over plan for us, even though we don’t know what winter will hit us. We had some inventory left, more than we expect, but the bigger surprise was that some sizes and shapes was completely sold out, so we have to reorder. I don’t know how to predict what size will sell because it’s always different. Generally we don’t have overstock from 2023, so we go as usual for first production. This is our big advantage, we manufacture boards 400 km from office, so we don’t need to do big bulk order for one shipment.

Is e-commerce sales still strong since most brands have been put a lot of effort in physical retail?

Yes, e-commerce is main contact with customers, but final deal is more about talking by phone, chatting, emailing. However, even splitboard is not a new thing, for a lot of customers its complicated to set up splitboard equipment for them. So we try to simplify how to set up gear.

Does your brand have any new developments concerning sustainability and/or how you are positioning any environmental messaging?

Main concern is not to do over production, try to use bio resin, use local suppliers of raw material and as we make boards just a few hours from us we don’t ship raw material one way and product the opposite way, I guess we already do a lot in this case…

What are your top product marketing stories for next season?

We start a new series of boards for next years, we have the new Enduro II and Safari II. It is an evolution with focus on user friendly experience from riding to swapping to the hiking mode. We try to save weight and don’t effect performance and the riding feeling. I am very happy with the result.

Key produCTS

Enduro II

ENDURO

Safari II

Safari

Ranger

RANGER