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Swiss Market Insight: Splitboard & Binding Market Stoked by Influx of Newcomers
What a strange situation, with the pandemic in its umpteenth wave at the start of 2022, many sectors are suffering from a lack of workforce due to quarantines but retail commerce seems to be holding up pretty well.
By Fabien Grisel
Shops that aren’t in resorts are really happy with their autumn and start to winter, visitation numbers are good and sales are going well. It’s hard to explain but it seems as though your average Swiss person at this point in the pandemic still has good buying power and less opportunities and different ways to spend it. The limited access to culture, restaurants and indoor leisure in general has led people to turn towards outdoor activities and this seems to be confirmed by retailers and rental shops active in winter sports who seem very satisfied with their 2021 end of year period. There’s a quick transition when completing purchases, customers are less calculating and really eager, they need their equipment right away and the price matters less than before.
For resorts, we don’t quite have enough perspective but for sure the big tourist destinations that attract foreigners are suffering from the travel restrictions; the Brits, the Belgians and the Dutch are lacking and that’s being felt. Will local tourism be enough to make up for this shortfall? Probably not. Well, let’s not make any hasty judgements because the season is still young.
The splitboard market continues to grow and when you analyse the sales you realise that the majority of them last season and up to now this season were made by newcomers, a whole segment wanting to start splitboard touring. Although the statistics aren’t infallible, we can say that the majority of splitboards sold with bindings are destined for newcomers to the sport. According to quite a lot of the shops we asked, board sales that did not include bindings (assuming therefore that they already had an old board bought elsewhere) was very rare, only 15% of cases, and most wanted to buy the complete set up. This is interesting and a good sign because this means that the sector is still growing and that it hasn’t reached its peak.
Having said that, the problem is that the quantity of bindings dedicated to this activity is very limited, the product has become a rare commodity and it’s now certain that there are way more splitboards on the market than bindings for them. This could potentially make sales nosedive at the start of 2022 because if people are looking for complete set ups then the solo boards are going to just stay on the racks because of a lack of bindings. No problem, they’ll sell next year, they’ll say.
Steve DeCrousaz from Altmann Sport in Vevey says that he’s done some good trade and sold well but in memory he has never had so much to do in terms of assembling products that were ordered online. At SB Sport in Gland, the weeks leading up to the end of year holidays were also intense and Yan Bosson has noticed that sales and discussions with customers have changed, these days there are certain products that are so hard to get that the game of stock availability and restock waiting times has completely changed. This makes the customer complete the purchase quicker and the shop anticipate more. From now on there’s no more presuming that there will always be exactly what you need at a certain supplier or another. This provides a certain motivation to retailers to make their orders for next winter as soon as possible in order to ensure delivery and good trade in autumn.
