Ski Shop doesn't even need summer

It's tough for any locally owned business to survive more than five decades, let alone one that depends on that most fickle of meteorological conditions - snow.

That's what The Ski Shop has done.

Opened in 1952, the business on South Tejon Street has fitted generations of Colorado Springs skiers with boots and skis. And it has done so through drought, the closure of a popular local ski area, the death of most locally owned specialty ski shops along the Front Range and, most recently, competition from scores of Internet sites selling ski equipment.

It has survived and thrived thanks to personal service and a keen understanding of its customers, said Rick Uhl, whose parents, Wolfgang and Julie, bought The Ski Shop in 1982.

The shop had changed hands three times before the Uhls took ownership, Uhl said. He's tried to track down the history and previous owners with little luck, although he knows one previous owner was Barbara Freyschlag, a prominent businesswoman and socialite who was killed in her Broadmoor-area home in 1986, a murder that has not been solved.

Uhl said his father bought the shop after he arrived in Colorado Springs from his native Germany with little English and learned the art of ski tuning at another local shop, now defunct.

Uhl remembers starting work in the shop on weekends when he was 12. He attended Western State College in Gunnison to pursue a business degree, specifically so he'd be ready to take ownership of the shop. That happened in 2002, when his folks retired.

He quickly enticed his brother, Scott, to use his marketing degree to help him. Rick's wife, Debbie, also joined the family affair.

The Uhl family is aided by a staff that has long roots in the business - and who keep coming back even though the shop is closed from April to August.

The store's hard-goods manager, for example, Kevin Kinney, began working with family patriarch Wolfgang in 1976 and came to The Ski Shop a year after the Uhls bought it. Kinney's wife, Carolyn, is the shop's longtime soft-goods (clothing, gloves, etc.) manager, and granddaughter Cassidy VanDevender also works at the shop (as did Cassidy's father).

Kinney said the shop has survived by forging relationships with customers that endure: "It's the personalized service. No one works on commission, and every one of us is passionate about skiing or snowboarding, so we sell you the stuff that's right for you. That's probably the thing that has kept us in business - the desire to do right by the customer."

The result?

"I've seen three generations of customers," Kinney said. "I now have grandparents buying gear for their grandkids. It's fun."

Service at the shop was what hooked repeat customer Bob Reehoorn just a month after he moved to Colorado Springs 11 years ago. A work colleague suggested he go to The Ski Shop and introduce himself to "Wolfie."

He did, and he felt immediately at home.

"I grew up in a small town in the foothills of Washington state," Reehoorn said. "Let me describe it this way - walking into that shop reminded me of my own little town in 1975. What a pleasure."

Reehoorn, wife Debra and their four kids often spend 50 days a season on the slopes. He said that when his children were younger, The Ski Shop worked trades and credits to keep the cost of equipping them to a reasonable level. He remembers buying a pair of boots one year from the shop. The next year, he felt a bit of unwanted pressure on a toe.

He brought in the boots for tweaking by Kinney, whom he calls the boot doctor. No muss, no fuss, no charge.

"I feel like I'm a client, not a customer. I know the whole family. Sometimes I just stop in to say hello."

Uhl said there are fewer and fewer shops that can boast that kind of multigenerational experience. Nordica, a top boot manufacturer, looked through its records a few years ago to mark its 50th year in business in America and found The Ski Shop was one of its three oldest accounts in the nation. The same informal study by Nordica revealed that there were 70-some family-owned ski shops operating along the Front Range in the early 1970s. Today, that number of specialty shops has plunged to three.

Uhl said the shop has survived the consolidation of the ski industry in part because it knows what kind of equipment its customers like (higher-end recreational gear), and it orders only the quantity of boots and skis it can reasonably sell over a season.

"We don't have to put up a big tent in our parking lot to try to sell equipment," he said, a reference to the corporate ski shops along the Front Range that often hold big pre-season sales on equipment they didn't sell the year before ... or the year before that.

That's not to say the shop doesn't face challenges. The shop took a hit after Ski Broadmoor closed in 1991, after 32 years in operation. The tiny ski area had a program called Hats that introduced thousands of Springs kids to skiing - and the enticing world of ski gear.

He said the shop now works closely with Monarch Mountain, which has a program that buses young skiers and snowboarders from The Ski Shop's parking lot to the mountain, where they receive lessons and the run of the mountain.

"It's just to get them addicted to the sport," Uhl said. "A lot of kids don't realize what's in their backyard."

Uhl said he has yet to figure out how to combat the growing popularity of buying ski gear on the Internet.

He said buying ski boots without trying them on and spending some time in them is a sure-fire recipe for black toes, blisters and raw shins. And, he said, manufacturers regulate the price of their current-season skis, so online sellers and his shop have essentially the same prices. He said those who buy skis online also must pay shipping fees and charges to mount bindings.

The ski shop's biggest challenge has been and always will be something it has no control over - the weather.

He said Springs residents are funny about snow. It can dump in the mountains, but if it remains dry and temperate here, they're not too interested in skiing.

"Thanksgiving this year was a prime example," he said. "There was good snow in the mountains but none here, and it was one of the worst Thanksgivings we've had."

Conversely, when snow started flying down here in the weeks leading up to Christmas, the shop's rental gear flew off the shelf.

"We were out of rentals for four nights in a row. We've never had that happen," he said.

"Mother Nature is my biggest asset," he said. "When she's good to me, things are good."

He and his staff are now in the midst of another perennial challenge: ordering next year's gear. He said getting the right mix and quantity is always a risk, even with the family's 27-year handle on what sells and what doesn't. It's even more complicated this year, as Uhl and his team try to predict what shape the economy will be when lifts open for the 2009-2010 ski season.

"It's a leap of faith, banking on a good snow year and that the economy will be good again," he said. "There are many nights I don't go to sleep. It's such a crazy, volatile business."

Still, Uhl said, The Ski Shop will surmount all challenges. It will reopen its doors again next fall. It's a family tradition.

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Contact the writer: 636-0197 or bill.mckeown@gazette.com