Rental Buyer's
RENTAL BUYER’S For rental shops and their suppliers, the overriding mission is to nur- ture and develop new skiers and riders. While serving beginners has long been the mainstay for rental operations, awareness of the importance of new-rider and new-skier development is more recent. At the same time, GUIDE as more guests opt to rent rather than buy, the rental market has grown to serve a wider audience. That has brought more suppliers back into the 2018-19rental market, too. Here’s a look at next year’s trends and innovations. ALPINE RENTAL GEAR 2018-19 Currently, with the euro taking a beat- increasingly favoring renting over buy- inexpensive but durable fleet-rental gear ing against a strong U.S. dollar, the ing. Regardless, more suppliers are get- is giving way to more focused design typically slim margins of rental sales ting into the rental pool. and testing of gear, sometimes at a small are likely to feel an extra squeeze. uptick in price, aimed at enhancing the “It’s definitely affecting pricing,” RETURNING SUPPLIERS performance of learning skiers. says Tecnica’s Bart Tuttle. Not only are the historically big players Nevertheless, there has been a more in rental—e.g., Head, Elan, Dalbello, and RENTAL R&D GROWS aggressive push in rental-product devel- Rossignol—continuing to go after big Nordica, for example, worked closely opment and sales, with more players get- market shares, other suppliers, such as with PSIA demo team leader Mike Rogan ting more actively involved. Perhaps it is Nordica, Salomon, and K2, are vying to to optimize the design and test its new the volume of sales in rental—a few hun- get back into the picture.
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