We’ll say it straight up: there is still no real snow in California. The San Francisco Chronicle breaks down the NorCal bleakness (Mt. Shasta pictured right).
Temperatures as high as the 60s this past week at mountain resorts mean that most ski and snowboard runs are bare and the lifts deserted. But there are exceptions.
Those exceptions: Boreal, Heavenly, Mt. Rose, and Mammoth. Keep praying.
[Link: San Francisco Chronicle]
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Billabong is letting investors know that for the second straight year their first-half earnings-per-share are going to fall according to a story on Bloomberg.com.
Slowing demand in the U.S. “has accelerated throughout November,” Gold Coast-based Billabong said in a statement today. The company cut its forecast for annual EPS growth between 6 percent and 10 percent in the year ending June, down from an October prediction for a rise of as much as 16 percent. . . . The reduced annual EPS forecast comes less than six weeks after Billabong raised earnings expectations citing a slump in the Australian dollar.
It appears the U.S. economy is causing more problems than a slumping Australian dollar can make up for.
[Link: Bloomberg.com]
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The core mall retailer Zumiez came in a little ahead of the street on their November same-store sales numbers according to a story on Forbes.com.
Zumiez Inc. said on Wednesday same-store sales fell 15 percent in November, compared with an increase of more than 5 percent in the year-earlier period. . . . Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected sales to fall 15.3 percent.
Net sales, however, only fell 2 percent to $32.6 million and the stock was up on the day (not that the two things had much to do with each other).
[Link: Forbes]
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We love Todd Richards and are we’re really glad he’s out humorously self-promoting himself in a new film. But what we’re most looking forward to is the part about how he could have won the first gold medal in the Olympic Halfpipe but he choked. Is that in there somewhere?
[Link: Snowbroader.eu]
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Think of trillions and trillions of these flakes piled up. Trippy.
Snow flakes highly magnified by a low-temperature scanning electron microscope (SEM). The colours are called “pseudo colours”, they are computer generated and are a standard technique used with SEM images.
[Link: Kung Fu Grippe]
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In a race to crush the action sports media competition, NBC is loading up. First, NBC’s AST Tour brought in MTV. Now, an entirely new alliance has been created aggregating the Action Sports Tour properties (AST) with Maloof Money Cup, AMA Motocross Championship and King of Wake series. It’s called Alli: The Alliance of Action Sports.
Alli’s mission is to facilitate the momentous growth of action sports by showcasing both the competition and lifestyle aspect of these sports. We believe these are the sports of a new generation and Alli will bring together the best properties, athletes, and brands globally for the fans of action sports,” says Wade Martin, President of Alli, the Alliance of Action Sports.
Alli has an entirely new, updated website to go with new events. Seems like a nice preemptory strike by NBC against the much rumored (though obviously delayed) relaunch of action sports on ESPN. Now all NBC needs is a magazine group to go with it.
Follow the jump for the whole press release or check out this story on Sports Business Journal.
[click to continue…]
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We know this has gone on way, way, way too long (we’ve already said that three times we think). But now, Jake Burton Carpenter has written an editorial for the Burlington Free Press regarding the Love board debacle in which he outlines all the amazing financial benefits Burton has brought snowboarding and the state of Vermont, and then issues a veiled threat that he would “rather relocate the company to another state than compromise our commitment to listen to core snowboarders.”
We’re so over this whole story that we’re not even going to comment.
[Link: Burlington Free Press]
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Blockbuster Canada just released their numbers for top ten video gamer rentals on the four major platforms and the newly released Shaun White Snowboard game is right in there on all platforms.
Number 6 on Playstation 3, number 10 on Playstation 2, number 6 on Xbox 360, and number 5 on Wii. Not too bad when you consider most of the game’s competition are shoot ’em up war games.
[Link: Canadian Press]
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We know we said we were done, but: today Jake and Donna “Burton” Carpenter appeared on Vermont Public Radio (on whose board Donna is a member) to “respond to criticism of the graphics on some of their boards.” (Click here for the MP3 version)
Jake Burton Carpenter and Donna Carpenter said that for them, the controversy and stories in the media have been hurtful and out of line.
“Hurtful” and “out of line”? Really? Guess everyone is a victim in this love story. Here are a couple more quotes from snowboarding’s first family. First off, Donna is fine with the Playboy boards:
When I first heard about the Love board – I heard the idea that we were putting Playboy centerfolds on the boards and I said, you know, ‘no way.’ And honestly, I was totally prepared to fly off the handle. . .
But she didn’t because after seeing the designs she thought they were tasteful and had a sense of humor. She added that:
The young women that I speak to are not offended by these images at all. They’re really not. I’ve actually had women in the U.S. but also around the world who are buying these boards because they think the images are beautiful.”
And when asked if Burton would create boards like these in the future Jake said, “Yes.”
There might be some moms out there that are part of this, that aren’t going to buy a Burton for their kid. But we’ve never been the brand that builds our graphics about what mom wants. And that was a conscious decision that we made years ago… we make the product and design the product for the person who’s going to use it.”
We guess the bigger question is was all this really worth it? Our answer would be no, but VPR didn’t ask that one.
[Editors’ note: For a longer, nicer interview with Jake and Donna check out Transworld Business.]
[Link: Vermont Public Radio]
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Many in the action sport media business have been asking what Wasserman Media Group was doing spending so much money on their Sportnet property. It appears someone inside the company asked the same question and answered by cutting 41 percent of the staff.
Twenty-eight of the group’s 68 employees were laid off late Friday, including Gabe Huerta, VP-product development, and a number of others from product development and support.
An email to Luke McDonough, the former president of Studio 411 was returned with the following message: As of November 21st 2008, Luke McDonough is no longer an employee at Wasserman Media Group/Sportnet.” And the recently launched Snowboarder.com has cut recently hired editor James Sullivan and is reportedly being run by a “project manager” at the company.
Some would say it was only a matter of time.
[Link: Paid Content]
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