There is some general good news for Spain’s ski sector. Thanks to this past Christmas, the 2019/20 ski season is off to a strong start. The main ski lodges in Spain and Andorra have seen skiers’ numbers increase. The Aramón group had its second-best start ever, with 325,000 skiers, and Sierra Nevada saw 140,000. The same figure was up by 56 percent at La Molina and by 20 percent at Grandvalira and Vallnord. The ski resort of Baqueira Beret, while not reporting figures, has declared itself satisfied.
Better yet, this has translated into higher sales at snow sports stores, according to CMDsport. Twinner Deportes Skiman of Zaragoza has just had its best Christmas since 2007, and its management believes that certain customers have grown tired of buying or renting online and are now seeking the kind of advice that only an in-store staff can provide. On the flipside, Patrick Sport cautions that ski conditions have not been uniform throughout Spain, as the Central System and Cantabrian Range lack snow. Sales have improved, but the sector needs some snow fast to keep things moving in the right direction. The recent record high temperatures throughout the world are certainly not helping the snow sports market.
Snow sports presented a very different commercial landscape in Spain before 2008, when the market for mortgage-backed securities collapsed and sent the world into recession. The preceding construction boom had introduced a whole new type of consumer to the joys of snow, and physical retail stores flourished. In particular, there was a spike in the market with the young, who took to snowboarding.
The recession brought this pleasant glide to a halt, as shown in the data collected by Spain’s Association for Ski and Mountain Tourism (Atudem). Spain’s ski lodges drew 5.52 million skiers in the 2010/11 winter season, a decline of 6.6 percent from the previous season. The figure for winter 2018/19 was 5.67 million, up a mere 2.7 percent from nine years previously, and yet it qualifies as the decade’s best. The decade’s nadir was the winter of 2011/12, with 4.5 million skiers. By comparison, winter 2008/09 hit 6.59 million.
As the number of skiers declined – and as, at times, even the weather stopped cooperating – the sector’s traditional distribution network in Spain began to suffer. Add to this the general rise of e-commerce, which did not spare the snow sports market, as well as the arrival in force of Decathlon, which has made snow sports a focus in Spain. All of this narrowed the specialist retailers’ margins, driving many of them out of business and inducing multi-sport retailers to shift their business toward more profitable and less seasonal sports. Snow sports retailers now estimate that their sales have been cut by half over the past decade or so.
As in other countries, Spain’s urban retailers have been hit especially hard by yet another phenomenon: the rise of the rental market. Naturally, this has been a benefit for stores operating at ski lodges, as renters can avoid the hassle of lugging gear. Rentals have also brought gear of higher quality into the financial reach of the average consumer.
In short, as noted by CMDsport, Spain has lost such iconic shops as Foss and Deportes Tornal Moya in Madrid, Esports Mañanés in Barcelona and Yordas Sport in León. Retailers estimate that, like sales, store numbers have been halved over the past decade.
At the same time, others have grown stronger with their survival. Among these is Cuylás, a chain of seven stores in Madrid, Barcelona and Baqueira; Skimarket, which has consolidated two stores into one in Las Rozas; and Barrabés Esquí y Montaña, another chain of seven units, but one that leads the market in both total surface area (5,500 square meters) and sales (€24.5 million in 2018).
Furthermore, the development of e-commerce has brought more foreign players into the Spanish ski market, notably from Central Europe. Shorter ski seasons have resulted in higher inventories, enticing more customers to seek bargains online. According to CMDsport, however, at least one Spanish player has been thriving off the current conditions: namely, Snowinn, the snow sports branch of Tradeinn, the rapidly growing online retailer (see the brief in this issue). Snowinn is regarded as Spain’s best positioned online portal for ski and snowboard sales.
