It's all on sale!

In-store sale only.

 Now is the time to grab your gear because it will sell out.  Some things to note:

    Most brands are sold out of 2010 product and stores are selling out quickly.  Many people are used to a lot of snowboard product being available late in the season and in the off season, but this year it will be different.  Ever since the '06/'07 season, brands have overproduced product so there was a surplus for shops to buy later in the season.  Brands sell that product on sale to shops and the shops sell the product at a discount in return.  However, this year is more like how it was four years ago and prior. There are many factors to the shortage of snowboard product.  Here are some of them:

    SHOPS ORDERED LESS - Shops order the product well in advance, this is called prebooking.  The product is ordered in January and February for the next season.  This is done so the brand knows how much to produce and has time to have it made.  We have already seen and ordered the 2011 product and brands stopped making 2010 product several months ago.  If they overproduce they have to sell it at a discount to shops late in the season which may be below the brand's cost.  When you see big late season sales at shops it isn't necessarily because the shop has low prices, it's because they got surplus product on sale from the brand.  Any shop can do this as long as the product is available.  This year, there is far less overstock. 

   BRANDS MADE LESS - The less overstock is because at the time shops prebooked, the economy was in very bad shape.  Nearly all shops ordered less product and in return, brands made less.  Most brands reduced the percentage of product to be produced.  For the past few seasons they had made 150% to 200% of what what prebooked so there was a lot of extra product to be reordered.  This year brands anticipated shops canceling orders or closing their doors, so most of them only produced 90% to 110% of what was prebooked.  This left little to no product left to be ordered by shops.  We would like to get more product, but for example, 32 snowboard boots sold out in November and most other brands have nothing left.

     IT'S THE BEST SEASON SINCE '04/'05 - The past few seasons were bad snow years in Tahoe and all over the US.  Because of El Nino and the heavy snowfall, people have been gearing up and buying more snowboard product than in past seasons.  This has been taking place all over the country and very much so in our region leaving less product in stores. 

    WINTER OLYMPICS STARTS SNOWBOARD HYPE - Every Winter Olympics a huge surge in snowboard participation happens.  In February 2006, stores, including GZ were nearly wiped out of snowboard stock to people wanting to start snowboarding because of all the exposure.  This happened in 2002 and 1998 for us, as well. 

     Basically, if you go looking for gear in May or later you will likely have a hard time finding product, at least not the highest rated and popular products, ANYWHERE, which is the way it used to be years ago.  We just wanted to let our customers know, as we anticipate a lot of people being very unhappy with the quantity of product out there in the coming months.

   If you read all that, you now have a little more insight to our side of snowboarding.  Thank you for reading!