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Powder7 Turns 10

powder7 early years
The crew in November 2007: me holding Gulliver, Jordan, Alex (Jordan’s brother), and an ever-serious Ofer.
Powder7 Crew Summer 2017
Most of the crew in August 2017: Jordan, a very pregnant me, Terol, Lauren, Kenzie, Mike, Mia, Blake, Matt, Sarah, Andrew, Justin, Zack. (Gulliver was lurking nearby but opted out of the photo.)

10 years!

I’ve written this blog post at least a hundred times in my head over the course of the past decade—often while running on the trails near our HQ in Golden, Colorado. In the early years I pondered if we could really make it to 10. Reaching the 10 year mark is a big deal in the small business world. According to SBA.org, 50% of businesses fail in the first 5 years. Surely the odds decrease further if you lack industry experience, hire your long distance girlfriend as employee #2, as Jordan did, and the two of you build your own website from the ground up. If we were lucky to make it 10 years, what would 2017 bring? Hover-skis? Flying cars to negate I-70 traffic? Perhaps not, but what the past decade has brought us is even better than those science fiction dreams: the ability to still do today what we were in 2007, just in a much improved, more efficient, bigger way.

In 2007 we were completely focused on eCommerce, operating mostly through our eBay store, until we launched our own website in early 2008. Some intrepid locals sought out our warehouse in Lakewood to pick up their orders and save on shipping, but they were few and far between. Over the years, and especially once we moved to Golden in 2009, our local pick-ups increased and we gradually developed a retail space. Our expansion in 2015 focused heavily on a better in-store experience for our customers, and today that continues to be a strong area of growth for our business. However, eCommerce has always been our primary focus.

The retail space in 2011, the day after we doubled our footprint for the first time, busting through a wall to adjoin the unit next to us. This space is now utilized as offices for our growing team.
Our current retail space, August 2017.
Powder7 ski shop
Another shot of our current retail space. This was designed in-house and incorporates locally sourced elements, and beetle kill pine as slat wall. Over the years sustainability has become increasingly important and is now one of the major tenets of our business.

Over the years, we expanded our team of employees: 3 full time in 2007-2009, then 4 in 2010, 6 in 2011, 8 in 2012….now in 2017 we are over 20 people strong and will be over 25 this winter. Without sounding hyperbolical, we really do have the best staff in the industry, and that’s always been the case. Like everything we do, we take hiring seriously, and the application and interview process is certainly more intensive than at your average ski shop.

Ofer was with us from the summer of 2007 to the spring of 2009. Then he went on to Yale to become a PA. Maybe we should have given him a nicer office.
Part of our current offices – August 2017.

Technically, Jordan’s entrepreneurial roots can be traced to selling sporting goods on eBay out of his Boston University dorm room. Other “warehouse locations” over the years have included his mom’s basement and the garage of his apartment (not on the up and up with the leasing office). Moving to a legit warehouse, however rustic it may have been, was a big development for us in fall 2007. The warehouse improvements that have come since 2009, bigger still.

Warehouse storage was not a strength in 2008, but we didn’t have enough skis for it to really matter.
Our current warehouse space – ski storage is our jam.
Jordan with a whole lotta skis in our current warehouse.
Boot storage and miscellany circa 2008.

 

Every ski sold from 2007-2009 passed through this shipping area. We anticipated major efficiency gains with the cart in the background, but the tires were nearly always flat. I find the gnarled cluster of wires on the wall really completes the look.
Our shipping area still isn’t glamorous, but our systems have vastly improved.

 

company-car
For a brief period in time we had a Powder7 Audi. Then I got into it one morning to find the interior had flooded in a mild overnight rain. We promptly sold it.

We are no doubt, lucky. We’ve had a lot go right since our official inception in 2007. We’ve had support from loyal friends, family, customers, and employees. We received our fair share of crap advice (such as: “you should operate your business out of a mobile home / your garage / a floating barge” and “paying taxes is for suckers!”), but were thankfully able to use our limited wits to sift through the rubbish and focus on the gems that others shared with us. Thank you to everyone who believed in us from the start and encouraged us to give it a go. Thank you especially to our parents who never tried to dissuade us from pursuing this roughly drafted dream, even when I’m sure they must have been nervous about what we were getting into.

What will 2027 bring? We have some big plans in store for the next few years at Powder7, but if the last decade has taught me anything it’s to not play the soothsayer, and instead to let change and development happen by showing up everyday, and working on small, incremental improvements. After all, Powder7 wasn’t built in a day.

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