What's hot and why
As the publisher of SNEWS, a monthly newsletter that covers the business of specialty outdoor sports, Bob Woodward has a close-up view of adventure sports. The trends he monitors are also encapsulated in his book series, What's New, What's Hot. In a recent interview with Inc., Woodward zeroed in on what's hot in adventure sports and why.
Q: When did the adventure-sports craze take off?
A: Five years ago the recognition really started to rise, inspired primarily by snowboarding.
Q: What's driving it?
A: Advances in equipment have flattened the learning curve of many of these sports, leading to a cumulative effect. Kids who got into one outdoor sport and excelled quickly have been inspired to get into others as well. So a kid who got into an urban sport like skateboarding or BMX bicycling added an element of thrill to it by bringing it to the rugged outdoors and turning it into snowboarding or mountain biking.
Q: What about the demographics?
A: It depends entirely on how you define adventure sports. The people doing extremely dangerous stuff--daredevil, scary, life-and-death, leading-edge sports--are mostly under age 25. But if you're talking about climbing and mountaineering, or something just a little bit out of the ordinary, then the demographics are all over the map. I don't have hard numbers, but you've probably got 1% to 2% of the population doing something.
Q: What's hot today?
A: White-water kayaking. It's always been a small sport for a young crowd. But thanks to advances in boat design--shorter kayaks, for example--the sport's becoming easier to learn. You can do a lot more with kayaks, amazing things, like huge drops from waterfalls. Sea kayaking is actually the fastest-growing paddle sport, but white-water is getting all the attention because it's exciting, exhilarating, and death defying.
Q: What's next?
A: Hard to say, but it will likely be combining elements from different sports (like climbing to a remote area in order to kayak, for instance). Or it could be derivations of an extreme sport, like skiboarding. Skiboards are the short, short skis--90 to 100 centimeters long--that you're beginning to see on the mountains. They have a lot of potential for kids, who can do lots of tricks with them or race with them.
Kayakers: A sampler
(Listed in the following order: Company, Location, Product, Year Started)
Driftwood Productions
Auburn, Calif.
Hair-raising films
1996
Epic Paddles
Seattle
Carbon-fiber paddles
1997
Heritage Kayaks
Wellesley, Mass.
Open-deck kayaks
1995
Khaya Kayaks
Longwood, Fla.
Seagoing kayaks
1997
Rain and Snow Inc.
Friendsville, Md.
Kevlar helmets
1994
Seairsports
San Diego
Accessories
1995
Labors of love--with mixed results
If kayaking is the adventure sport du jour, then its counterpart several years ago was rock climbing. In the late 1980s the craze inspired a host of start-up companies to market rock-climbing gear and related products. Many of the start-ups were fringe operations run by climbers determined to make a living in a business associated with the sport they loved, according to Michael Kennedy, editor of Climbing Magazine. As the number of climbing enthusiasts peaked in 1994 at 6.2 million, some large retailers shouldered their way into the market, heightening the competition. In the inevitable shakeout, not all the ardent pioneers survived.
Todd Bibler, of Park City, Utah, is an avid climber. (In the 1980s he ascended Himalayan peaks 11 times.) In 1977 he started his single-wall-tent proprietorship, a business that allowed him time to indulge his passion for climbing. In 1989 he expanded from strictly mail order to wholesale and tripled the number of his tent designs, to 12. But when large competitors like North Face, Marmot, and Sierra Designs came out with their own versions of lightweight tents for high-altitude climbers, Bibler sold his company to $20-million Black Diamond Equipment, in Salt Lake City, rather than compete with the giants. "Even though their tents weren't as good as mine, the other companies had a large marketing network that they could tap into right away, which I didn't have as a small business," notes Bibler, 46, who now designs tents for Black Diamond.
Another climber-turned-entrepreneur who encountered stiff competition is Peter Mayfield, 35. He quit high school 19 years ago to enlist as a climbing guide in California's Yosemite Valley. In 1990 he established the nation's first indoor climbing gym, City Rock, in Berkeley, Calif. But his investors and board members forced him to sell the business four years later, faulting him for a lack of management skill. "I'm a climbing artist," concedes Mayfield. "I never wanted to set up a mom-and-pop shop and be the pop."
One pop who made it is Christian Griffith, an elite rock climber and CEO of Verve, in Boulder, Colo. "It's been pretty incredible," he says of the changes he's seen in his industry since launching his climbing-apparel company out of the back of his car in 1990. (See " New Businesses," May 1992.) "When I started I had to justify the existence of the type of clothing we were making," he says. "Now, with even mainstream companies crossing over into our niche, we struggle to maintain our authentic climbing identity."
Griffith, 33, estimates that at least 10 companies have copied his signature product: loose-fitting cotton-Lycra pants. The Verve brand, however, still has cachet among serious climbers in an increasingly dog-eat-dog market--in part, says Griffith, because of his status as a world-class climber. He adds that Verve is "very profitable," with revenues growing by 15% annually.
