2020 OBJ Retailer Survey results, part 10: Snowsports gear
136 independent outdoor retailers across the country responded to our annual survey last year. Here are the industry's best-selling snowsports brands, according to their responses.
Get full access to Outside Learn, our online education hub featuring in-depth fitness, nutrition, and adventure courses and more than 2,000 instructional videos when you sign up for Outside+.
As we approach the end of our 2020 OBJ Retailer Survey results, we have just a couple key categories left to report on. This week, we’re taking a look at snowsports sales, with data from retailers about the relative sales of backcountry skis, alpine skis, snowboards, snowshoes, and more.
How we collected our data
As with the rest of the sections in our survey, we didn’t supply a list of responses for retailers to choose from. The results you see below all came from write-ins.
The numbers here reflect the percentages of respondents who actually answered each question. Some respondents declined to answer one or more of our questions about snowsports sales. These omissions were not included in the calculation of vote percentages. We also included a question about whether or not respondents’ shops sold snowsports gear at all. If they didn’t, we omitted them from the calculation of vote percentages.
Finally, survey responses were gathered with the promise of anonymity to ensure the collection of the most accurate possible data from retailers.
The overview
In the snowsports category, we saw a split between product types dominated by a single brand, and those with a more even spread of brand sales at specialty retail. In the former group, our data showed moderate market dominance by a single brand in backcountry ski boots, alpine ski boots, cross-country skis and boots, and snowshoes. The latter group, in which sales split more evenly across multiple brands, included backcountry skis, alpine skis, and snowboards.
We found it interesting that single-brand category dominance was much more closely tied to boot sales than to sales on the hardgoods side of the equation, i.e. skis and snowboards. In the boot categories, Scarpa and Solomon controlled the market for backcountry and alpine, respectively. For ski sales, market control was evenly split between multiple brands, especially in the backcountry category, where we saw a four-way tie for first place.
Salomon seemed to do the best overall, capturing a significant percentage of the vote and showing up as a top contender in five of the eight categories we studied—and nabbing the top spot in two of them (alpine skis, alpine ski boots). Rossignol also turned in a strong performance, taking the second-place spot in two of the categories (cross-country skis, cross-country ski boots) and the third-place spot in one (alpine skis).
The complete data for each category is listed below.
Backcountry / telemark skis
Black Diamond: 12 percent
Blizzard: 12 percent
Fischer: 12 percent
Voile: 12 percent
Scarpa: 8 percent
Other brands mentioned: 22 Designs, Atomic, Black Crows, Volkl, Yoko
Backcountry / telemark ski boots
Scarpa: 40.9 percent
Scott: 13.6 percent
Fischer: 9.1 perent
Salomon: 9.1 perent
Tecnica: 9.1 perent
Other brands mentioned: 22 Designs, Alpina, Rossignol, ROXA,
Alpine skis
Salomon: 21 percent
K2: 14.3 percent
Rossignol: 14.3 percent
Other brands mentioned: Atomic, Faction, Fischer, Lib Tech, Liberty, Nordica, Volkl
Alpine ski boots
Salomon: 41.7 percent
Dalbello: 25 percent
Tecnica: 16.7 percent
Other brands mentioned: Fischer, K2
Snowboards
Weston: 29.4 percent
Burton: 23.5 percent
Other brands mentioned: Thirtytwo, Capita, Flow, Jones, K2, Winterstick
Cross-country skis
Fischer: 44 percent
Rossignol: 32 percent
Salomon: 12 percent
Other brands mentioned: Asnes, Atomic, Madshus
Cross-country ski boots
Fischer: 44 percent
Rossignol: 40 percent
Salomon: 12 percent
Other brands mentioned: Alpina
Snowshoes
MSR: 46.2 percent
Tubbs: 26.9 percent
Other brands mentioned: Atlas, Crescent Moon, Emory Peak, TSL
