Applying to work at ski shop?

BlakeLively

BlakeLively

Member
im applying to work at a few different ski shops next season and i was wondering if there was anything i should know before going into that. any tips would be awesome. also, is there anything i should learn how to do before i actually start the job?
 
1. its not fun

2. you wont make any money

3. you will smell like wax nonstop

4. dealing with gapers is miserable

5. the discounted gear and free pass is worth it
 
and it sucks being a kid in a shop.. you often get taken advantage of

but all in all the discounted gear was worth it in my opinion.
 
It's a hell of a lot better than washing dishes.

As with any job, show your interest! Go in as a confident individual who knows what they want. If you genuinely want to work there, for reasons other than you just need a job, they'll most likely like you and see you as a valuable addition to the staff.

Show you're interested and know a thing or two about skis.
 
I want to apply at my local shop, but I play football.

Should I apply in august even though I can't work until football is over, around thanksgiving, or wait for football to end.

Or am I screwed because of football?
 
is this a tune shop or are you going to be working on the retail floor?

i like retail better myself, but working in a shop will teach you about skis and actually give you a clue how to tune and take care of your shit.

Retail is fun cuz you can get excited about the product you sell and get people stoked on skiing. you just have to keep pretending that the person youre talking to is really a type 3 plus expert skier who really does need those AC50s youre selling cuz he rips it so hard..
 
i love working at my shop. i just got hired a little while ago and they arent open yet but dealing with gapers and shit my suck but i get 200 ish dollars a week which is nice for a high school kid that only has to pay for his car
 
I worked at a ski shop for a few seasons, it was by far the most fun job ive had, some people i worked with hated the gapers but i dont mind talking about skiing all day. also i made $12/hr which i thought was fine, and I got to ski 5 days a week. figure out what sort of retail the shop u wanna work at carries and read a bunch of shit about their '11-'12 gear.
 
do it, its pretty epic and fun even if you have to deal with way too much shit and gapers. youll learn a lot about skiing and skiis that you probably never would
 
I can wax my own skis and clean the edges, but I've never mounted my own bidnings before, would that set me back on getting a job?
 
I pretty much disagree.

I find it very rewarding, whether it is helping an advanced skier find the right stuff, or helping a beginner get into it, or even just getting shit done.

I have made a fair amount of money, I just spend it all... It doesn't pay well, but I work quite a bit, so it adds up.

And dealing with gapers is not miserable. I think that's kinda cruel to say. They are still part of our sport. Help em out, sometimes they say some funny shit. (It can be difficult to get across what you are trying to say if they know nothing, but be friendly and speak in clear, understandable terms and they'll get it.)
 
so do you ever ski? when i worked in a ski shop i didnt work a lot and most of the time it was crazy doring especially since my shop was at a mountain so i saw all of my friends go have fun. I did however get s free seasons pass to both the mountain at which i worked and mount snow ( peak resorts owns both) so in the end it was completely worth it.
 
Yes, I do ski. I work one weekend day every other week, and 3 days a week after school. And I do a shit load of rental ski tuning in the summer, and work quite a bit.
 
Don't do it! I applied to work at a beacon production place thinking it would be super cool, skiing would be all around and the people I worked with would all be super into skiing. Only two of the 24 people I work with freeski (also basically the only two with college degrees), and after a while the magic of working with ski products like beacons wore off and you realize you could pretty much be working with ipods and it would be the same. Trust me I love skiing a ton, and I just stopped giving a shit about the type of product we were manufacturing cause it wasnt that exciting. You will probably find the fun of working with ski products at first will quickly wear off as you realize it is just another retail/manual labor job.

 
yes it is. but when you finally get someone that knows what they're doing it makes up for it. did it for 4 seasons, its more fun then some say, but every shop is different i guess
 
If you don't already know a lot about the product you sell, (I promise you know less than you think) do some extensive research on it. It will make your life much easier.
 
Sounds like what happened to me when I was on park crew at a shitty mountain. See everyone just cruising and then you have to go rake out fucking gaper bombholes and stay til closing which was 9 or 10 at night. Shit sucked
 
would it be likely for some place to hire a 16 year old? ive been skiing for 12 years and ive been tuning my familys and friends skis for the past couple, and i had a paper route since i was 11 and a summer job sanding and polishing corian samples last/this summer for past jobs.
 
What's the harm in asking?

The shop I worked in gave this kid who was interested a bit of work in the workshop just to get him started.

It wasn't full time or anything official, but it gave him experience of working in a full workshop with proper machinery rather than the hand tools most people use for themselves. So maybe they'd do something like that.
 
Hell yeah go for the job at the ski shop near you. If you show interest and don't act like a bum most likely any store will be willing to pick you up. The only downfall I could imagine is alot of the young guys who work at my store don't get hooked up as much on pro prices... but besides that its the best environment to work in imo....
 
yeah I understand that...just I feel like the main draw towards working at a ski shop v. the apple store or macy's is just the products, and soon you will realize it doesnt matter.

If you have a job offer somewhere else take it, working in the ski industry is awesome, but don't work a shitty ass job just to work in the ski industry. Marketing, designing products, engineering and sales in the ski world are all dope, try to look for a job in that.
 
It is very hard to compare working in a shop, interacting with customers, helping people find the right gear, etc., to working in a factory and mindlessly making beacons all day. Making beacons, as you said, is a lot like making iPods. You don't have to ski or even know about skiing to make a beacon, just as you could make an iPod but have never listened to music in your life.

But working in a ski shop, you are constantly gaining ski knowledge and using it, as well as actually interacting with the public.
 
Yeah you are definitely right about that and I would for sure prefer the shop to my production job and interacting with people and seeing as the OP is 16, same as me, ski shop is a legit job to have just to help people and stuff but working with people is definitely the best part, so go into it for that not the products you will be working with.

 
I worked in a shop for 7 winters. It's really like any other retail store, if you managers are cool, then you will have a good time, if they aren't...then it will be miserable. Yes the gapers will occasionally make you want to stab your eyes with ski poles, but it isn't that bad. As for smelling like wax, I worked about 25% of my time tuning and I don't recall smelling like wax lol. The benefits are awesome though, shop deal is typically 20-30% off of wholesale pricing so you don't break your bank on new gear, and if you work for a larger store or even and chain such as Christy Sports, they will often hook you up with a pass - depending if you sell passes in the fall. I would recommend applying by the end of this month. Most of the big sales (at least in CO) start the first weekend of September.
 
i was thinking about applying to my local shop for the fall because Im going to mountain school this winter, is that a good time to be working in a ski shop because everyone is getting gear for the new season? or should i look somewhere else to work for the fall?
 
So it seems like some people really hate it and others like it, have any of you worked at a ski shop and at a grocery store bagging or something? I do bagging and carts now at a grocery store but I want to apply at a ski shop this fall, would you guys think it would be better or worse?
 
i'd like to to sharpening/waxing/mounting/tech stuff but dealing with people would suck so much.

i was volunteering at a ski swap last year and some asian lady and her kid came up to me with some random pair of like 200$ all mountain skis off the wall and asks "are these skis the right level of difficulty for my little girl?"

i had no fucking clue so i just bullshat and asked a bunch of questions about her skiing
 
thanks to those who answered my question, even if they don't say they're hiring? they're not open yet from the summer so i don't know, but even if they're not?
 
Any tips on like what to where or anything? It's my first time really applying to a job and I think retail in a shop is going to be a little different than park crew.
 
I want to apply at my local shop, but I play football.

Should I apply in august even though I can't work until football is over, around thanksgiving, or wait for football to end.

Or am I screwed because of football?
 
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