What We Can Expect With 300 Users

[Wesley Tucker]

Ok, time for some demographics and maybe some soul searching.

Slalomskateboarder.com registered it 300th participant this week. Is that a big deal? I don't know. What it means, though, is that at least 300 confirmed people have expressed an interest in slalom skateboarding and want to pursue learning more and possibly participating in the sport.

The good news is that manufacturers can anticipate at LEAST 300 people interested in their products. That doesn't mean a board maker or a wheel seller can expect to sell 300 units. But it does translate into at least some people buying some boards and some wheels. With a little luck everyone will buy a little bit all year round. This would make it at least feasible for the board, wheel and truck guys to keep up the good work and not get discouraged.

How does 300 customers translate into the real world? Well, I look at it this way:

300 users = 1.5 sales annually (average)
1.5 x 300 = 450 sales

Average sale for complete board =

Deck = $200
Trucks = $50.00
Wheels = $30.00
Bearings = $15.00
Hardware = $8.00 (includes risers)

TOTAL = $303.00 (let's round it down to $300.00)

So, 300 hundred users can expect to spend ($300 x 1.5) annually, or $450.00. 450 x 300 = $135,000.00 annually on slalom skateboard equipment sales. Of course, none of this includes accessories like cones, safety gear, timing equipment, travel, etc.

Ok. Let's go one step further. Annual sales are $135,000. That translates into monthly sales of $11250.00, or $2600.00 weekly and even $520.00 daily (five working days.)

That's $520.00 a day divided up between Bahne, Comet, Fibreflex, Gravity, Ick, PLankRR, Pocket Pistol, Roe, Turner, Abec11, 3DM, Indy, PVD, Radikal, Seismic, Tracker and maybe one or two others who's sales haven't impacted the sport.

So what do y'all think? Is that enough revenue to see the sport continue like it has in the past two years? Or will we see some manufacturers reconsider their commitment and move on to more profitable opportunities? Or, better yet, can we hope the slalom skateboarding manufacturers will find other markets for their products and expand sales based on greater visibility? (Turner has the downhill gun, a Flywheels competitor from 3DM, etc.) Although I think we'd all like to see "our guys" stick solely with us, I think we'd also agree the best thing for everyone involved is for the manufacturers to grow, make money and continue to make equipment for us.

Anyway, after a little over a year only, SS.com has 300 users. Now, I know that's not everyone who slaloms. I also know there are registered used who came here, registered, looked around and haven't been back in 6 months. They probably never got around to riding cones, either. So maybe we can use the same formula for riders that we used for sales and say there are 450 of us? That's still around a total sport-wide market of $200,000 max.

So here's some questions:

1. Do we need to double that number in a specific time (one year, two years, whatever.)

2. Can the manufacturers expect to see greater sales from existing users (300 users spending $600 or $700 annually?)

3. Can we expect to see some manufacturers in the next year give it up and move on to other things?

4. Can we expect to see some manufacturers expanding their business by making and marketing products to other sports? (The Roe Skimboard, the Pocket Pistol Snowboard, etc.)

Oh, one other thing. In case anyone asks where I got my numbers, it's just a basic application of marketing. For every three known propects there are two unknown. That's a ratio of 1.5:1. The sales figures are just guesses based on what I've seen the past year. For every guy who has a new board every week there's a guy like me who's got two new decks in two years. So I think an average of two completes annually is a pretty good guess. Sure, some of you out there are spending the kids college fund on skate equipment, but some have a board and will ride it til it's ragged. So again I think it's a safe average.

[Pierre Gravel]

Good post Wesley but i want to add that there may be 300 registered users but as in my case in Montreal, i'm the only one whos registered but i slalom with 6 or 7 guys and girls. This is probably the case elsewhere, we only see the really obsessed with slalom in the forums but there are other who actulally have a life

[John Gilmour]

Bruce Brewington, California
Tway, North East
Kenny Mollica, Mid West
Brady Mitchell, South East
comprise 50% of all slalom sales.

Luckily for slalom I am not a typical slalom consumer.

I did hear though that Europe's demand for wheels has been very high. France's demand in particular is huge.

Hopefully we will continue to see some cross over of the slalom products market into the Longboard and cruising market. Trucks will be the slowest to make the crossover- though ironically trucks with special geometry and higher traction are probably the most neglected area of performance in longboard cruising and carving.

[Terry Kirby]

Mr Gilmour, Kindly remove my name from the above list of you will be hearing from my Lawers. TK

[Wes Eastridge]

I don’t know about removing TK from your list, JG. When I was trying to get my first slalom board, I couldn’t get any slalom-appropriate wheels for it. It turns out that a certain dog trainer had bought up all the remaining Hyper Stradas. Maybe they were used as chew toys, rather than slalom wheels?

[Adam Trahan]

Statistics


Summary usage.

September is not complete, currently we are experiencing our most visited month since the site's inception. September may set a record as you can see in the image below.


Summary by month. Take a look at September's daily average.


Daily usage for August.


Search string...

These are the stats for September for words searched on the engines that lead people to http://www.slalomskateboarder.com as you can see, not a lot of searches to find our site, the stats reflect growth by people knowing that we exist and directly going to the site from their favorites.

On skateboard slalom participants: A note from Howard Gordon.

If you define the market by riders who would participate at a minimum in a grass roots level race, the numbers are probably in the range of 600-1000 in the US, and at least that many in Europe. The US numbers might get into the range of 2500-5000 next year, but I think the real growth will occur in Europe - it was a big deal that the small group of Euros came to the championships here and saw the high level of riding here, and that message has been carried home. In the greater scheme of things, it's still a small market, but I think we will see some reasonable sales numbers next season.

Regarding membership at http://www.slalomskateboarder.com: There are a WHOLE LOT MORE than 300 visiting and reading than there are registered users. I don't look at the site like I used to and my own visitation had a lot to do with the statistics at the start. I look at it once a day now for a few pages because I am interested in reading and seeing that some idiot hasn't bombed the place. There is somebody over at the http://www.ncdsa.com domain really generating a lot of page views, there is one who is banned still visiting too.

I think we can conservatively say that http://www.slalomskateboarder.com is the most visited slalom specific web site found on the internet. You can tweak statistics anyway you want but the fact of the matter is that we are skateboard slalom specific. Our inclination is international, not a specific geographic area. The input into the site can and is edited by the users making their own posts and less than 10 posts in nearly 10,000 have been deleted due to content.

At http://www.slalomskateboarder.com you can converse with the fastest racers in the sport, dis-agree with the race organizers if that is your thing or even sell your skateboard slalom specific equipment. The success is founded on it's own merit and YOU, the participant makes up the content of the site and we as a community will profit in knowledge by our investment.

Participate or simply read, it's none of my business why you choose to do either.

[Vlad Popov]

Nice stats!

PS. Hey, Luca just registered. I heard he’s fast. But he hasn't bought any slalom stuff in years. So, he doesn’t matter.

[Jani Soderhall]

Pierre Gravel wrote:
... i'm the only one whos registered but i slalom with 6 or 7 guys and girls. This is probably the case elsewhere, we only see the really obsessed with slalom in the forums but there are other who actulally have a life

I think that Pierre is about right, I'd say there's currently about 5 slalomers for every registered slalomer. But what we've seen over the last years is that is also 5 old slalomers for every registered user who hasn't yet brought out his board, or is about to do it. Every week I hear from an old friend who is discovering that slalom is indeed happening again!

And more importantly in certain areas there are skaters who just start to discover slalom, not ever having heard about it. Those are the real future of our sport.