Hopara

Well, a few days ago, we wrote about how the San Juan Skiing Company is for sale, and we pointed out a few questions that we had about how you’d make the financials work.  On Wednesday, the people at SAM (that’s the ski area management magazine) published a post that reaffirmed some of our questions about running this type of business in vacation country, and it turns out that a few things have changed since our first post on this.  For starters, the price has been chopped by $150,000 to $225,000.  He’s also noted that other cat skiing operations in the area charge $350 - $400 (although we think that, after our research in his part of the world, his current pricing of about $250 - $275 was market - it does go up quite a bit as you move towards the bigger ski areas, though).  So let’s see if this changes our analysis any.

For starters, you’ve still got the same limit of 750 skiers per year (one of our readers asked why this is true, and the answer is that this is what he gets from the government / BLM / whatever you want to call it.  You want to negotiate with the government, you go right ahead).  At his new price (let’s take the high of $400), that now means that you have a shot at generating $300,000 per year in revenue, and using our math from before, that translates into about $60,000 per year in profits (and maybe even a bit more than that - let’s say $100,000, because your costs didn’t really change all that much — all you did is increase your prices).  So that means that you’ll earn back what you spent on this operation in two to three years - hey!  That’s pretty darn good!

We also looked at the value of all of the stuff you’re buying — snowcats, explosives, and so on.  Last time, we thought it was worth a heck of a lot more than $375,000, so it’s safe to say that it’s definitely worth way more than $225,000. 

We’ve got to say, this is a really good deal for someone who has dreamed of moving to the mountains and skiing all day.  You’re likely to clear more in profits than you would as a ski or snowboard instructor, and you get your own business.  So what are you waiting for?  Go get an SBA loan from a local bank and buy this!!!  Opportunities like this don’t come along too often!