he reason that many resorts have added these snowboard parks isbecause of the problems between skiers and snowboarders. (Feldman) Roger Hauser, the director of Massanutten Ski School, said that there were quite afew reasons the resort added the "snowboard only" park five years ago. First of all, hesaid the mangers of the mountain were taking a lot of "heat" from skiers because of all thejumping and tricks the snowboarders were doing on the slopes. He said that when kidsare doing tricks they are going to be falling down, when they fall down people run intothem. So the mountain added the park and now limits snowboarders who want to dotricks to use that slope. The rest of the mountain is still open to snowboarders. Hausersaid that since the park was opened there has been a dramatic decrease in injuries betweenskier and snowboard collisions. He also said that business has picked up about 15% inthe past five years which he believes is attributed to snowboarding.Ski resorts are not the only place that business has picked up in the past five years. The main area of financial growth is the actual snowboard manufactures of snowboards.Currently there are 117 snowboard companies in the world. (Schacter) Of the 117 there Jones4are five that hold 50% of the market. Burton is number one with an annual sales ofaround 30million, Ride is number two, and three, four and five are: Sims, Morrow, andAnthony. (Baker 1995) Morrow and Ride have seen the most dramatic increases in theindustry since 1993. The total current assets for Ride in 1993 were $2,365,000 and in1995 they were up to $37,139,000. Morrows total current assets went from $6,607,000 to$31,179,000 in the same time period. Net sales for both companies went up dramaticallyin the past five years also. Ride has seen a net sales increase of 611.2% while Morrowssales have increase 74%. (These figures are directly from the company records of bothcompanies.)The cost of snowboards is one rea...
