January 14, 2008
Ski lift | Business plan in hand, Mistie Bickford hopes to bring change to Skowhegan's struggling Eaton Mountain
By Kerry Elson
Eaton Mountain opened for the winter season Dec. 31. A record December snowfall left two feet of powder on the slopes, and the Skowhegan ski area was bustling, with teenage boys speeding downhill on snowboards as their parents sipped coffee in the lodge.
Ski area owners across Maine rejoiced at the early snow. Mistie Bickford, who bought Eaton Mountain in August, was feeling overwhelmed. The snow groomer was broken, the lodge was only partly repainted and the new bathrooms weren't complete, so customers were using four port-a-potties outside.
"I learned two weeks after I bought it that I'd never get anything done," she jokes, trudging through snow at the base of the mountain.
At 22 years old, Bickford wants to revive Eaton Mountain, a 40-year old ski area that has struggled financially for years. She bought the business from her uncle, Eugene Kent, just months after receiving a business degree from Thomas College in Waterville. She's relying on a business plan for the mountain that she wrote in college ˆ and relying on her own experience, having worked at the ski area since she was nine years old.
Bickford hopes to make Eaton Mountain profitable this year by adding year-round programs. The business currently offers skiing, snowboarding, tubing, snowmobile racing and motocross, or off-road motorcycle racing. Next summer, she hopes to add paintball, a playground and "mud runs," which involves splashing trucks through mud pits.
Bickford acknowledges that buying the business was a risk. Banks thought so, too. None of the six she approached would lend her money, so she's borrowing money from her mother, Kim, who secured funding by putting a second mortgage on their Waterville home. Bickford hopes to repay the loan in five years. Keeping Eaton Mountain afloat is important, Bickford says, because her family depends on it. Her brother works there and lives in a mobile home on the property. Her mom and her aunt run the kitchen. "This is where I grew up," she says. "This is where the family came together."
She has reason to worry, though. The ski industry is known to be competitive and unpredictable. Small ski areas like Eaton Mountain are especially vulnerable to the high cost of insurance, energy and maintenance. Since the 1960s, as many as 20 small, independently-owned ski mountains in Maine have closed due to financial pressure, estimates Greg Sweetser, executive director of the Ski Maine Association in Portland. These days, owners of small ski areas have to be vigilant about keeping costs down to stay in business.
Adding to Bickford's burden is Eaton Mountain's reputation as a run-down ski area that didn't always pay its bills. "I am finding that a lot of companies won't do business with me because of the Eaton Mountain name," Bickford says. "Even if I say it's under new ownership, because of the name and because I've only been in business for three months, I have a hard time convincing them that I will make payments."
Building a base
Eaton Mountain is one of 22 ski areas in Maine. The big players are Sunday River and Sugarloaf, which saw a combined 783,000 skiers in the 2005-2006 season. Some smaller ski areas are nonprofits run by ski clubs, such as Baker Mountain in Moscow and Quoggy Jo in Presque Isle. About seven independently owned, for-profit ski areas like Eaton Mountain remain, including Lost Valley in Auburn and Hermon Mountain just outside Bangor.
These small ski areas are vital to Maine's ski industry because they develop customers for the larger resorts, according to Sweetser at Ski Maine. Once a kid gets hooked on skiing at Lost Valley, for example, their parents might be willing to drive them to Sunday River. Acknowledging this relationship, some larger resorts offer help to smaller ones. Last year, Saddleback loaned an outdoor snack stand to Eaton Mountain, which was renovating its kitchen.
Smaller mountains still can find it hard to keep up with expenses. When Eugene Kent first bought Eaton Mountain in the early 90s, he'd see up to 400 people on a Saturday. Last season, the ski area sold about 800 tickets total, according to Bickford. The slowdown was partly due to a lack of snow over the last couple years. Most customers didn't know that Eaton had its own snow-making equipment, so they stayed away, Bickford reasons.
Other customers were turned off by Eaton Mountain's appearance. Junk was strewn around the property, Bickford remembers, and the stairs were broken in the swimming pool, which has been dry for the last three years. "That was the biggest complaint of customers ˆ the look," she says. Bickford spent most of last summer removing junk. She plans to fix the pool by next summer, as part of a plan to keep the mountain open year-round.
Kent decided to sell Eaton Mountain in 2005, after a fire destroyed a snow groomer, tools and his mobile home on the 114-acre property ˆ roughly $1 million in damages. He says he was depleted, too, by the death of his wife in 2006. "[The mountain] just didn't feel like home anymore," he says.
(Bickford wouldn't say how much she paid for the mountain, but said it was "far less" than the $800,000 her uncle asked for.)
Thinking locally
Bickford is cautiously optimistic about Eaton Mountain's future. "I think [the success of the business] depends onˆ where I put my money," she says. "I don't want to get into any debt, except for the debt I'm already in."
As the owner of any ski mountain knows, the business depends on snow. Eaton Mountain has six snow guns that are more than 10 years old and take three to four days to cover a slope. Bickford says they'll need to be replaced eventually, but for now, she says, they'll do, since the mountain still hosts a relatively small number of skiers each season.
While some potential vendors were still wary of the business, others have been supportive. A local electrician doing work for the mountain charged his residential rate, and gave Bickford a 50% discount on the $404 bill. Bickford paid the rest with a gift certificate for skiing.
Bickford is keeping the business mostly the same. Lift tickets are still $22 apiece. The main difference: She plans to stay open year-round with new or renovated facilities, and invest any profit back into the business. Additions like mud runs, new campsites and Frisbee golf are relatively cheap to set up, but could bring in extra revenue. Adding another 45 campsites this summer to her current 15 would yield another $3,000 in profit, according to Bickford's business plan. "At this point I'm willing to try almost anything," she says.
But even with new facilities, will customers come? Bickford says Eaton Mountain hardly advertised in years past. With new print and radio advertisements, she predicts, the mountain could bring 1,300 skiers this year, 500 more than last year. To keep costs low, she plans to trade gift certificates for ad space. She's hoping that the new offerings attract local kids, who could remain customers for years.
Bickford's youth is her strength, says Sweetser at Ski Maine. "She can spark the enthusiasm of kids in the area," he says. "She just really needs to focus on the community and get into schools."
Eaton Mountain can be sustainable, so long as Bickford can afford annual improvements. She won't need to spend millions on maintenance, like Sunday River or Sugarloaf, says Sweetser. "[Maintenance] really is scaled to the size of the business," he says. Local customers who pay $22 for a lift ticket at Eaton Mountain won't expect the kind of facilities at bigger resorts, which also charge more. But, Sweetser notes, "if people don't feel improvements are what they expect, they might not come back."
Bickford has made some improvements already, including a new roof and drywall in the lodge. This summer, with an estimated $30,000 profit from the winter season, she plans to buy new equipment for the ski shop and do other maintenance around Eaton Mountain. If there's more money left over, she could renovate the pool and build a playground, which could cost about $20,000.
For now, Bickford is just trying to follow her business plan. Implementing it is harder than she thought. "I basically live here now," she says. "It's kind of fun to see the plans coming into effect, though. To say, 'Well, this is my dream,' and it's actually coming to what I wanted it to be."
Ski area owners across Maine rejoiced at the early snow. Mistie Bickford, who bought Eaton Mountain in August, was feeling overwhelmed. The snow groomer was broken, the lodge was only partly repainted and the new bathrooms weren't complete, so customers were using four port-a-potties outside.
"I learned two weeks after I bought it that I'd never get anything done," she jokes, trudging through snow at the base of the mountain.
At 22 years old, Bickford wants to revive Eaton Mountain, a 40-year old ski area that has struggled financially for years. She bought the business from her uncle, Eugene Kent, just months after receiving a business degree from Thomas College in Waterville. She's relying on a business plan for the mountain that she wrote in college ˆ and relying on her own experience, having worked at the ski area since she was nine years old.
Bickford hopes to make Eaton Mountain profitable this year by adding year-round programs. The business currently offers skiing, snowboarding, tubing, snowmobile racing and motocross, or off-road motorcycle racing. Next summer, she hopes to add paintball, a playground and "mud runs," which involves splashing trucks through mud pits.
Bickford acknowledges that buying the business was a risk. Banks thought so, too. None of the six she approached would lend her money, so she's borrowing money from her mother, Kim, who secured funding by putting a second mortgage on their Waterville home. Bickford hopes to repay the loan in five years. Keeping Eaton Mountain afloat is important, Bickford says, because her family depends on it. Her brother works there and lives in a mobile home on the property. Her mom and her aunt run the kitchen. "This is where I grew up," she says. "This is where the family came together."
She has reason to worry, though. The ski industry is known to be competitive and unpredictable. Small ski areas like Eaton Mountain are especially vulnerable to the high cost of insurance, energy and maintenance. Since the 1960s, as many as 20 small, independently-owned ski mountains in Maine have closed due to financial pressure, estimates Greg Sweetser, executive director of the Ski Maine Association in Portland. These days, owners of small ski areas have to be vigilant about keeping costs down to stay in business.
Adding to Bickford's burden is Eaton Mountain's reputation as a run-down ski area that didn't always pay its bills. "I am finding that a lot of companies won't do business with me because of the Eaton Mountain name," Bickford says. "Even if I say it's under new ownership, because of the name and because I've only been in business for three months, I have a hard time convincing them that I will make payments."
Building a base
Eaton Mountain is one of 22 ski areas in Maine. The big players are Sunday River and Sugarloaf, which saw a combined 783,000 skiers in the 2005-2006 season. Some smaller ski areas are nonprofits run by ski clubs, such as Baker Mountain in Moscow and Quoggy Jo in Presque Isle. About seven independently owned, for-profit ski areas like Eaton Mountain remain, including Lost Valley in Auburn and Hermon Mountain just outside Bangor.
These small ski areas are vital to Maine's ski industry because they develop customers for the larger resorts, according to Sweetser at Ski Maine. Once a kid gets hooked on skiing at Lost Valley, for example, their parents might be willing to drive them to Sunday River. Acknowledging this relationship, some larger resorts offer help to smaller ones. Last year, Saddleback loaned an outdoor snack stand to Eaton Mountain, which was renovating its kitchen.
Smaller mountains still can find it hard to keep up with expenses. When Eugene Kent first bought Eaton Mountain in the early 90s, he'd see up to 400 people on a Saturday. Last season, the ski area sold about 800 tickets total, according to Bickford. The slowdown was partly due to a lack of snow over the last couple years. Most customers didn't know that Eaton had its own snow-making equipment, so they stayed away, Bickford reasons.
Other customers were turned off by Eaton Mountain's appearance. Junk was strewn around the property, Bickford remembers, and the stairs were broken in the swimming pool, which has been dry for the last three years. "That was the biggest complaint of customers ˆ the look," she says. Bickford spent most of last summer removing junk. She plans to fix the pool by next summer, as part of a plan to keep the mountain open year-round.
Kent decided to sell Eaton Mountain in 2005, after a fire destroyed a snow groomer, tools and his mobile home on the 114-acre property ˆ roughly $1 million in damages. He says he was depleted, too, by the death of his wife in 2006. "[The mountain] just didn't feel like home anymore," he says.
(Bickford wouldn't say how much she paid for the mountain, but said it was "far less" than the $800,000 her uncle asked for.)
Thinking locally
Bickford is cautiously optimistic about Eaton Mountain's future. "I think [the success of the business] depends onˆ where I put my money," she says. "I don't want to get into any debt, except for the debt I'm already in."
As the owner of any ski mountain knows, the business depends on snow. Eaton Mountain has six snow guns that are more than 10 years old and take three to four days to cover a slope. Bickford says they'll need to be replaced eventually, but for now, she says, they'll do, since the mountain still hosts a relatively small number of skiers each season.
While some potential vendors were still wary of the business, others have been supportive. A local electrician doing work for the mountain charged his residential rate, and gave Bickford a 50% discount on the $404 bill. Bickford paid the rest with a gift certificate for skiing.
Bickford is keeping the business mostly the same. Lift tickets are still $22 apiece. The main difference: She plans to stay open year-round with new or renovated facilities, and invest any profit back into the business. Additions like mud runs, new campsites and Frisbee golf are relatively cheap to set up, but could bring in extra revenue. Adding another 45 campsites this summer to her current 15 would yield another $3,000 in profit, according to Bickford's business plan. "At this point I'm willing to try almost anything," she says.
But even with new facilities, will customers come? Bickford says Eaton Mountain hardly advertised in years past. With new print and radio advertisements, she predicts, the mountain could bring 1,300 skiers this year, 500 more than last year. To keep costs low, she plans to trade gift certificates for ad space. She's hoping that the new offerings attract local kids, who could remain customers for years.
Bickford's youth is her strength, says Sweetser at Ski Maine. "She can spark the enthusiasm of kids in the area," he says. "She just really needs to focus on the community and get into schools."
Eaton Mountain can be sustainable, so long as Bickford can afford annual improvements. She won't need to spend millions on maintenance, like Sunday River or Sugarloaf, says Sweetser. "[Maintenance] really is scaled to the size of the business," he says. Local customers who pay $22 for a lift ticket at Eaton Mountain won't expect the kind of facilities at bigger resorts, which also charge more. But, Sweetser notes, "if people don't feel improvements are what they expect, they might not come back."
Bickford has made some improvements already, including a new roof and drywall in the lodge. This summer, with an estimated $30,000 profit from the winter season, she plans to buy new equipment for the ski shop and do other maintenance around Eaton Mountain. If there's more money left over, she could renovate the pool and build a playground, which could cost about $20,000.
For now, Bickford is just trying to follow her business plan. Implementing it is harder than she thought. "I basically live here now," she says. "It's kind of fun to see the plans coming into effect, though. To say, 'Well, this is my dream,' and it's actually coming to what I wanted it to be."
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