Parlor Skis is a custom ski business based in Boston's "Eastie" neighborhood; it was launched in 2010 in an old funeral home. While many sporting goods manufacturers claim they can give you exactly what you're looking for, Parlor goes several steps further. Every single pair of skis is one of a kind, custom designed according to a skier's height, weight, ski style and preferences; the skis are then sawed, sanded, and pieced together. The result is a completely tailored piece of equipment, right down to the graphics and colors that grace the final product.

Mark Wallace and his cofounders Pete Endres and Jason Epstein are all Williams College graduates. The three met on the racing slopes during school. After college, Wallace took to the competitive international racing circuit, while Endres and Epstein found jobs in the "real world." Still, skiing was never far from their minds.

"We realized that there was a gap out there in the market in terms of a product that was really tailored to the rider," Mark says. "Integrating people with their product is core to what we do." Endres, who was also a ski coach at Boston College, elaborates: "When you buy from a ski shop, you are trying to find the best mass-produced product for your skiing style. We custom-make the core of the ski to fit you. Our product complements skiers." But it was the input from customers that was most important. Before Parlor Skis earned its first dollar, the three entrepreneurs took their idea through four years of process and product testing. Friends and family sales and "demo days" on the slopes gave the trio valuable feedback to tweak processes and product. "I think that we have built this business in a low-risk way," Mark reflects, "because we test things all the time. Testing and then tweaking, then testing is a great way to de-risk the business. We have also really controlled our growth, which helps."

Parlor Skis also holds "shop nights," where the community is welcome to tour the workshop and talk to the guys face to face. "We are learning about our customers every day," Mark says. "When I look back at our first customer profiles, I realize that we were fairly wrong about who was going to buy our skis and what they cared about. For example, we thought that people were going to love that they were handmade. [It] turns out this made them nervous about quality. . .. Who knew! That's why we test."

By its fifth year in business, Parlor was pulling in small profits, yet the endeavor had already seen some setbacks. "We failed trying to get our skis into brick-and-mortar stores," recalls Mark, "[when] we thought that they would love the product. It turns out that they don't understand it and that they wanted a higher margin than we could provide." Instead, customers were able to find the company through events, or on Facebookwhere Parlor Skis first launched or via the website.

Mark urges aspiring entrepreneurs to climb the summit and take the plunge. "Get out there and do it. Fail fast and cheaply. Then keep going. Always be learning, [even though] that is a really hard thing to do. We all think we are really smart and right all the time; it's not always true. The flipside of that is people give you BAD advice so you have to know who not to listen to. Basically, it comes down to judgment . . . and a bit of luck."

Critical Thinking Questions

A.Identify some ways in which the Parlor Skis founders' collective experience helped them start their own business.

B.In what ways do you think testing and experimentation helped the Parlor Skis entrepreneurs grow their business?

C.Suppose you started a business and your original assumptions about your target customer base turned out to be incorrect? How would you deal with this setback?