This is the case study

BURTON SNOWBOARDS CASE STUDY

Burton Snowboards: Building a Sport
This case is about snowboard manufacturer Burton Snowboards and the problems facing both the company
and the snowboarding industry in general since its peak period due to declining participation in the sport of
snowboarding.
BACKGROUND
In 1977 at the age of 23, Jake Burton Carpenter founded Burton Snowboards in Manchester, Vermont with a
$20,000 inheritance. Carpenter first became interested in snowboarding when he received a Snurfer for
Christmas in the late 1960s. The Snurfer was essentially two skis bound together with a rope for steering.
Although the Snurfer was never a commercial success, Carpenter never forgot the product and it became the
basis for the Burton snowboard. Working out of his garage in the mid-70's, Carpenter began developing safe
and manageable snowboards in earnest. He had a vision of bringing his passion for snowboarding to the world.
Carpenter began shaping snowboards out of wood and attaching rubber foot straps to them as primitive
bindings. The early years were rough. He sold fewer than 1,500 boards in his first three years in business.
Snowboard devotees did not fit into the typical image of alpine sports. The snowboarding way of life rebelled
against the more sophisticated way of skiing, and skiers did not easily accept this new culture on their slopes.
The two cultures contrasted each other in several ways including how they spoke, acted, and their entire style
of clothing. Snowboarders embraced the punk and hip-hop look into their style. Snowboarding came to
represent risk-taking, rebellion, and youth versus its dull older brother, skiing.
The big break for snowboarding came in 1983 when Vermont’s Stratton Mountain became the first ski resort to
allow snowboarding. Carpenter sent employees out to more than 300 ski resorts to lobby to allow boarders on
their hills. Carpenter’s vision has succeeded. Burton Snowboards has been one of the leading forerunners in the
snowboard industry for the last 40 years and has directly influenced today's modern sport of snowboarding.
Burton snowboarding has grown to be the world's leading snowboard maker, doing business in 35 countries
with offices in Australia, Austria, Canada, California, China, Japan, and Republic of Korea as well as its
headquarters in Burlington, Vermont. As a privately held company, Burton sales are not reported, but their
estimated annual revenue is believed to reach $250 million.
THE SNOWBOARDING INDUSTRY - FROM FRINGE TO FULL THROTTLE
From the mid-1980s onward, snowboarding achieved worldwide attention and acceptance. The International
Olympic Committee and the International Ski Federation first accepted snowboarding as a medal sport in the
1998 Winter Olympics, held in Nagano, Japan. According to the National Sporting Goods Association, in 2004
snowboarders represented more than 31% of all ski passes and were the fastest-growing part of the ski
industry. There were 6.6 million snowboarders in the United States in 2004, up from 2.1 million boarders 10
years earlier. While snowboarding grew in popularity, alpine skiing was declining.
Those were the years of the sport’s tremendous growth spurts, a growth that was fueled by quantum leaps in
equipment innovation, riding style and terrain progression. The sport was new, brash, and creative.
Snowboarders were flying on top of the snow as skiers hacked through it in hops turns. Talented young riders
re-imagined every terrain roll or drop as a natural feature to spin or flip. Snowboarding surged into the
mainstream as skiers looked on in horror as snowboarders were slowly accepted at ski resorts across the
country and rampaged onto groomed ski runs where they were once banned.
During those early years, snowboarding also became a force in popular culture, beamed into living rooms
across the nation and depicted on billboards as the future of the Snowsports industry. As snowboarding went
from a fringe pursuit of a couple hundred misfits to a high-growth recreational activity, an industry sprang up
around it as mainstream brands embraced the raw inertia of the sport.

MATURITY & WARNING SIGNS
But like skateboarding or surfing before it, that tremendous wave of growth was about to wash over the sport,
leaving it looking out for the next swell of innovation to drive it forward. Participation in snowboarding has
been in steady decline ever since it peaked in 2004. In the lifecycle of a sport, snowboarding has hit its version
of the midlife crisis years. The youthful exuberance and wild experimentation of the 1980s and ’90s is gone.
It’s hard not to see snowboarding as a once-rebellious teenager, now turned middle-aged nine-to-fiver. That
passionate energy of the early days has waned, and the number of people snowboarding has steadily dwindled
over the last decade, and the number of days a snowboarder makes it to the ski hill has also declined according
to the National Ski Area Association.
By the early 2000s, the rapid growth had flagged. As the sport that was once an unstoppable growth engine
sputtered, snowboarding did not handle maturity well. For the first four years of the 2000s, snowboarding’s
participation rate plateaued at 2.3 million snowboarders per winter, according to data from the National Ski
Area Association. There would be better years throughout the early 2000s, but the long-term trend line was
tailing off into gradual decline. The growth decline was not unusual for a relatively new sport, but it was
jarring. And deeper within that data are even more troubling trends. The rate of snowboarders going to the
resort multiple times per year has also declined substantially, according to the Snowsports Industry
Association. In the 2007–08 winter, 86 percent of snowboarders went to the hill two or more times, but that
declined to 72 percent by 2016-17. It is expected that if nothing is done to remedy this situation, this trend of
declining participation in snowboarding will continue. Correspondingly, snowboard sales dropped from
30–40% annual gains in the mid-2000s, to just 4% for each of the last three years.
Identifying what halted snowboarding’s growth is an imprecise endeavor. Skiing certainly received a new
breath of life from snowboarding, which introduced wider ski shapes and style to a sport that had grown
stagnant. In this way snowboarding was a victim of its own success. Its brilliant innovations were co-opted by
skiing in a way that almost guaranteed skiing’s resurgence. In many ways, that is snowboarding’s dilemma.
The sport that started as a brash challenge to the status quo is suddenly populated by the very people it revolted
against - the weekend warriors spending too much on single-day lift tickets, the once-a-year rider who treats a
trip to the ski hill more like an occasional activity than a core sport.
THE COMPETITION
While today there are still several snowboard manufacturers, not to mention companies that produce
snowboarding apparel and accessories, as a signal of snowboarding’s precarious position many of the pioneers
of the sport have left or sit on the fringes. There has also been consolidation in the industry through merger and
acquisition activity. One estimate still places Burton’s current market share at 40% followed by K2 (which
acquired Ride) at 31%, Rossignol with 4%, Salomon with 6%, Lamar with 7%, and Gnu with 3%.,
PRODUCT LINE & PRICING
Burton remains the biggest name in the snowboarding industry, not only as the pioneer, but as a trendsetter for
snowboard designs that are constantly changing. Currently, boards are becoming longer (for better landings),
are trending toward unidirectional styles (rather than the blunt nosed boards that can ride in both directions),
and now have more side cuts and narrower stances than in the past. Burton has the product line with the
greatest depth and breadth with racing, free riding, park, and pipe boards. Burton’s line appeals to novice as
well as professional boarders, with retail list prices for beginner, intermediate and expert snowboards that can
range from $300 to $1500. In addition to boards, Burton offers an assortment of apparel, accessories,
protective gear, bags, boots, bindings, and goggles for men, women as well as kids.

PROMOTION & DISTRIBUTION EFFORTS
Burton primarily utilizes print advertisements in such specialty magazines as Snowboarder and Transworld
SNOWboarding. Burton also sponsors riders - an important promotional tool and vital to the sport’s success.
Burton sponsors more than 100 riders worldwide at different levels. The top level of sponsorship consists of
riders that are among the best in the world. These team members are often role models for young boarders.
Burton also sponsors snowboarding events such as the U.S. and Canadian Open Snowboarding
Championships. Other promotional items include posters and stickers.
Burton has been very loyal to the distributors that have helped them build the business. Burton's primary
business continues to be driven by independent Burton reps who distribute Burton products to approximately
4350 authorized specialty retailers located in various cities around the world. Recently, there has been
increasing pressure to offer Burton boards and accessories through national sporting good chains.
THE MAIN ISSUE - DEMOGRAPHICS
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Burton and the entire snowboarding industry is demographics
(characteristics of human populations such as age or income used specially to identify markets). According to
figures in Snowboarding Business magazine, snowboarding is primarily a sport engaged in by younger, male
participants. 82% of participants are male, 18% female. The average age of snowboard riders is 23.3 years. The
big numbers are in the 13 to 17 age group (30.7%) and in the 18 to 24 age group (46.7%.).
Critics say snowboarding as a sport became insular and exclusionary, catering to primarily young white male
participants, and failing to broaden the activity beyond the upper middle class. Female participation has also
dropped. Meanwhile, generational change is disrupting the industry as well. Millennials are less committed to
snowboarding than aging Baby Boomers, who are slowly cycling out of the industry.
It has now been realized that this increasingly young white male core of the sport that has been the seemingly
sole focus of snowboarding, has turned out to be an unstable demographic on which to build an industry. When
you narrow down the marketing focus to the 14-year-old boy and that person is fickle, it is inevitable that the
simple inertia of a sport that was so new and growing so rapidly would at some point during maturity lose
some momentum. It should be no surprise given the circumstances that the number of snowboarders has begun
to thin.
THE FUTURE OF THE INDUSTRY & THE COMPANY?
In many ways, the snowboarding industry has come full circle. Like a rebellious teen who bucks authority, but
then eventually grows up and follows in his or her parents’ footsteps, snowboarding is now in some ways the
mirror image of the ski industry that it defied. Snowboarding has changed, it’s a little older, the hair’s a little
grayer, and yesterday’s radical might just be today’s conservative. The industry has hit a point where the
participation numbers are down, interest has waned, and it isn’t able to support itself like it used to. Change
can be scary, especially when an industry is led by companies that aren’t prepared for it.
Burton Snowboards have been the industry leader to so many people for so long. They are the biggest
company and have undoubtedly done so much for the snowboarding industry, but they are not sustainable in
their present form. This makes them a beacon for hope or a target for despair depending on who you ask as the
times change. A complete overhaul and revamping of Burton’s current marketing plan may go a long way in
ensuring future survival for themselves, and the snowboarding industry in general.

here are the questions

Part 1: Case Summary
Briefly summarize the key facts presented in the case. List just the major pieces of information (15-20)
presented in the case that you need to consider. Present just the most important facts with no room for
lengthy explanations. Only this section can be done in point form. All subsequent sections require
complete sentences and paragraphs.

Part 2: Major/Minor Case Problem Identification
Clearly identify the primary issue or major problem of the case, and any secondary issues or minor
problems that are connected to or contributing to the major problem.

Part 3: Inferences
List 2-3 intelligent suppositions called inferences - evidence-based assumptions drawn from case facts -
looking at the evidence and coming to conclusions that have not been expressed specifically in words
(“reading between the lines”). Implicit deductions rather than explicit case information.

Part 4: Recommended Alternative Solutions
Conclude your case by making recommendations as to the marketing courses of action or strategies that
your client must take to resolve any major and minor problems identified in Part 2.
Be sure to indicate to your client not only what needs to be done, but also be explicit as to how they should
go about implementing your recommendations.
Several possible solutions must be recommended to solve the problems identified in Part 2, beginning with
all solutions related to:
The 4Ps Marketing Mix (Product - Ch.8, Price - Ch.9, Place - Ch.10, Promotion - Ch. 11-14).
The 4Cs (the Customer or target market you are going after - Ch. 3 and 6, Competition, Company or
Climate - Ch.3).
Other (solutions that do not fit neatly into any of the above categories).
Maintain Status Quo if applicable (do nothing, just keep doing what you are doing).
Recommended solutions should be as specific and detailed as possible, as well as realistically
implementable. If your client were to implement your recommendations, would they be successful? These
recommendations should also be ranked hierarchically starting from the most urgent that the client needs
to address first, to the least urgent.
Your written strategic marketing plan needs to be composed in such a manner that clearly and concisely
communicates to the reader all required components. Use of proper writing conventions such as correct
spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and sentence structure will help to clarify your work and
make it more understandable. Proofing and editing will ensure that the document is completely free of
errors and polished to a professional and high standard.