Clearance — put this on sale now

Marked down as below, the block cost $20,996 and would fetch $27,657 — an average 27% off the ticket, still $6,661 clear of cost. Only four small lines genuinely need to go below cost, and they write off $247 in total.

There are roughly five weeks of trading left. Ex-rental carbon poles sold 20 pairs at $97 this season — more than every new pole combined — so the appetite for discounted gear is already proven. This is stock that will otherwise sit until next June.

Round 1 — start now, all above cost

Round 2 — late September, and only these

Too much stock, and none of it is what sells

The shop is holding 986 units worth $30,948 at cost — $62,218 at retail, against roughly $35,000 of annual sales. That is about a year and a half of stock, and $22,000 of it sits in skis, boots and poles that turn over a handful of times a season.

Meanwhile six proven sellers are at zero — including stickers, the highest-volume product in the shop at 148 units across two seasons. The money is tied up in exactly the wrong places.

Sold out — reorder now

Dead stock — stop buying

The buy — what the numbers actually support

What the stocktake changed

Category performance

The door grew faster than the till

Had this season's guests spent at last year's rate of $2.08 each, the shop would have taken $29,499. It took $25,041 — $4,458 that walked past the counter. Across a full year at last season's rate the shortfall is nearer $6,000.

The stocktake explains a good part of it. Stickers, children's gloves and lipbalm — the impulse lines that convert a walk-past into a sale — have been at zero for some or all of the season. The rest is placement: Fun Zone families are the fastest-growing group on the hill, and if they don't pass the counter, no order fixes it.

Wax is a workshop store, not a retail range

The stocktake holds 220 units of wax across 121 lines, worth $1,684 — every klister, kick wax, glide wax, brush and kork in the catalogue. Counter sales are trivial: 32 units and $686 across two seasons.

But the ski servicing that consumes it is growing fast — 75 jobs and $2,150 ex-GST over the two seasons, up from $791 last season to $1,422 this season, an 80% rise, with 47 jobs booked in 2026 against 30 in all of 2025. This range is feeding the waxing bench, not the shelf. Judge it on service consumption, not retail sales, and don't cut it on the counter numbers.

How solid is this

What to do, in order

1. Start the clearance this week
   394 units, $20,996 of cost, marked at the prices in the table above. It recovers $27,657 — cost plus $6,661 — and frees the shelf and the capital before next season's buy. Only $247 of it ever needs to go below cost, and not until late September.
   Frees ~$21,000 of tied-up stock
2. Get stickers back on the counter this week
   148 units across two seasons, 52 this season, none in stock. Cheapest margin in the shop and the fastest thing on this list to fix. Order 150.
   Days, not weeks — ~5 weeks of season left
3. Settle what the 42 junior X-1 boots are
   21 size lines, no RRP, no wholesale price, two pairs sold in two seasons. Either they are ex-rental stock on the wrong sheet or they are the largest dead holding in the shop. Nothing else in the hardgoods plan can be sized until that is known.
   Blocks the hardgoods decision
4. Fill the sold-out impulse lines
   Sunscreen lipbalm (one left, 48 sold), children's Gracefull and Firestorm gloves (both at zero across every size), and the t-shirt and sweatshirt size runs. These are the lines the falling attach rate is being lost on.
   Order now if it can land inside three weeks
5. Stop buying hardgoods entirely for now
   $22,000 of the $30,948 is in skis, boots and poles, and every one of those lines carries more than three years of cover — X-8 classic boots at 6.5 years and $3,636, Force 7 poles at 7 years. Sell the position down and move to special-order before another pair is bought.
   Largest block of tied-up capital
6. Answer the Snow Farm Sunglasses question
   Two till buttons, one physical product line, no matching stocktake entry. If they are the same thing, retire a button and the "47 units vanished" finding disappears with it. If the branded pair is a real discontinued line, it sold 47 units and deserves reinstating.
   Five minutes with the shop
7. Check the Muster merch shelf before the race
   The stocktake sheet for it is unused, so we genuinely do not know what is there. The till says 106 units sold this season and roughly $2,380 still to come — most of it in September, not on race day.
   This weekend
8. Keep the stocktake going, and add stock to the platform
   This report only works because someone counted. The weekly sales columns can be dropped — the till already has that, more accurately — but the Available count is what turns sales history into an order. Longer term it belongs in the platform alongside the rental fleet so it doesn't depend on a spreadsheet.
   Before the 2027 buy