Can Tech Save Small Ski Resorts From Extinction?

The third piece of that strategy came in the fall of last year: Mogensen bought Black Mountain, the oldest ski area in New Hampshire. He shipped a handful of his team members from their base in Granby, Colorado, to New England. There, they have been focused on improving the point-of-sale software and hardware at the ticket counter and in the lodge.

Mogensen aims to eventually offload the new and improved mountain as a co-op where its skier members can become co-owners, a business model that’s growing popular in Europe. In the meantime, Mogensen is using Black Mountain as a laboratory for the Entabeni approach–where, by the way, all the new hardware, from the point-of-sale systems used for ticketing and concessions to the intake system used by the mountain’s ski school, is built in-house.

The advantage to custom-built hardware allows Entabeni (and now Black Mountain) to iterate on the fly, with a purpose-built approach aimed only at the ski industry and without the extra step of integration. Competing companies, like Skidata, offer similar solutions for a broader customer base including stadiums, amusement parks, and ski resorts. Morgensen’s hope is that the deep dive he’s doing at Black Mountain will result in learnings he and his team can apply to the rest of their ski resort customers.

Geoff Hatheway, president of Magic Mountain ski area in Londonderry, Vermont, first met Mogensen through Indy Pass’ former owner, Doug Fish. Mogensen had pulled a conference together for the independent operators on the Indy Pass at Powder Mountain (now owned by Netflix OG Reed Hastings, who has made headlines with his plans to offer private memberships at the resort). Hatheway says he was immediately taken by Mogensen’s mindset and Entabeni’s ability to tailor its solutions to meet each resort’s specific needs and address its unique pain points.

“We are spending huge sums of money to put a product out on the hill,” says Hatheway, referencing the actual skiing and riding experience from snowmaking to ski school and lift operation. “We don’t have a ton of money to put a product inside the business—software and hardware—which requires a lot of upfront cost.” Entabeni absorbs that upfront cost for its resort partners and then takes a piece of the action (a single-digit percentage, and less for nonprofit resorts) on the backside. “They are in it with us. If we do better, they do better.”

Plus, says Hatheway, Mogenson’s overall ethos resonates, in that he’s all about the small independent operator and puts skin in the game as one, too. “Having those guys show up in our parking lot, drink some beers after work, have a little cookout to get to know all the players at Entabeni is part of the personal approach that makes skiing a unique business,” he says. Magic Mountain has weekly calls with the Entabeni team to talk strategy and possible software and hardware upgrades. “Erik takes that personal approach. The vans are one side of it: that he basically comes and lives with you for a week or two.”

Who Wants to Scale, Anyway?

Janlu Pretorius has worked at Entabeni as an engineer for three years. He is a member of the team that recently moved temporarily to New Hampshire to work at Black Mountain.

“The hands-on approach is fundamentally different from what a lot of engineers experience,” he says. “That short feedback loop is remarkable from an engineering perspective. You can iterate a lot faster and be a lot more dynamic in your iterations. It sparks creativity. When I’m at the mountain now, and looking at the slopes, I can imagine all of the things we can apply and integrate into Entabeni as a whole.”