Shred Index is designed to help skiers and snowboarders make a good decision on which resort they choose on where to shred. It is is the most recent website I have been working on. With almost instant navigation by selecting the filters needed for there trip or desired long-term living.
I've been thinking a lot in my life about what I want to do. I have always wanted to get into the ski industry and always wondered how I can help it or add to it. Snowboarding and more recently skiing have been a big part of life and passion. In my recent years, I have lived in many ski resorts and worked for a couple of companies including Mike Weigele Helicopter Skiing, Whistler Blackcomb and up north in Hokkaido Japan. Some of the ideas I had was about getting into the ski development and some other extra product work with skies or drones.
Recently my job changed and I'm currently working as a website developing, which I'm finally starting to enjoy.
Want to know how I came up with the Idea for another Ski Resort Website?
Keep reading.
Yes, another one!
Again, Yes! It is such a competitive market. However, I believe this Ski Resort Website to be different by two main factors.
1. Instant side by side comparisons of ski resorts with whatever element or category you choose.
2. Focus on, liveability and visiting costs.
and a third is :
3. Ease of use
After listening to a podcast by peter levels. I was hugely inspired. I am not sure why exactly, maybe its because this guy comes from music background like I did and similarly, he produced drum n bass. Drum and bass is Awesome! I was thinking who is this guy who is producing drum and bass and making other businesses. His talk was very inspirational to me. So I checked his music as the artist 'Document One' then checked out his website digital Nomads. Com. Boom. Then it hit me I realize that they need to be a website similar to this for ski resorts and the ski community.
It was interesting to me because I had never been a digital nomad before until recently. It was the first website I used as an application and a tool to find out what I wanted. Most websites out there either sell something or is a struggle to find out information you want by searching for it. Which is time-consuming and boring.
I want to the website where I can the ski resorts I'm what's best to go to. At the time of this idea. I was currently living in Whistler British Columbia. where I had previously lived 6 years before.
The difference was this time, is that it had become so popular and prices on literally everything had gone up dramatically. I was thinking where is the next best place to go. However, trying to find a new place is very difficult.
How can I find a cheap place with a huge amount of powder with no crazy crowds?
My guess is that it is most likely going to be in Japan. Since I have lived in there before in Niseko, similarly the prices are hyper fluctuated.
After peeping through at nomadlist.com I saw that there was one ski resort Bansko. I was considering moving there, highly. But after doing some more thorough and time-consuming research, I found the snow conditions are really horrid. It doesn't receive much snow at all and because I've already done five seasons before in 'high-end' resorts, I doubtt come out to my 'dream' standard.
The time to travel to a ski resort is usually extensive and awkward, due to the fact they are located on or near mountains in remote places in freezing conditions. Also, note about how much luggage you have. Lugging around a pair of skis and boots and heavy clothes is never fun unless you do it for fashion purposes.
So once you have arrived, already 1 grand down in expenses, tired and got yourself checked in (where you had to pay $30 for parking per day). To find out in the morning that your 5-star resort has no fresh snow. Even though it snowed 30 cm that night, all the locals have chowed through it like pac-man.
This hasn't happened to me exactly, but I can see that it has happened to some people.
I hope that I can help some people to make the right decision for exactly what they want and truly get value for their time and effort. So over the next month, I am working making the Minimum Viable product with some basic functionality. This MVP is just to get some users to have a play and see what people like and don't. Get some customer feedback, and find out what's really important to them.
You can help by testing it out and giving feedback. Maybe even add a few resorts to the database in your Area?
Any questions?
Shoot me a message if you have any ideas or would like to discuss anything.
-Tom