East Coast Alpine

I was passing by the old Ski Market store on Comm Ave in Boston and saw signs in the window that East Coast Alpine will be opening in that location in September. While I'm happy to see that a ski store will be opening at that location again, does anybody have any feedback on this shop? Their website says that they're based in Danvers, MA.

http://www.eastcoastalpine.com/index.html

I hit one of the stores in Danvers up this past spring when I was kinda sorta looking for boots. I currently wear 27.5s and their 'master fitter' said I was too small and needed more room like a 28.5. Now on the other hand I have a bit more than 2 fingers in a shell fit which is almost too much room. Needless to say I didn't stay there long looking at boots. Price wise in late March they were much higher than places up around Sunday.

Know nothing about them, but heard yesterday they, along with Eastern Boarder, are the primary retail folks this year at the Boston ski show.

I bought new boots from them last year - they had to be special ordered after they sized me up. They failed to order the liner I had specifically requested. Start to finish, took close to two months to get a boot that should have taken one week to get.

The boots ended up being too big - too big to the extent that I had a minor ankle sprain from my foot swishing around in the oversized boot. Before coming to the "too big" conclusion, I had major issues getting time with their staff for bootfitting - they seemed to be understaffed or too busy to deal with me. Not sure if this had to do with ironing out kinks having the new second store up in Danvers or what. In the end, I did manage to get a couple visits of bootfitting time from them - BUT - they were very distracted - more interested in keeping an eye on potential shoplifters than servicing me or other customers.

In the end, I had to buy a completely new pair of boots - full size smaller, and fit like a glove. East Coast Alpine would not return my phone calls or messages left from personal visits. They fit me into the too-large boot - they should have rectified the issue.

Very bitter taste left from my experience with them, along with a lightly used pair of expensive high end boots I can't use.

Thanks for the responses. Looks like they're not the place for bootwork. It's an old saying in bootfitting that you can make a small boot bigger but you can't make a big boot smaller. It also seems that they are in the same mold as SkiMarket -- beginner to intermediate friendly, overpriced and present at the Boston ski expo. Despite that, I hope that they succeed at their new location. The old SkiMarket location is an easy walk from my office and it was easy for me to get my ski fix -- and find other people to talk skiing with in August.

Is Wilderness House still there? They used to have a good boot fitter.

wa-loaf said:

Is Wilderness House still there? They used to have a good boot fitter.

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He's gone if you are referring to the same guy that did my boot work 6-7 years ago.

^ Seems that way although the Wilderness House is still in the same spot up the street. They used to be affiliated with Joe Jones then Bob Smith (or was it the other way around). Now, it's just Wilderness House but they have a branches near Sunday River, the Loaf and Scarborough. http://www.wildernesshouse.com/

wa-loaf said:

Is Wilderness House still there? They used to have a good boot fitter.

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Gordon Hay used to work for them. He used to be the best boot fitter at Killington before his love life relocated him down to metro-Boston. He now has a sports orthotic business called ALine. http://www.aline.com/

I passed by Wilderness House yesterday. It was shut and there was a sign in the window saying they were "temporarily closed for retocking" (sic). There was stuff in the store but not much. I really hope it's temporary.

Not a good sign for Wilderness house - their facebook page has someone complaining that they haven't been paid in 52 days after being told paychecks would be delayed a few days.

It sucks cause there are not a lot of good stores in the Boston area, and Ski Market did fill a void even if they had crappy service. EastCoast will, I just hope their service level goes up from what I saw in Danvers.

Not a good sign at all. I used to go in there all the time to chat with one of the shop guys -- and have skis mounted. He said that he and a bunch of the guys working there bought the place from Joe Jones and were running it themselves. The place didn't have much stuff then (this was early this year) and I was asking him if they were going to carry AT stuff. He was saying they would be gearing up for this season and would have more stuff in. He was talking about some difficulty with stocking Black Diamond products because of BD policies. The impression I got was that credit was tight. I hope they get their house in order and open up.

You're right. Boston needs a good ski store. judging from what I've read here, EC Alpine has to step up big time. The stories here about their bootfitter are troubling. If Widerness goes under, only REI and EMS are left in the city. Not much of a choice.

snowmonster said:

The impression I got was that credit was tight. I hope they get their house in order and open up.

You're right. Boston needs a good ski store. judging from what I've read here, EC Alpine has to step up big time. The stories here about their bootfitter are troubling. If Widerness goes under, only REI and EMS are left in the city. Not much of a choice.

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Why does Boston need a good ski store? The reason why ski shops keep closing is that everyone is ordering online. If Boston really needed a good ski shop, there would be demand for one and one would be profitable. While I am no longer from the Boston area, I can certainly vouch for not supporting my local shops with gear purchases. But when we as consumers only visit shops for service, it is not entirely appropriate for us to be disappointed when they go out of business. And I use the collective "we" to mean the majority of skiers, not any one in particular. But I would be surprised if any regular contributor to this forum has not purchased gear online.

It is a tough time to be a small business, especially retail, especially retail in which your merchandise is very expensive and only sells during certain times of the year. That usually entails a small business loan to pay vendors on their terms (typically 30 days from the invoice). Don't pay the bills, you don't get any more gear and get sent to collections. Hard to pay the bills if you can not obtain a small business loan to do so, especially when banks have tightened up on small businesses in tough markets.

If East Coast Alpine is the same shop that I went to when I lived on the North Shore, they did not seem to be much of a step up from Ski Market (which is ironic considering they were right down the road from one). I only went to the shop once to have a pair of 8000s mounted. I came in when they were closing and they mounted them for me in five minutes while I waited. I received good service but I have read from others that have not. Who knows.

riverc0il said:

Why does Boston need a good ski store?

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Good question. Conventional wisdom suggests that stores in metro areas are terrible and you're better off getting services at slopeside/access road shops and gear from online stores. This is true. But, specialized ski shops in metro areas do provide one good service to the sport: getting beginners and intermediates into skiing. From organizing bus trips to selling cheap intro gear to providing tuning and other maintenance services, these stores make it easier for the ordinary city dweller to participate in the sport (and hopefully move up a level and become an avid skier).

I realize that it's hard to put a number on this and it can be argued that the same benefits can be derived from having a well-stocked and staffed ski department at REI or City Sports (But there's really no incentive for them to push skiing over basketball, is there?). The fact that ski stores in Boston keep closing shows that it is not economically feasible. But, in an ideal world, you'd like to have a ski store in a huge population area to feed people into the sport. Perhaps the model should be a brick and mortar ski store with an online presence. I don't know how profitable Evogear is but my understanding is that they have both a store in Seattle and sell a lot of gear online.

Downtown used to have Bob Smiths right in the financial district. I worked there for a year and was the ski tech. They did a pretty good business and had a few of the big bank officers as regular customers. Not sure why they closed. Maybe taking over Wilderness House did them in? Sounds like no one has much luck in that location.

Wilderness House is done. Ba-bye. My understanding is that they were under capitalized and that's not a good way to start off. One bad winter (or no inventory when people are ready to buy) and the situation only gets worse. I think Ski Market's demise was years of mis-management (not closing poor performing locations, paying a lot to the family who owned it but weren't necessarily doing the work, not adapting to the changing marketplace, no internet componnent, etc) and finally the creditors said enough.

I still think there is a place for a specialty store inside of 128 or in the city IF done right (see Ski Market and Wilderness House issues above). There are enough skiers to make things work both on the retail and service side and there is still a feeling that if you wait to get to the mountain to buy what you want/need, you'll pay too much. The question is - is there anyone out there who can do it right and has access to the necessary capital?

Wilderness House is done. Ba-bye. My understanding is that they were under capitalized and that's not a good way to start off. One bad winter (or no inventory when people are ready to buy) and the situation only gets worse. I think Ski Market's demise was years of mis-management (not closing poor performing locations, paying a lot to the family who owned it but weren't necessarily doing the work, not adapting to the changing marketplace, no internet componnent, etc) and finally the creditors said enough.

I still think there is a place for a specialty store inside of 128 or in the city IF done right (see Ski Market and Wilderness House issues above). There are enough skiers to make things work both on the retail and service side and there is still a feeling that if you wait to get to the mountain to buy what you want/need, you'll pay too much. The question is - is there anyone out there who can do it right and has access to the necessary capital?

Sad to hear that about Wilderness House. From their website, it seemed that they had branches in Maine. I wonder if those were affected too. From my random conversations with one of the guys that worked there, he talked about how he and a few guys bought the shop from Joe Jones. He did say that money was short but that they were getting ready to make a big run of things for this season. One observation about the Ski Market and Wilderness House was that they had a lot of floor space in those shops. Perhaps cutting down significantly on their floor space would have made the margins more bearable.

my understanding is that all wilderness house operations are gone. the company was being run out of ME.

Are there any other options for shops that are open now to check out ski boots in the Boston area?