Most students at Colorado School of Mines know Bent Gate Mountaineering as the only ski and board shop in Golden, but on the north end of town, about as far as one can go on highway 93, there is a little ski shop called Powder7. Though Powder7 operates mostly online, they keep all of their inventory at their Golden location, including a small display room where they show off a fraction of their entire gear selection. Although the display room is small, they are always willing to bring merchandise from the storage room to the display room to show customers if they ask. Additionally, they have no qualms about selling equipment in person.
Katie Basse, the customer service and operations manager at Powder7, was glad to tell “The Oredigger” about the shop. “We are a still a small business,” said Basse. “We have four employees. We have been in operation since 2007, and we have been in this location for three years. Before that we were in Lakewood. Originally we started out of the owner’s garage.”
Basse explained that the owners, Jordan Jones and Amy Dannwolf, married and moved to Colorado from Boston and New Jersey. They started Powder7 because of a general love for the outdoors. Beside owning Powder7, “Jordan is a professional triathlete and Amy puts on races and a few triathlons in Golden, for example the Turkey trot,” said Basse.
Originally, Jones was just selling demo skis when he found that there was a huge demand for demo skis in not only Colorado, but also across the country. Basse continued, “[In] a lot of places, especially in the midwest and the northeast, the demo quality is really low, so we can supply high quality demos across the country. Soon we started shipping to Canada and now we ship all over the world.” A large portion of Powder7’s international sales go to Australia and New Zealand.
When asked what they do in the summer, Basse said, “Still throughout the summer we are mainly ski and snowboard oriented. You would be surprised there is a demand for skis and snowboards all summer long.” A large reason Powder7 has not branched out very much and has tried to sell summer sports equipment is to keep a specialized focus. “It’s nice that we specialize in skis and snowboards and we all ski and snowboard. We try and use everything we have. We can focus and really know what we are talking about.”
Amidst this focus, Powder7 has been expanding their backcountry gear selection. Additionally, they hope to offer services such as ski tunes and waxes next ski season, making it hard to say what lies in store for this promising company.
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