“I get about 60 days of skiing in each year,” says the man whose business card says he is Chief Product Tester for Showdown Ski Area, located eight miles south of Neihart, Montana. The title matches the man’s skiing lifestyle, though George Willett’s more formal title is president and general manager.

Willett, 66, is old school, and so is his resort. Showdown, located in the Lewis and Clark National Forest in the Little Belt Mountains, celebrated its 70th year in 2006. Willett has been running Showdown since he quit working as a CPA in the construction industry in 1972. A year after that, in 1973, he and his partner, Ted Cogswell, bought the place. Cogswell, who owns an insurance company, has no hand in the day-to-day operations of the ski area, but Willett says he “supplies a lot of good advice.”

Showdown opened in 1936 and came to life in the 1940s when a group of former 10th Mountain Division members from Neihart came back from World War II and constructed buildings on the site, then added rope tows. That club-style operation ran until 1957, when Ski Lift Incorporated was formed by the Great Falls Ski Club and several area businessmen. The shareholders ran the area until Willett and Cogswell purchased the majority of the shares.

Willett was born in Zortman, Montana, where his grandfather was a gold miner. His family worked there until the mine was broke, then moved to Great Falls. He and his wife, Margie (who also works at Showdown), live at the ski area. They have three children—ages 44, 43 and 27—along with seven grandchildren. But Showdown is not exactly a family operation. “My kids worked with me until I ran them off,” Willett says laughing. “My boy, Charlie, is studying graphic arts at Montana State, and he did the graphics for the website and some print stuff for us.”

Willett refers to Showdown as “your basic local ski area” and “a paint-and-fix operation.” With three fixed-grip chairs (one triple, two doubles) and one surface conveyor, 35 trails, 1,400 feet of vertical, and 640 acres, Showdown will never be Big Sky, and that is one reason for its continued success. Showdown’s 1,700–2,700 passholders make up 25 percent to 30 percent of the business; the rest come via day ticket purchases. Willett estimates that 35 percent of Showdown’s visitors take lessons.

The majority of the mountains’ clients are locals, but some come from as far away as southern Canada, eastern Montana, and North Dakota because Showdown is such a great economical option. Day tickets are just $33; season passes run $390 to $430, depending on when they are purchased.

“We don’t try to keep up with the Joneses,” Willett says candidly. “We are a feeder area and we try to keep the debt paid down, so in good years we do things to improve the place and in other years we get by. The Big Guy takes care of us with snowfall (20 feet annually and no snowmaking). We’ve had probably two years where snow has been a disaster. It doesn’t take a lot of snow to ski the mountain.”


The Family & Friends Plan
Customer service is at the heart of Willett’s business philosophy. “I think that’s paid off over the years. Families are comfortable bringing their kids up or putting them on the bus,” he says. “Our job is to take them when they come down the road and send them home with a bigger smile than they came with. From the parking lot to the ski school to the kitchen to the lifts, that’s our primary goal.” Showdown trains its employees to be friendly. “We hire people who smile,” Willett adds. “We had one lift op who worked here for nine years. He started off shy and by the time he left us he was singing Christmas carols to the lift line.”

But it’s not just smiling faces and ample snow that do the trick. Willett says Showdown stays within itself, not trying to be an overnight area, and making the best of who they are. Programs that cater to families and teens are at the forefront of their marketing effort. “Teens are difficult to please, but they are an important part of the future of our business,” he says. “Our neck of the woods is a big team-sport area, so we market to a group who doesn’t take part in those team sports, because they have time to do other things like ski and snowboard.”

One major factor in Showdown’s success is its Ski PE program, which boasts more than 5,000 kids each season. Beginning after Christmas on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, schools descend on Showdown from as far away as 300 miles, some leaving as early as 4 a.m. and returning home at 9 p.m. Daily numbers range from 50 to 300.

The kids get lift tickets for the day, a two-hour lesson, a safety talk in the morning and equipment. Before they arrive, they have already filled out cards with their foot measurements, height, weight and skiing ability. After their safety talk, they grab their boots, take the lesson, then receive a lift ticket—they can ski all lifts or only the beginner lift, based on their ability.

When the program began in 1975, it cost $4.50. Today it’s $20 for skiers, $30 for snowboarders. “I have people say to me, ‘I started in that PE program and now my kids are in it,’” Willett says. “The governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, learned to ski here in the PE program.

“Without it, we’d be a three-day-a-week resort.”

Showdown also has a large adaptive ski program. Eagle Mount provides the service, and the mountain provides the space and tickets. “They are coming every day we are open,” Willett says.

And while Showdown is old school in many ways, it’s not completely old-fashioned. “We keep up with the times,” Willett says. “We embraced snowbikes as soon as they hit the street and trained our staff. We have three or four instructors for the bikes, and there are no restrictions on where they can go.”

The importance of an online presence has not escaped Willett, either. He credits his “artsy” children for keeping him moving forward with the website. “We also have some younger kids here who are more techie than me and they keep pushing me on that stuff,” he says. “Most of our marketing is done on the web page. Print costs have gone through the roof. We still do print ads, but it is simple stuff that refers people to web.”


Small is Personal
But for Showdown’s Chief Product Tester, the fun part of the job is still hitting the slopes and chatting up customers in the lift line. “The office stuff is the pits,” Willett says. “Skiing and visiting with the people is the fun part.”

Willett, who switched to telemark skiing five years ago, has watched with some reservation as the ski industry has gone corporate in recent years. While he understands the reasoning behind it, he remains a traditionalist. “Certain guys that run big resorts still go out and talk to people and ski, but there are other guys who’ve lost touch with what skiing is because they have a corporate boss in New York City or wherever who is demanding performance in the financial stuff,” he says. “So many of the places are big resorts, and the ski business is just the smaller side of the business. Those people speak a different language than I do. You hate to see the ski industry get swept up in that, because there is so much tradition and history in the business itself.”