Business as Usual
All the creative freedom at Slopecycle is supported by a bustling business. The team manages paperwork, marketing materials, and finances on their Mac computers. “Everything from our basic email to our business management is done on a Mac,” says Aguilar. Correspondence is penned with Microsoft Word, flyers and brochures are drafted with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, and numbers are crunched with QuickBooks Pro. To keep their customers informed, the Slopecycle team turns to Sig Software’s Email Merge X. The application makes mass update email easy through Apple Mail. They also rely on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to keep contact information and serial numbers sorted.
The team uses Apple Mail to sort messages and iCal to manage schedules. “Whenever something new is added to the calendar, everyone gets it,” says Aguilar. “We publish our calendars on .Mac for everyone to see and we send email reminders that go right into iCal. It’s the best way to coordinate our calendars and hectic schedules.”
Those schedules include a lot of time on the road. Aguilar and his crew travel from resort to resort with the Slopecycle, shooting video and meeting with ski resort moguls and extreme sports gurus. “From here to Mammoth it’s five hours. From here to Tahoe it’s eight hours. From here to Aspen, to the Winter X Games, it’s 16 hours,” says Aguilar. “That’s a lot of time in the car and we get tons of work done on our laptops while we’re traveling.” The team uses a pack of MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook computers. “The car has become a serious workspace for us when we’re on the road,” says Aguilar.
The crew also uses iChat to stay in touch while they’re away. “We use it constantly,” says Aguilar. “We use its video capabilities to stay in touch with our race team in Spain. They don’t like to just hear our voices; they like to see us as well. iChat AV is seamless and easy.” It’s also a great way to shave some cash off the long-distance bill, says Aguilar.
Aguilar and his team record their road trips with digital video for official Slopecycle materials, but they also take tons of snapshots. To keep them all organized, they use iPhoto. “iPhoto is so quick and easy to use,” says Aguilar. “We download and organize all our photos using iPhoto while we’re away. It makes finding pictures super easy and it’s powerful enough to organize and export photos for nearly any aspect of our business.”
Hitting the Slopes
The Slopecycle has been accepted as a valid way of sailing down the slopes at many major ski resorts. The growing list includes Keystone in Colorado, Heavenly and Northstar at Tahoe, Mountain High near Los Angeles, and a host of other resorts in Aspen.
“We’ve gone from a super-small company to a multinational one in just a few years,” says Aguilar. “The Slopecycle is at major resorts and it’s a huge hit. And the whole business has been powered by Macs.”
The Mac-powered business has also been able to propel the Slopecycle race teams to stardom. The U.S. and E.U. teams feature pro BMXers, jet skiers, and snowboarders. They tour the United States and Europe, racing other snow cycle riders down a boardercross course, four or five at a time. The team also hits the slalom courses and performs some freestyle and big-air tricks. “We love the freestyle aspect of the Slopecycle,” says Aguilar. “Travis Pastrana, X Games gold medalist, and other Nitro Circus members ripped back flips on the Slopecycle this past winter.”
The Slopecycle is definitely at home on the slopes and Aguilar and his team plan to keep it there. “The Slopecycle is huge for us,” he says. “It’s easy to ride, it’s exciting, and it’s dynamic. We wouldn’t want to make anything that wasn’t. We want to make it a big part of winter sports and the Mac is going to be a crucial part of that journey.”
