I am cursed with knowledge and ethics.
Fitting a somewhat tall and very slim woman to skating skis last Saturday, I saw that we had nothing on the rack that fit her properly. When I went to the front to ask the manager about investigating a special order, he elbowed me aside and took over the sale. To his credit, he at least fitted her to the pair that was only marginally too stiff and too short rather than midrange on the flex and significantly too short.
Times are extremely tight right now. Just that morning he had given us a pep talk about how we needed to be "used car salesmen" out there. Wink wink.
Really tall people will end up on skating skis that are technically shorter than optimal, simply because the industry doesn't make longer sizes. They get by. But we did learn the hard way in the 1990s that there is such a thing as too short a ski, even for skating. The manager was issued some 183cm skating skis in the early 1990s. Now he's on 192, or whatever is the nearest equivalent. I never hear him wish his skating skis were shorter.
For myself, I started on some 179 skating skis in the late 1990s, as skate ski lengths were on the verge of stabilizing after the ill-advised short-ski experiments of the early 1990s. In 2000 or 2001 I replaced them with 186s. Since then I have never wanted a shorter ski for skating.
A woman who is 5'8" (172cm) should be on a skate ski between 183 and 190, more or less, flexed appropriately. A 179 is no better than okay. She was in range on the flex, although the ski was on the stiff side for her weight. As a new skater, she may find it a little bouncy and unstable, but at least we made a sale.
If someone is going to spend their money with me, I want them to have spent it as wisely as possible. Back when Salomon Pilot was available, I would recommend that a customer invest the bulk of the money in getting that boot and binding. Skis come and go. I was also selling in our seasonal location where the clientele on average had a lot more disposable income that they were willing to dedicate to cross-country ski gear. I could say something like, "It's not what ski to buy, it's what ski to buy first." Even then, I fit people to skis that were well matched to their height and weight, so that they didn't develop distorted impressions of the technique.
The ski shapes the skier. Industry cynics say that most people won't know the difference. I answer that most people will notice a difference, but they won't be able to analyze it because some salesman thought so little of them. I wish I had not been involved at all. Aside from the humiliation of being overruled like some obsessive nerd, I look like an accomplice.
I pride myself on the precision of my ski fitting. He prides himself on his sales history. He's also fond of the saying, "desperate times call for desperate measures." You may find yourself on the receiving end of one of those desperate measures. Hey, a business exists to make money. We all live on the proceeds. Too active a conscience is a luxury.
To a veteran retailer, the people who come in are just wallets. Over time you might get to be more careful with some of them, but the default position is "bag of money." Whether you persuade them to fork over or smack them like a pinata, the goal is the release of funds. The product is just a tool.
If I'm fudging a fit, I let the customer know, giving them the option to go for it or not. Some decide to do it. Others opt to wait for something that matches their dimensions more closely.
No doubt the salesman who closed the deal on Saturday believes that it's perfectly fine. Next time his daughter's skate skis come in I will run the numbers to see how closely they fit her.
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