Justin Broglio makes his living from hooking people up. As the General Manager for SnowBomb.com, his job is to get the best deals for people in search of great turns. SnowBomb.com allows the thrifty skier or snowboarder to go online and find hearty discounts on a multitude of lift tickets – a one-stop shop replacing the painful task of bargain hunting. The business once specialized in discount lift tickets exclusively for the Tahoe area, but today you find tickets for resorts across the country. SnowBomb gets you hooked up from Squaw Valley to Sugarloaf. ‘What Orbitz and Travelocity are to the hotel industry, SnowBomb is to the ski industry,’ says founder Jim McAlpine.
Moonshine Ink: How did SnowBomb Start?
Justin Broglio: In 1997 Jim McAlpine, an avid skier and natural entrepreneur started the company as a simple campus discount card. It was an easy way for ski resorts to attract business students visiting the Lake Tahoe area. SnowBomb has grown and grown and now we’re appealing to the discount consumer nation wide. We have been getting people stoked on skiing and riding in Lake Tahoe for 10 years, and saving them money to boot.
MI: How has SnowBomb evolved and what’s new?
JB: In addition to offering the top discounts in and around Lake Tahoe, we’ve gone nationwide. Our SnowBomb VIP Tahoe Card is available to anyone and everyone for $60. When your card arrives in the mail it will include one free lift ticket to Kirkwood and one free lift ticket to Donner Ski Ranch. It also includes more than $300 worth of rentals and tune-ups from various local ski shops, access to SnowBomb’s elite online lift ticketing store where you can purchase and print out lift tickets to more than a dozen Tahoe resorts at rates of up to 50 percent off. SnowBomb is the number one discount source for everything Tahoe. We’re hoping to open the door for people to experience a mountain they might not have known about.
MI: Word on upcoming events?
JB: The SnowBomb Sick n’ Twisted events are our way to giving back to the community we live in. This year we’ve partnered with major industry sponsors including Toyota and Under Armour and gathered more than $25,000 in cash and prizes to give away throughout the season. There are 15 contests at 12 resorts and if you haven’t seen a slope style competition recently I highly recommend it. Local kids are throwing down switch 1080s and tricks you’d think would be reserved for the X-Games. The level of riding is insane. Check them out.
Sick and Twisted competitions:
March 16 at Diamond Peak
March 22 at Alpine Meadows
April 12 & 13 at Squaw Valley
MI: What’s it like being an independent business in Tahoe City?
JB: The Blackberry never stops buzzing. As general manager of SnowBomb I wear a lot of hats. I’m on the phone, on the website, emails, press releases, photo shoots, sponsor and partner relations and on and on. I’d say the most difficult thing about having a business here is finding staff. Yeah, now I have a great staff, but it took a while to find. The best thing is being able to look out at the lake everyday and being a member of the Lake Tahoe community.
