There’s no Business Like Snow Business!
Like many people who enjoy their work, we often toss ideas around the office for fun new projects. We look for ideas that can satisfy what we think is a need out there. Sometimes these ideas lay on the drawing board, and other times they take on a life of their own.
Last year, one of our team members thought it would be useful to have a map of snowmobile trails, both in paper format and online. We had never done such a map so the production team thought it would be both fun and challenging. Our sales team thought “Wow, people could really use a map like this!” So, after gathering the data, generating the map and soliciting sponsors we went to press with our first New York State Snowmobile map. Then an unusual thing happened during our upstate New York winter of 2012.
It didn’t snow.
No Nor’easters, no prodigious dumps of lake effect snow, no Alberta Clippers, nothing, zilch! The paper maps sat on store shelves and in our warehouse with hardly any movement. It appeared to be a gamble that we had lost, or did we?
The online version of the New York State snowmobile map available in our Map Room at http://www.jimapco.com/maproom/snowmobile/nys/ started receiving visit after visit that winter as frustrated snowmobilers dreamt about their next ride. As winter turned into spring and then summer, traffic to the map actually increased to hundreds of visits a month. This past fall, the map was receiving thousands of visits per month, and once the snow started flying last month, it has been receiving over a thousand visits per day! Today we have two customers who have state snowmobile maps in progress and several others who want maps for their areas and clubs.
Who knew that a recreational map like this would have such a dedicated following? What if your group or business had a powerful tool like this to help manage your team, increase sales or simply guide your customers and constituents? Imagine the power that is in a map, your map.
If you can imagine it, we can map it!