Living the dream
By Laura Clarke © 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Published 9th August 2007 with permission.
Having French family I was put on skis at an early age and told to get down the mountain. As I grew up, I was lucky enough to ski every year and always fancied the idea of running a chalet. But I was career orientated and ended up a stressed commuter, working as a Purchasing Manager in London for The Ivy, Le Caprice and J Sheekey restaurants.
It was on holiday in La Plagne four years ago that I had a freak accident which changed my life. I don’t remember much but my ski host Mike can recall the details vividly: “We were around two thirds of the way up the chairlift. Laura was on my right, suddenly her body went rigid. Terrifyingly in a fraction of a second her skis slid off the footrest and she slid through the safety bar. I grabbed her by the scruff of her jacket as she was sliding off and heading for the cliffs underneath.
"Check if she is still alive?" I said to myself as the implications of the situation hit home. My hands were linked under her arms. Her eyes were closed, she was unconscious, her lips blue. As I pulled her head back to clear her airway she coughed, regaining consciousness. Suddenly everything went back into chaos as she realised she was hanging out of the chair. She became hysterical, eventually I adjusted my grip and levered her back into the chair. The relief swept over me. At the top Laura was heli-lifted to hospital.” To this day we don’t really know what happened, perhaps a combination of altitude, heat, exercise and low blood pressure lead to a fainting attack.
Mike and I met sometime later in the UK and developed a wonderful relationship. I decided it was now or never to do a season in the Alps, this kind of thing makes you stop and think and I realised I would always regret it if I didn’t go. Mike was more than happy to do another season, he loves the mountains with a passion and we worked for the company he had been working for when I met him.
After a super season, we returned to the UK looking to get our careers back on track. Mike had been a Logistics Manager before a break working a season. It didn’t take us long before we knew that really we wanted to be in the Alps, so we worked another season and started looking for a chalet. We found our dream with Chalet Chantelauze in La Rosière.
It was hard securing the chalet as it was up for sale and chalets aren’t cheap (1.6m Euros)! We hadn’t been looking to buy but to rent and we found a potential investor who would be our landlord. Sadly it all fell through but we were lucky enough to get offered a rental agreement with the owners. With a few renovations, a great resort, scrumptious cuisine and our previous experience running chalets, we had a recipe for success.
The first season was very hard work, setting up our new business, SnowCrazy, implementing a ‘capture all’ marketing plan (we learnt quickly to concentrate on our core clientele, mainly families), taking bookings, putting systems in place and getting the chalet ready for guests. All this whilst learning the implications of applying traditional cooking methods at altitude and acclimatising to living in France. Of course we learnt the hard way by making mistakes, however our previous experience running someone else’s chalet was invaluable and we had lots of fun too. The best feeling (other than getting out on skis on a blue sky powder day) was when a group of guests ended their week saying they’d had the best holiday ever.
Two years later we now have five chalets in two resorts, La Rosière and La Plagne and we’ve added our own private ski equipment hire to our range of services for our chalet guests meaning they can relax in the chalet whilst their skis and boots are fitted. When the snow’s gone it’s very difficult to tempt people to the Alps. We tried selling summer activity holidays and found it very hard. Unfortunately, many people still feel a summer holiday is not a summer holiday unless there is a beach involved, which is such a shame as we do get hot weather and there are so many exciting activities to do!
We decided we wanted to live in the Alps year round so we needed to fill the gaps somehow. We created and run the very successful Ultimate Chalet Host Cookery Course, teaching budding chalet hosts how to run a chalet, cook for large numbers at altitude and make the most of their time in the Alps. The course is so successful all our students go on to find jobs for the winter and many companies now contact us in order to recruit students. Next summer we are launching the Alpine Cup (www.alpinecup.com), a youth football tournament programme in the valley. If this takes off, it could be even bigger than SnowCrazy.
We’re hiring 11 staff this winter, some of whom may be of a similar mind-set, i.e. disillusioned with the 9 to 5 and dreaming of running a chalet business. Being our own bosses has been the most liberating experience. We certainly couldn’t go back to clocking in and sitting in an office, the mountains are our office now! Yes we get to ski whenever we want, however we can never loose sight of the fact that running a business is all about the effort you put in, so it does mean hard work if you want to succeed. We’ve also been able to take time off to travel and have recently been spotted diving with manta rays and sharks in the South Pacific. Living the dream is our daily reality!
Laura Clarke © 2007
www.snowcrazy.co.uk
www.skibug.co.uk
www.alpinecup.com
Tel: 01342 302 910