work work work

lots of work - been too busy for blogging, tsk tsk
It's not all bad, i'd rather work for me than anyone else - the only problem is that when i make a mistake there is no one else to blame - cripes! I dont even have a cat to kick, although the boyfriend makes a good alternative and it usually is his fault....

www.christopherchalets.co.uk

what?

So we had to decide what to buy.
This was pretty tough - originally we were interested in an old traditional house that we could renovate - my dad's got all the building experience and I'm a great lackey!
Some of the old houses here look fantastic and would be great projects to do up, but....
finding exactly what you want can be tough. I wanted to offer luxury at affordable prices which means en-suite bathrooms, lots of space, room for a hot tub and a massage room - you get the idea. The problem with buying something that has already been built is that you are stuck with certain dimensions and room sizes that are quite what you want.
The other problem is that the old buildings are not always well built and we didnt want to end up spending a small fortune trying to fix damp and draughty spots or lose all the heat because of bad insulation.
So we decided that for us, the best thing to do would be to find something that we could extend and change easily or that we could build ourselves from scratch.
We did put an offer in on a great little chalet that we wanted to extend and cou;d have got pretty close to what we wanted, but the owner would not lower the price at all and it worked out just too much.
Then we found an amazing piece of land just off one of the pistes that will be developed in the next few years. An expensive hotel has bought the land next to it, but all around is national forest that cannot be built on. Tranquil, ski-in ski-out, beautiful.
But, it was a massive piece of land - I just could not afford to build anything if we bought it. I would have a lovely piece of land in the forest with posh neighbours but I didn't think a tent was going to cut it!
We considered getting investors in, but it would have been a huge project-we would have become developers and that is not what we wanted so back to the search.
Next - halfway up the mountain, some of the best views we have seen. But at the moment in the middle of nowhere. Now if it had been a holiday home jus for myself I would have snapped this piece up. It's gorgeous and the new pistes in Dobrinishte will be somewhere nearby. It;s close to the quirky fish farm where you can fish for yor dinner but.. its a 15 minute drive into town. down a very bumpy road. it's a steep hill - you coul;d never walk it in ski boots. In a few years i can envisage this becoming a fab little enclove for a few ski chalets but we needed something that we can get going a little bit quicker...
So, a little bit further down the mountain - on the edge of the town in fact. 2 plots next to each other, looking up at the mountin. Already in regulation so building permission is easy to get - pretty nice views, nothing allowed to be built in front of it (at the moment). This one looked promising.
Buying property or land is just not simple and easy, but where is it like that? I'm getting a headache just thinking about it all again!

Powder in Bansko

POwder in Bansko on the 19th November 2007!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vATBzVx_egw

One more thing you'll need...

Another thing that is vital for setting up your ski chalet, or any business I imagine, is support.
My friends and family have been great - they have encouraged me so much, ok I have seen a few raised eyebrows and there have been worries expressed about my personal welfare but my wonderful friends and family know that this is what I want to do and they are behind me.
Which is what I need, because there are so many people who you will meet who will tell you that you are making a terrible mistake, too much competition, global warming, bulgarian mafia, isn't it better just to get a nice easy job? - I have heard them all.
The most annoying thing is that I have already though about and considered most of the negatives that anyone else can come up with - after all this is my future and not something that I have started on a whim, as some people seem to think! Yes it will be hard work but I'm doing it for me, because it is something I really want to do and I am passionate about it. Still, some people just won't be convinced.
You have to develop a thick skin - don't take it personally, just accept that there are a lot of cynics and pesimists out there - and keep in mind that you'll be able to proove them wrong one day.

Snyag (Snow snow snow)

Ooooooh, so much snow in Bansko. I only wish we had got the ski bus serviced last week instead of putting it off.... oops!
Rule number one for would be chalet owners: Be Prepared!
I'm realising that this is so much more important in the mountains because of the unpredictable weather - it comes in so fast and I just spend 3 hours charging round town trying to find the right size snow chains. We weren't expecting quite this much snow in Bansko in November!

Anyway, after working out how much this will cost you should add another half on - that's what I've done and so far it seems to be working (depressingly), there are so many little things that don't get mentioned when you start working out your costings.

For example, I just found out that there is another little tax of some sort that I have to pay after our chalet is built - that no-one mentioned to me despite me asking hundreds of times about this sort of thing - grrrr!

But hey, it's snowing in Bansko so I'm happy! http://www.banskoski.com/cam2_en.html
(and it doesn't look like it will stop anytime soon!)

snow??

Hmmm.
There look to be some snow clouds up above - had a little bit but there's 12cm forecast for tonight. The locals have been telling me that we are in for a long cold snowy winter. I can't wait.
If it snows enough tonight maybe we'll jump on the dobrinishte lift and hike to the top for an off-piste run this weekend.
If the freezing temperatures are anything to go by there will be a lot of snow this winter - time to dig out my ski socks!

And more research... and a business plan

My next question was funding. Even in Bulgaria, this wasn't exactly going to be cheap.
Could I get a bank business loan? No - they won't give away cash to be taken to Bulgaria, suggetsed that I ask my parents to mortgage their house as that is cheaper than getting a business loan anyway. Well, at least he was honest.
But mortgaging my parents house didn't really seem to be the best option to me - they had already said they would lend quite a big chunk of money so I felt I couldn't really ask for anymore.

So I tidied up my business plan and sent it around a few retired very wealthy people who like investing - I was looking for a business angel and I was very lucky - I actually got a choice of two.

The business plan was very important. Not only to help me find finance but to help me see all the different bits and pieces that I needed to consider - it took me a couple of weeks working on it intensively to get it in a readable state but it made me write down everything.

This meant that other people could see all my ideas - they weren't all locked up in my head, so if I forgot to mention something, if they read my business plan it all becomes clear.

And there were bits that I hadn't considered in detail like exit strategies and insurance, that I had to cover. I used the book, The Definitive Business Plan http://www.amazon.co.uk/Definitive-Business-Plan-Intelligent-Entrepreneurs/dp/0273659219/ref=sr_1_9/202-9471987-9804616?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194594852&sr=1-9 (that's it on Amazon) to help me, and it was very useful and easy to read, but there are loads of different books and websites out there for you to plough through.

I'm still working on my business plan, every 4 months or so I go back read through it, update any bits of research that I have been doing or change any bits that I am learning more about. Doing this keeps me focused and stops me wandering off on a tangent.

Business Link give pretty good advice, they have a section about writing a business plan on:
http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/layer?topicId=1073869162

Writing it all down made everything a lot clearer and really made me want to get going.

www.christopherchalets.co.uk

Research, research, research

Does it all sound a bit easy so far?
It wasn't quite so simple, it wasn't just a question of where I could afford to set up - I spent weeks and weeks researching the area, the ski holiday market, the summer mountain holiday market - I don't want a business that I can only run for 16 weeks of the year, after all.

Then there is the question of transport - I won't go into it now as I don't want to bore you to tears but the airline industry is sooooo complicated and it is near impossible to get a straight answer from anyone, unless of course you want to give them a big wad of cash!

But if you are interested in some market research:

The ski industry report 2007
http://emag.digitalpc.co.uk/welcome/sir/sir-11-07-2006.asp

The Ski Club of Great Britain Snowsports Analysis
https://www.skiclub.co.uk/skiclub/presscentre/snowsportsanalysis.asp

Mintel's Snowsport Report 2006
http://www.mintel.com/docs/trade_abta_snowsports.htm

That should be enough reading for now. I just wanted to show that it is important to have a good idea who your market is and whether there will be enough customers to go around!

My next problem is pesky global warming - this depends on who you are listening to. the doom sayers predict that we will not be able to ski in low resorts in a few years while the more optimistic are pointing out that gulf stream is changing and the next ice age is on the way!
This is the problem - no one can predict what will happen, however, I did think it was important to be somewhere where there are alternative activites, just in case.

As it is, we have golf, horse-riding, mountain - biking, kayaking, hunting, all sorts of other sports are developing around Bansko so that helped my descision.

Anyway I must go and tidy up the website, I have been neglecting it recently in an effort to get my Bulgarian ID cards... but i'll get to that headache later.

www.christopherchalets.co.uk

Ski in Bulgaria??

Yep,
I was surprised too! I had never heard of anyone skiing in Bulgaria but the property prices were so low compared to France that I felt like I had to check it out.
After doing a little more research I discovered that Bulgaria has 3 main resorts - all quite small but all beginning to develop. More hours spent on the Internet convinced me that Bansko was the most promising of the lot - with recent investment meaning that all the lifts were new for 2005. So no rickety communist chairlifts then?
Still - Bulgaria. I didn't know anything about it, I just had some vague idea that it was a bit like Russia...
So we went on a little trip (the first of many), it was the end of Spring (May/June) but there was still snow on the moutains and I even managed to throw a couple of snow balls around! This impressed me and after walking up and down the pistes I decided like in most resort, they would be much more fun to ski on.

So, our search began:

On the internet I had seen a number of promising looking properties BUT on arrival in Bansko I was a little shocked. I had entered a building site - a huge number of apartments were going up, and the old houses that looked quite quaint were dropping to bits and were generally badly built.
It was a bit disapointing, but when you look closer at Bansko you realise that there is a bit more to it. The old town is lovely and has houses hiding in beautiful walled courtyards - these fortified houses are so unusual and walking through the cobbled streets is very different to strolling round the usual purpose built resort.
I started to see what Bansko had to offer.

Where to begin?

About halfway through my first winter season it dawned on me that the 87 Euros that I was making every week was pretty small compared to the amount of cash the chalet company that I was working for was making.
I expect that you can see where I am going with this...
I was meant to be doing that season as a break to help me decide what to do next - I wasn't planning on getting adicted to the mountains, but that's what happened. After spending a couple of months on pristine snowy mountain tops, away from all those nasty office blocks and crowded roads I just couldn't imagine wanting to go back.
But it isn't as easy as you might think.

Prices in the usual places such as France, Austria, Switzerland are astronomical, and other places such as the USA and Chile/Argentina proved to be a little too far away and much more complicated for setting up a business.
But then, during another long winded search on the Internet, I found out that you could ski in Bulgaria...