The Ski Monster Is Expanding From Boston to the Twin Cities, and It's Owner Has a Not-So Secret Trick To His Success

Skiers of a certain age have played the classic Windows computer game ‘Ski Free’. 

Moving your mouse side to side and clicking every once in a while to jump over obstacles, the goal is simple—ski as long as you can without crashing, and for god’s sake, don’t let the Yeti catch you from behind.

Skiing video games have evolved dramatically since the 90s, but George Michealsen, a skier turned park rat who hails from Minnesota, used the game as inspiration when he opened his shop, The Ski Monster, in Boston in 2014.

“No matter how good you are at Ski Free, the ski monster is going to get you,” Michaelsen explained to me on a video call earlier this month. “So, we will eventually get to you, you know?”

But getting skiers to simply buy products was never what Michaelsen was after. Disturbed by the aggressive sales tactics used by ski shops for decades to pressure skiers into buying products, Michaelsen took a different approach.

“We worked really hard on making things less confusing and more simple,” he explained.

The work has paid off, and while it has benefited Michaelsen and The Ski Monster in terms of revenue, that was never really the goal. Rather, Michaelsen wanted to create an atmosphere that encouraged skiers to relax, drink a beer, enjoy the experience, and, hopefully, stick with what is an expensive sport for years to come. A byproduct of that skier-first experience is that they’ll keep coming back to The Ski Monster and tell their friends about it.

The new Boston shop, located in a high-end restaurant that’s been converted into a boot-fitting and ski-selling dreamscape, opened earlier this year and is a success in its own right. Michaelsen has fostered a passionate, loyal customer base, but his business isn’t refined to Beantown.

The Ski Monster has a large online presence, including a digital store, original media content, podcasts, and explainer videos. Michaelsen reaches hundreds of thousands of skiers nationwide on apps like TikTok and Instagram, and that has converted to both online and offline sales; the latter is worth highlighting.

“You want to talk about having imposter syndrome?” Michaelsen asks rhetorically with a chuckle. “We started getting an obscene amount of people, like over a dozen people a week, flying in from places like California and Texas.”

The majority of these skiers, who clearly have deep pockets, fly in for a day or two, get a professional boot fit from Michaelsen or a member of his staff, buy a pair of skis, and then fly back home. 

Michaelsen says The Ski Monster’s TikTok videos in particular make the bootfitting experience less intimidating and, ultimately, convince skiers from far-flung regions to drop what they’re doing and fly to Boston.

Michaelsen spent over a decade in Boston, but he recently moved his family back home to Minnesota, and a second Ski Monster shop has popped up, ready to serve the Twin Cities’ die-hard skiers.

Once a high-speed rope-tow park rat himself, Michaelsen remembers his jibbing days fondly. “You try a rail, mess up, you grab the rope tow, and you just do it again, again, and again. And you can get like 50 laps in on one feature in so little time,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

The Ski Monster’s new shop in Plymouth, Minnesota, will largely carry the same fleet of gear as the Boston and online store, but when asked if he’s catering to the next generation of park rats, Michaelsen lit up. “I actually just reordered park skis today because, dude, the thirst for that stuff is real.”

Moving back to Minnesota was a business move at its core (shipping nationwide for the online business from the Midwest is significantly cheaper than Boston), but Michaelsen is looking forward to raising his son away from the incessant traffic of the East Coast and enjoying some lake life in the summer, a pastime he missed in the urban jungle of the Megalopolis. 

It doesn’t hurt that there are more than a dozen ski areas within driving distance, including his home hills of Hyland, Buck, and Afton, too.

“I know the stoke is here,” Michaelsen said with a smile.

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