Richard Patey

How I built a ski marketing business from a trade show stand

By Richard Patey. Last updated 29 October 2026.

Short answer: In 2013 I decided all new marketing work would be for ski businesses. I had no industry contacts, just one ski season behind me. I won my first customers at the biggest UK ski show, filled my capacity within a few months, then productized the work into three fixed packages. The brand I ran it through was Snowbistro, which is now a comparison site for UK skiers.

Picking a niche I knew as a customer

I’d worked a ski season. I knew how skiers chose a chalet company, and I could see that most ski businesses marketed themselves badly online. That was enough to pick the niche.

The trade show

The biggest UK ski show is aimed at skiers, not businesses. I went anyway and sold SEO to the exhibitors. Every stand was a ski business with a marketing budget, all in one hall. I left with my first customers.

Hitting the ceiling

Within a few months I had no spare capacity. No time to write content, no time to sell, no time to take anyone new. I’d hit an income and stress ceiling and didn’t know how to get past it.

Productizing it

The fix was to stop selling custom work. I split ski SEO into three products:

  1. A one-off on-site package
  2. A one-off off-site package
  3. A rolling monthly package

Each had a fixed price and a “buy now” button in a pricing table. Customers paid before work started. It was the first time I’d sold a service like a product, and it’s the model I’ve used since. More in productizing services.

What happened next

After the ski agency I set up FunnelEngine, a done-for-you funnel service, and later turned it into a review site and sold it.

Ski, 13 years later

The ski trade is where I started, and it’s where Snowbistro started. Today Snowbistro compares 50 UK ski tour operators on search traffic, ATOL capacity, Trustpilot and years trading. The marketing service has come back in a new form: the AI Visibility Pack for ski businesses, delivered by my AI visibility service Cited.

Disclosure: I own Snowbistro and Cited.