LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. — The family owned Perfect North Slopes ski resort in southeastern Indiana is entering its 25th anniversary amid a run of strong growth in recent years.
Revenue has nearly doubled over the past five years, said general manager Chip Perfect, and the resort 15 miles west of Cincinnati recently doubled the size of the tubing hill and installed new snowmaking equipment.
“Perfect North is as nice a ski and snowboard resort as there is in the country,” said Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association in Denver. “It’s not the biggest, but it’s family-run and family-friendly; and the Perfects do a superb job.”
As Perfect North prepares to enter its snow sport season — generally spanning 90 days from mid-December through mid-March — it will again try to use the small window of business opportunity to keep the resort viable.
The slope draws about half of its business from night skiing. New technology, including Web cams to show snow fall, also is a key.
“Convincing people that we have snow and that we have good snow when there’s none in their yard has always been a challenge,” Perfect said.
Being family-run presents its own business challenge.
Sid Barton, an associate professor of management at the University of Cincinnati, said family businesses represent about half of the U.S. gross domestic product. Yet the number of such businesses succeeding from generation to generation is not high.
“You’re combining two very intense social systems — a family and a business,” Barton said. “It takes a lot of effort, or luck.”
Clyde Perfect, Chip’s father, decided to turn his 200-acre cattle and grain farm into a ski resort after realizing that the snow on its north-facing hills was the last to melt for miles around.
Now the family is counting on the third generation — Clyde Perfect’s grandchildren, whom he jokingly calls “ski bums” — to keep the family business going.
Chip Perfect said the members of the third generation “do have aspirations” about taking over. “Hopefully, some of them will.”
