The Ski Journal - Volume 15, Issue 3
REFUGE: The Jaber Family’s Ski Shop Dream
Words: José da Silva 2021-12-01 07:21:37
“My dad Hussein in 1998 at the West Springfield, MA store. I have to say, 23 years later, that mustache is still impressive.”—Adam Jaber. Photo: Jaber Family Archive
On Westfield Street, West Springfield, MA’s main thoroughfare, Colorado Ski Shop sits in a squat brick building. Mountain bikes take up a good portion of the store these days, but skis and snowboards dominate the back wall. Even stocked with the newest gear, the shop still feels communal, familiar. That’s what Hussein Jaber has been working toward for over three decades, a legacy now instilled in his children.
Hussein was 29 years old the first time he clicked into skis. A Palestinian refugee who immigrated to the United States via Jordan, he’d landed in West Springfield, MA, in the early ’90s. He’d met a girl from the area, Diane, and wanted nothing more than to impress her and her family. That meant skiing—in jeans and with a rickety rental setup—flying down 680 vertical feet at the now-defunct Mount Tom Ski Area.
“[My dad] only does things because he feels a certain way about other people,” Hussein’s son, Adam says. “Skiing is a release for him, but it was more about my mother than anything else.” Diane and her family were skiers, so Hussein would be too. He thought, what better way to show that passion than open a storefront dedicated to the sport?
Hussein and Diane opened Colorado Ski Shop in 1994. It quickly became a family affair. Soon four Jaber kids were running around the shop. Adam, the oldest, began working there when he turned 14, and has been part of the operation ever since. A lifelong skier best known for his popular Out of Bounds podcast, he says the shop is all about “helping somebody that wants to get into the sport, genuinely, and just doesn’t know where to start.”
West Springfield is an odd place to open a ski shop. It’s not a resort town and the closest ski hill, Otis Ridge, is an hour away. The city’s population is primarily blue-collar—hardly the demographic of most skiing hotbeds. “It’s a hard place to tell people, ‘Oh yeah, skiing is sick, skiing is fun, it should be your priority,’” Adam says. “They can do a different sport for a fraction of the cost.”
Still, the city was where Diane and Hussein met, where Diane’s family was from and, when the shop opened, was roughly two hours from the popular Blandford Ski Area and 15 minutes from Mount Tom. Mount Tom shuttered in 1998, impacting business, and in 2017 rental sales dipped when Blandford closed.
Hussein says there were plenty of early business struggles, growing pains compounded by discrimination. “As I first started out, many people doubted me and created challenges for me,” he says. “Of course, the fact that I was a foreigner did add some additional challenges as well, but I think that is a huge contributor to the success we have now.”
In those days, it was nearly impossible to get an in with a major ski supplier, since the Jaber business was the “weird shop with the Arab guy,” Adam says. Slowly, Colorado Ski Shop gained the trust of the local community, and in time reps realized they were losing out on valuable commissions. Eventually, suppliers started lining up for the small-town operation.
Now, nearly 30 years since it opened, the ski shop is an institution in western Massachusetts, and the Jabers have expanded to a second location near Mount Snow, VT, in addition to operating a high-traffic online store.
Nowadays, Adam says he feels at home in a culture that initially presented obstacles for Hussein. “That dude being my father, I mean he’s made me the way I am,” Adam says. “Now I’m trying to make changes for other people. It’s ingrained in me.”
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