Chair-o-nomics – Is Vail Better than Breckenridge?
At Majestic Mountain Movers we inventory everything we move and we think over hundreds of moves we have a data set like no other in the world. Because 70% of homes sold in our mountain communities are sold furnished, we only move those things that people absolutely value. We have a data set of the indispensable items, the special things that people selling houses take out before the buyer can get their hands on them. So why not use this data to invent Chair-o-nomics?
Chair-o-nomics Conceived
Take the ordinary chair for example. Why would a person move a chair from a house that is sold furnished? We would imagine most chairs are replaceable, and most likely candidates to be left behind. However, the data tells us this is not so. Even in small moves where 20 or less furnishings are part of the move, there is always a few of those special chairs along for the ride.
So can the chair be an indicator of a social status? Does it give evidence to more charitable way of life? If I have more chairs as a percentage of my valued furnishings, perhaps I have more friends than the average person? Maybe I throw more parties. It might be a proxy for how much charm I possess. This approach to Chair-o-nomics could yield psychological and social insight that could change the very nature of how we see ourselves up here in the mountains.
The Analysis
In the Majestic Laboratories we posed our scientific hypothesis. Is the ordinary chair as a percentage of valued things moved higher in Vail than in Breckenridge? Or asked another way, does traveling west over Vail pass take you into a more mysterious, chair enabled world? If chair ownership as a percentage of valued items became an Olympic Sport, would more US athletes in that category come from Vail or Breck? We had to know.
We have an anonymized data set of furnishings that we at Majestic Mountain Movers have had the good fortune to help our clients move in the last six months. Using this, we pulled together a data set of customers roughly equal in number on either side of the Vail pass. In this set, we looked at chairs moved as a percentage of total furnishings moved. What we found astonishes as well as informs.
The average for chair ownership in our data set for Vail is higher than for Breckenridge. When we saw that number our unscientific brain lobes sang with possibilities. But we are scientists, not just passionate moving professionals. So we ran a statistical test and found that there is no statistically significant difference (p>5%) by percentage that chairs occupy in the valued furnishings of people having moved in Breckenridge and Vail. There is equality, the playing field is level and along the I70 corridor we can declare a chairitocracy.
Ah yes, back to the lab. What role does the armoire play in Keystone vs. Frisco? For next time perhaps.
