They came. They grew. And they left.
I suppose it's an essential thing to do, wondering why somebody left a place for someplace else, especially if you're the one that's staying put. I've certainly been on the leaving end numerous times -- pulling up stakes from Boulder, from Seattle, from Jackson, from Portland. And each time, while there were plenty of those who were happy and excited to endorse the new adventure, there were always those who weren't exactly wild about the news. Understandably so.
Taken one at a time, the list of outdoorsy companies that have left Vermont behind isn't so bad. But looking at the pile of names in a single group -- it can certainly appear that some sort of nefarious forces are at play, with a bend that leans against the Green Mountain state.
Tubbs, Merrell, Karhu, Mad River Canoe, Isis, Garmont.
As any J-school dropout can tell you: two is a coincidence, three is a trend, but six means that your story is very, very late.
In all fairness, each time one of these outdoor industry stalwarts has packed up the U-Hauls, the minor tremor led to a brief festival inward-looking hand wringing. Why not Vermont? What has this place done to turn these companies away? Are our taxes too high? Is this place unfriendly to business? Are the mountains too small? Is it the lack of good chile relleno?
But freaking out about the cute girls who left the dance early ignores a few significant realities. Like the talent that still remains in the room.
Darn Tough puts Vermont right there in bold letters on the front of every package, and it would take an army of sandblasters to push them out of Northfield. Waterbury's Rome Snowboards is the third largest snowboard brand in the world -- though arguably the most influential, imitated and important -- specifically because of their gritty eastern perspective. The crew at Ibex down in Woodstock is competing against publicly held mega-brands, and is not only holding their own, but growing, simply by being the independent-minded Vermont dudes and dudettes that they are. Vermont Canoe is going all-in on spectacular, hand-crafted boats ... right in the Mad River Valley.There's apparently a fly fishing company down in Manchester called Orvis, though i don't know much about them. And don't get me started on the soaring future of Outdoor Gear Exchange -- I just wish that Marc would adopt me.
The second reality is the reality of business. Wrestling to find Vermont's "fault" in an outdoor company's departure, or succumbing to the easy out of blaming the trend of "brain drain" doesn't just play into the hands of the gloom and doomers, it simply ignores major market trends. It's like blaming the rules of chess for not being able to move a castle diagonally, or like blaming your ski jacket for not being able to stop the wind from blowing.
Once companies started shifting to international manufacturing, the home team was no longer anchored to a specific geography. The economies of scale -- being able to share marketing, R&D and financial support in a single office, for example -- are simply too attractive for many efficient business managers to pass up.
And making Asia that manufacturing choice has also impacted things. Apparently there are some factories over there that are a lot cheaper, and it's a shorter trip from southeast Asia to West Coast ports than the Eastern seaboard. So if you're playing in that sandbox, it makes basic dollar sense to have an outpost west of the Mississippi.
That's all pretty obvious stuff, of course. But another perhaps more subtle shift in the last two decades is that outdoor brands, these inventors of adult toys, these purveyors of sustainable healthy lifestyles, these role models for endless outdoor amusement ... have become legit. Today's outdoor icons are eagerly pursued by private equity money, and acquired by publicly traded NYSE ticker brands for a simple reason: they're money makers.
Inside the climbing-webbing beltway (aka, "behind the soft-shell curtain"), there are a handful of savvy, skilled and extremely good looking executives that have saved and made a ton of money for their companies by navigating these waters. These men and women are pretty well known in what's called the outdoor industry.
But up on the rock or out on the water -- nobody is famous for pioneering Vietnamese manufacturing or for maximizing brand synergies through consolidation. Nor should they be.
True legend status in the outdoor world is reserved solely for the innovators. The inventors. The passionate outdoor addicts who saw a need, who thought it through, and who stand behind their ideas by putting their name on every product.
While it's a fruitless, pushing-meat-uphill exercise for a small state like Vermont to beat itself up about how to compete with offshore labor costs, or how to artificially subsidise the effiiciencies of a clustering market segment, it's actually a pretty good moment to focus instead on setting the stage for that moment of outdoor inspiration.
Sure, Vermont isn't cutting multi-million dollar checks to lure mega-employers here along with their three-ring binder full of job postings. But Vermont does have the fertile ground of a vibrant four-season outdoor culture, a passionate outdoor community, a truly unique natural environment, and widespread acceptance for having more than one job.
Of course, as any good farmer knows, the best way to grow a big crop is to plant a lot of seeds. Encouraging entrepreneurship in the outdoor industry can take a lot of forms in Vermont, from structured programs at the University and high school level to carrots at the State level.
But the best way to get things started is to lace up those hikers, head out into the fresh air and see where your feet -- and your mind -- takes you.
O is for the Outdoor Industry Breakfast
The only thing weirder than the fact the that the Outdoor Industry Breakfast brought in WalMart's Director of Sustainability to provide the keynote address for this January's ORWM show .... was the silence.
The everyday low-price meat of their presentation hinged on sustainability programs and environmental goals that were established in 2005, as well as their progress toward some significant goals set at that time -- and since then -- for 2015.
“I had to bite my tongue,” said one attendee. “It was like listening to an abusive spouse announcing that he’s planning a 20% reduction in beating his wife over the next 10 years.”
I've definitely got questions about why the OIA would choose WalMart over other available speakers for this event. My guess is that it had something to do with the "inspiration through association" thing ... specifically, if the world's biggest retailer can get on board with a logical and structured sustainability plan, why can't the specialty retailers and small businesses attending OR?
The weird thing about that logic is that by holding up one part of WalMart's business strategy as a role model, it infers that you're endorsing the rest of the model as well. Even stuff that happened before they turned green in 2005. LINK.
But I've also got questions about why WalMart would care about the outdoor industry? According to their presentation at ORWM, they get about 600 requests per year for speaking engagements ... so some level of care is definitely going in to choosing when and where their employees speak.
Was WalMart's presence at ORWM because of the rising importance of a highly influential group of business people known as the "outdoor industry"?
Or was it because it was a full room?
According to Bloomberg, WalMart recently reported their seventh straight sales declines at US stores, as well as an accompanying, unequivocal statement from CEO Mike Duke that there is "no greater priority than improving US sales. (LINK). Didn't see any mention of sustainability in that report, btw.
LINK: Full video of ORWM Industry Breakfast with Jeff Rice, WalMart Director of Sustainability
Introducing scalable, customizable 'Family PR' services ... just in time for Christmas
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (December 21, 2010) -- Pale Morning Media, a public relations and strategic media agency specializing in the outdoor world, is unveiling innovative family-relations strategies, just in time for Christmas.
Ideal for mid-season rollouts of personal lifestyle choices, increasing sell-in and sell-through of emerging relationship issues, and elevating personal brand awareness in a crowded and competitive “red ocean” marketplace, this cutting-edge package of familial communication services spans the range of traditional public relations and new media tactics, bringing the best of old and new side by side. Like that time when Grandpa took me with him to show him how to use the ATM.
“PR starts at home. Trust me, I know,” said Drew Simmons, Pale Morning Media founder and president. “The essential PR skill set of identifying an audience, crafting a message, then delivering that message is one that is often overlooked in a holiday environment. By investing in a professional communication firm now, you can save yourself – and your personal brand – significant costs down the road.”
Pale Morning Media’s new suite of family relations services includes:
* Media relations: Maximize the mileage of critically newsworthy items from your personal and professional life. Scored three goals during the company coed broomball outing? Drove to work with the fuel light on, the entire way? I smell a press release!
* Spokesperson duties: As the spotlight of Christmas Dinner can shine a bit too bright for some of our clients, we now offer spokesperson duties to embrace your single chance to make up for last year’s poorly chosen words. Our veteran mouthpieces, with more than six decades of combined dinner party wine-drinking experience, will deliver a memorable, brand-consistent and effective toast on your behalf. You won’t even need to be there, but you’ll want to be.
* Event hosting: Be the hero you always wanted to be by hosting a seemingly spontaneous post-holiday event. Our professional event hosting experience reinforces your “living for the moment” brand mantra through a detail-driven process that leaves no stone unturned. We also maximize attendance at family-friendly events by developing invitation tiers of A-list, B-list and LFC-list targetsd. Previously successful events include the “Boxing Day Bloody Mary Massacre” and the “Sledneck All-ages Backhill Powder-tow-in Fest.”
* Social media management: Our experienced social media technicians will help you post an unforgtettable series of meticulously crafted, thought-provoking, whimsical and occasionally poignant status updates throughout the holiday season. As I think you’ll agree, spontaneity is an art.
Storytelling is the new social media
So I'm reading a book about social media. Which .... I'll admit ... feels a little like going on the internet to see if it's raining outside.
It's not a bad book. Not at all, actually. It's quite interesting and probably valuable with loads of case studies about how some companies really gacked it up by not responding to an angry Twitterer, and how others took advantage of similar situations by thinking and acting fast.
It's not exactly rocket science for any company that's come of age in the last decade, but for others who spend day after day in marathon "strategy meetings," it'll make a great stocking stuffer.
But whether you've read it or not ... just assume for a minute that real-time communications is something that everybody will get on board with, real soon. From Fortune 100 behemoths to the crusty flip-flop startup in the van down by the river, everybody will be kung fu fighting in real time. The media cycle will be real time. The PR cycle will be real time. And a globe-full of information consumers will be constantly and immediately satiated by the information producers ... sort of like the bottomless baked potato taco bar in heaven.
At that point, which probably isn't that far away, there will be a clear difference between company A and company B. And that difference will be pretty damn easy to spot.
It won't be about speed at that point, because everybody will have that tool in their box. It won't be about size at that point either, because real-time marketing and PR will have brought the entire corporate communications structure down to the flat earth.
Instead, the difference will be in storytelling.
The book talks a lot about how a real-time culture is more important than the real-time tools. I totally agree . But a more important concept for 2011 (and beyond) is nurturing an environment that encourages storytelling .... enabling designers to think about the brand story when they're creating a new widget, encouraging customer service agents to learn and appreciate the company's history, and building communication teams that enjoy spinning the yarns more than just wearing technical fabrics.
LINK: Real-Time Marketing & PR