Burton EVP of Product & North American Sales John Lacy
Burton recently announced that it will be attending Outdoor Retailer’s Winter Market this January for the first time as an exhibitor, where it will be showing portions of its 2012/13 line, with an emphasis on a new technical and backcountry focused group of products it’s calling “The Family Tree.”
We caught up with Burton EVP of Product & North American Sales John Lacy to learn more about the decision to exhibit at OR, the opportunities it presents, and how Burton’s strategy will differ between OR and SIA.
I’ve had the opportunity to go to OR the last couple rounds, and have seen how many “action sports” brands are coming into that space, finding a viable way to extend their reach and talk to people they might not have been able to before. Why has Burton decided to exhibit there this winter?
It’s a very credible space for Burton. We’re pretty much the most legitimate backcountry brand in the world when it comes to snowboarding. We’ve always told our message to the snowsports community, but we haven’t really come into the outdoor space. We find there are a lot of enthusiasts that are more from the outdoor side and it’s really picking up—whether it’s the splitboarding craze or a lot of our technical garments. For us, it was a way to widen our scope of specialty distribution and provide a new alternative for the outdoor channel.
What will you guys be showcasing there?
We’re going after it a little differently than SIA—we’re going after it more with our backcountry products. There’s a huge section around AK. We’re grounding it around a concept we’re launching on our hardgoods side called The Family Tree—an assortment of backcountry boards, a lot of stuff we work on with Terje [Haakonsen], that don’t get a lot of face time. At core retailers, everyone wants to look at the next park board. We put a lot of engineering and time into the Fish and bringing out so many cool quivers of boards that you can use in the backcountry, so we’re going to really anchor it around that technology story. That drives a lot of excitement coming into Outdoor, who likes to talk a little bit more tech.
We’ll be showcasing out bags and luggage programs and our technical backpacks. We’ll be showcasing our technical year-round apparel, that kind of crosses over from outerwear down to a lot of our accessory business. We’ve got some really cool things from our technical flannels to rideable hoodies. Another category we’ve begun to define internally is our Winter Necessities, like gloves and beanies, hats—all kinds of product that when you go riding, those are your necessities. From base layers to socks to gloves to beanies, we feel our technology and our stories are something new for the outdoor retailer to check out and see what we’re made of.
Can you talk a little more about the Family Tree?
We’ve always had an assortment of, call them freeride or backcountry boards, and now we’re just bundling them up, and referencing it as a campaign around this terminology of the Family Tree. It’s a little bit more rooted in outdoor. It’s built off of a bunch of different athletes; Terje is kind of the front line of it, working closely with JG, our board developer and tester, with these great ideas of how to improve alternative backcountry riding.
I don’t want to release all the different series that are coming out, it’s just a mix of our best-of-the-best, from the splitboards to the Fish technology, to taking our freestyle technology and bringing it into the backcountry board models. It’s definitely more of a low-key push when you get into the bigger world of snowsports, but in the outdoor side of things, we’ve had a lot of requests, especially in the mountains of Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, where people are going backcountry or “side-country” riding, and want to jump the lines and go find some fresh snow.
It’s not anything new for us. We kind of have it linked to AK—it’s the most technical garments we make, but a lot of time when you get into conversation in the snowsports industry it’s about price points, and we like to make nice stuff. I think there’s a wider appetite for those core “outdoor” riders that are looking for the best.
The only time I really see that end of the Burton product spectrum highlighted really well is in your flagship stores. Most of the core retailers, they’re not speaking to that customer. When you guys are going in to OR, what’s your primary goal, to talk to new retailers, or better connect to people who have dabbled in you product?
I don’t know that we set out with a set goal. I really feel it’s a brand driver. Jake [Burton] speaks on the message of “support the sport,” and a lot of the athletes that we work with have said, there is a resurgence in backcountry riding and that’s the end goal of any snowboarder—to someday go hit the backcountry. We felt going into this that we should get out and showcase to people that there is an alternative. I hope we find some new retailers, but more importantly that we educate a new marketplace of how many great things we have in the line that we haven’t been able to showcase in our current trade venue of SIA just because of space, and overall cost. It’s a different way to speak a slightly different angle to a lot of different product categories we’ve been doing for five, 10 years, or longer and haven’t really been given a place to present our technologies.
OR is trying to get more of the action sports type brands on board, and retailers have been receiving them really well. Both sides, OR and boardsports brands, are looking for added revenue streams. On OR’s side, I know they’ve been pushing really heavily to help brands get in there. Did they approach you?
It’s been collaborative. We’ve been talking for many years and we didn’t feel comfortable at the time doing it. Now, it just felt so right because we really had a push from the demand of the sport. People are starting to ask for it and we thought “Hey, when they ask, let’s put it out there.” I think you’re going to see a lot of new components that we bring in to OR.
You’ll see pieces of that show up in SIA because it’s also part of the trend of the sport. Even in a tough economy, people want something good and lasting, so we are seeing more excitement around things like our AK product lines. People are looking for an alternative to spending money on lift tickets, they’re shooting out to the backcountry, and we’re going to take some of those influences to SIA. It is who we are, not that we’re one face here and a different face there. It’s really just showcasing the brand in slightly different ways to different customers, but we’ll bring a lot of that to SIA, as well.
How will your footprint compare?
We’re about half the size of SIA [at OR]. When you think of Burton outerwear, and how much park and all-mountain hardgoods we make for the specialty channel in snowsports, the goal wasn’t to bring those types of products [to OR], because those products have really been built for the snowsports channel that we’ve been working in for over 30 years.
You’ve walked OR before personally, right?
Yes. From a product side, especially on the softgoods side, we actually align closer to OR because we work in more technical garments. We’re always looking for new technologies. Whether it be Gore-Tex or 3M, a lot of our fabric suppliers and manufacturers are more in tune with the outdoor market, so we actually spend a lot of time out there walking the show. SIA is great, it’s all about brands, it’s all about snowboarding and skiing, and a lifestyle, but there’s a lot more of the technical side that we need from a product side happening at OR.
We feel really comfortable going into this space because we’re excited for people to see a different side of us—a side you’ve known for years, and a lot of our athletes have known, but people are going to be pretty stoked to have this excitement come to the show.
