Channel Mastery - Ep. 106: Jen Gurecki, Coalition Snow
“...Understanding that the people who admire Coalition or who are invested in our brand ... They are as diverse thinkers as we are. We don't just talk about skiing. Enough of that happens in our industry. Everybody, great. You guys all keep doing that. There's bigger conversations, so we tend to have those.”
- Jen Gurecki
EPISODE PREVIEW:
This episode is the first of an entire season of Channel Mastery podcasts co-produced by our friends at the Snowsports Industries of America (SIA). Jen Gurecki joins me on this episode and after sharing the mic with her, I have to say, she just embodies the word entrepreneur. She is Co-founder and CEO of Coalition Snow, a women’s-specific ski hardgoods company, Editor-in-Chief of Sisu Magazine, and as of Oct. 14, 2019, a specialty brick-and-mortar retailer (Truckee, Calif.). Jen knows a thing or two about breaking the barriers and building channels where her followers expect her to with Coalition Snow. She’s a die-hard advocate for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and is seemingly unafraid to stand up for things many, many other brands are fearful to stand up for. We need more Jen Gurecki’s in our world, IMO. Jen’s background in the outdoor industry is unlike the traditional path many CEO’s in the snowsports communities have taken. When some were sales reps, she was founding a company in rural Kenya. How hard could it be, then, to start a women’s ski hardgoods brand? She set about to find out with Coalition Snow, a company that makes skis for women by women. Her drive, desire to push boundaries and willingness to try new strategies in a male-dominated battlefield set her and the Coalition Snow team apart from their competitors, but beyond that, they’re creating a sense of community and inclusiveness where it’s needed and using a creative and ever-evolving mix of brand and sales channels to connect with loyal fans and followers. Jen’s episode underscores the importance of being nimble, and testing and learning - concepts that are tough for longstanding, established brands to emulate. There’s a ton to learn from Jen’s instinct and her challenges and successes. Check out the show and give it a share today!
GUEST PROFILES:
Jen gurecki
Jen Gurecki is the CEO of Coalition Snow & Editor of Sisu Magazine.
SELECT QUOTES:
“Although I was not heavily involved in the industry, I'm smart enough at business to know that I had to bring other people on…. I'm starting a real business. So, I immediately found advisors and partners who could connect me to established and reputable manufacturers and engineers around the world so that we could immediately go to market with exceptional skis and snowboards.”
“As a team at Coalition, we always started where we are the women who are creating the designs, and we're really starting from this as a standpoint of - what do we want to ski on? … We always approached it as what's not out there in the market that we would like to be on, and then we designed it.”
“It {Coalition Snow} was a message of inclusivity and acceptance and come as we are. We accept you the way that you are.”
“...Understanding that the people who admire Coalition or who are invested in our brand ... They are as diverse thinkers as we are. We don't just talk about skiing. Enough of that happens in our industry. Everybody, great. You guys all keep doing that. There's bigger conversations, so we tend to have those.”
“By having a general outdoor magazine , that opened up a lot of doors for us to work with people who we respected and admired and wanted to be able to just give them these pages. There's that piece of that and the learning that comes from reading these people's words and how good we feel about sharing them, because it's not the typical stories you're used to reading.”
“We need to have deeper, richer conversations in the industry, and we need to do more than talk. We actually need to see action, and we're not going to do that with really watered down, simplistic, same old same. We do need radical change. I get that that's really uncomfortable for people, because it means things are going to change for all of us. But it's the right thing. There's a lot of brands who are on board with that and see how customers, like a customer demographic in the outdoor industry, is evolving.”
“If you look at it from simply an economic standpoint, if brands aren't able to understand shifting demographics of the outdoor population, you likely may not have a retail store or a brand or business in the next 10 to 15 years. You have to evolve. This is a really exciting time to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and be comfortable with not knowing all the answers and existing in this bit of the unknown and finding all of these co-conspirators who you can work with to not only make your business stronger but make the industry a better, more inclusive place.”
“If we're not solving a problem, if we're not creating value for the community, then there's no reason for us to do it just to do it.”
“That's the old way of doing things is having a perfectly polished, curated view for the public to think one way about you. But what people want now is they want the realness and they want the grittiness, and they want to see what's going on.”