Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast.
The current logo was the one that was served up first and I
hated it. I.
Think it's definitely been a balance of keeping it authentic
with those core users who really started and helped organically
grow the brand. If you're carrying the stuff out
into the Backcountry or into the mountains, like wait, really
does matter. Show me some mud.
Like I want to see mud being splattered.
I want to see it in a lake. It really comes down to making
sure that everything we're adding is based off of a
necessity. People are cut.
They're stopping and asking, hey, what is that?
Like, why are you who's smiling when you're busting your butt
going up a trail? Hello and welcome to another
episode of the Winning with Shopify podcast.
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today. We've got an amazing brand.
I've actually met these guys before.
One of them is part of our community.
The products are incredible and I'm very excited to hear a
little bit more. They're called Hyper like
Mountain gear. And we're delighted to be joined
by not one, but two guests, Mike, who's the founder, and
Jackie, who is marketing director.
So without further ado, we're going to start with you.
Mike, welcome to the show. How are you?
I'm great. Thank you for having me.
It's good to be here. Well, it's a pleasure to have
you on. And if anyone's not watching on
video, Mike, you have some products behind you as well to
grab some a bit later and show us some of the bits and pieces
while we're talking about them. But just before that, you are
the founder. I mean, just give us a quick
overview to your background. How long have you been running
this business? Why did you start it in the
first place? Yeah, great.
Yeah. So my background's a little
varied. I've had kind of three major
passions in life that I've pursued, which revolved around
music, food and the outdoors. So, you know, most of my life,
like prior to starting this business, was in the music
industry. I started as a guitar player and
then quickly realized that I could make more money as an
audio engineer. So it transitioned into that
world and that led me to touring the world with major rock'n'roll
bands, including the Eagles, and solo tours with Don Henley and
other other major bands. I got kind of tired of living on
the road and dove into the culinary world, not necessarily
as a career path, but I said if I have to eat, I want to learn
how to eat well and cook well. So I devoted 3 years to working
my way up into the best restaurants in the country,
which ended up at Per SE in New York City, which is Thomas
Keller. From there I started getting
more and more. I mean, I've always been
backpacking and hiking and doing things in the outdoors, but it
was my time in New York at the end of that three-year culinary
adventure that I really started thinking about how I could do
something in the other passion that I had in my life, which was
the outdoors. And at the time, you know, there
was a, the products that I was looking for were not available.
And so that kind of led to the search for, you know, new, more
stripped down minimalist designs, more efficient designs,
and then coupling that with the amazing fabrics that we use that
led to, you know, the growth of Hyperlite Mountain gear.
And that was a little over 15 years ago.
Amazing. See 15 years it's been running
and we're going to come back to some of those points.
I've already sharpened my pen, if that's a phrase and and taken
a few notes on this. But Jackie, I want to welcome
you to the show as well. We don't always get 2 guests.
It's an absolute pleasure. And last time they were both
called Brian's. This is much easier for me to
remember the difference between the both of you.
So Jackie, how are you as well? Good.
Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, Jackie Berlage at Hyper
Mountain Gear. I lead the E com team marketing
and yeah sales. So it's it's great to be here
too with Mike. Amazing, amazing.
And I'm going to ask you a question that's completely off
piece. It's only just come to mind, but
I thought it's a good joke about mountaineering as well going off
piece. But quick question to to to both
of you and either of you guys can go first.
Obviously, Mike, you're you're the founder.
It's based on the story you've just told us.
It's very much initially around yourself.
How does it work for someone like yourself and Jackie who's
come in and obviously got your own ideas?
You want to grow things your own way.
How do you guys manage like everything from the dynamic to
processes to bringing some of Mike's ideas and dreams to
fruition? I know as a founder saying to my
team, hey, let's do this. And they're like, what on earth
does that mean? You have to kind of explain, but
how do you guys manage that? How does that kind of
communication happen? Yeah, I think it's been great.
I think it's a lot of balance and I think a lot of open
communication. My background isn't as exciting
as Mike's. I was definitely more from like
the traditional brand side. So I have more like the business
side with retail and consumer facing brands.
I was at Timberland for a while and I worked at VF with Vans,
North Face and Timberland as well.
So I think definitely having more of that process and bigger
business mindset on growth, which balancing that with how
fast and how nimble and how flexible and how open we can be
at Hyperlite Mountain Gear I think is great.
I think it's a really good collaboration and balance of
taking some ideas, but then also being able to kind of really
make it our own and do what's right for our brand.
Amazing, amazing. I I love that as well because I
think, I mean, the first thing you said is it's been great.
And I think earlier in my career when I started hiring people,
actually understanding the, the cultural dynamics and things
that happen within a team. I mean, in hindsight, spoiler
alert, we're going to ask a question kind of similar to this
later, But if I started it again, like completely different
set of hiring decisions, but then it's like, would I have the
knowledge I have today when I started it again?
That's always the thing of the journey is really, really
important. And but Mike, I'm going to come
back to you. Let's, let's talk, let's talk
about high play mountain gear in a bit more detail then.
So that was the inspiration behind it.
But I've got in my notes, there was a real gap in the market
that you wanted to fill. And obviously the word Hyperlite
is a, is a really important part around the materials that you
guys do and mounting gear kind of says what, what, what the
product is, it delivers. What was the gap in the market
that you specifically saw and how have you managed that over
the last 15 years as things have grown and developed?
Sure. Great question.
So, you know, 1520 years ago when I was really kind of doing
a lot more backpack, well, when I was really getting into
backpacking, you know, all the products that were available, it
seemed like most manufacturers kind of forgot about what the
consumer really needs or they weren't really going out and
doing the activities as much. And it was all about like the
newest bells and whistles and how many more features you can
add and how many more pockets. And and so, you know, I quickly
realized, you know, shopping for packs 2025 years ago that, you
know, everything was overbuilt. And if you're carrying the stuff
out into the Backcountry or into the mountains, like weight
really does matter, you know, and durability really matters at
that point, too. So yeah, I remember, you know,
buying my first couple bags and they were really big, big
backpacks. You know, I'm like, this is
overkill. And then I went all the way the
other way to finding little kids book bags and, you know,
anything that had shoulder straps that I could like carry
the products I needed to go out for multiple days into the
Backcountry. And if that really kind of led
to, you know, a true understanding of what is
required and needed out there. And we started designing and
building the products that we felt would really fit that
market. I, I love that.
And I'm going to ask a quick sub question and this might actually
be more directed at yourself, Jackie, I think kind of on the
ground in marketing that is, given the, the movement into
influencer marketing and influencers using stuff, how,
how much do you think that's changed for both big brands and
small brands like you guys? I say I, I don't want to say
small, sorry, but very nimble. Like you said earlier, Jackie,
very nimble. We make decisions, we can pivot
quickly when something changes. I just want to give a quick
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on what you do best. Now back to the show, how is the
influence of the world and the rise of YouTube and and
Instagram and TikTok changed? Actually watching people using
products outdoors to go, there's clearly a problem here and we
can solve that very quickly. And it's wasn't, it's not
something someone would write on a customer feedback survey, But
having watched them try and open the bag or put it on their back
or as you say, my it's really bulky.
Like how much, how much do you guys use?
Kind of just watching what people are doing in the outdoors
online to then drive how we're going to build a product to
solve something they might not even know is a problem.
Yeah. I think the first part of that
is kind of the influencer side of this is more, you know, the
brand really started kind of organically with that
influential movement on professionals and users who were
really looking for the products that Mike was creating to solve
what they were trying to do. So you have like really
professional people, very technical people who kind of
really led the charge of building and starting kind of at
the beginning of it. So they were influential in that
way, but not like the influential marketing that we
kind of have now. So I think it's definitely been
a balance of keeping it authentic with those core users
who really started and helped organically grow the brand, but
then also balancing it with the social aspect of this across
YouTube reviewers and Instagram people who want to kind of use
the products. But sometimes it's more the,
it's still the intent of the product cuz you can use it
however you want, but it's just kind of finding that right
balance of the new shiny white packs on top of a mountain
compared to the really dirty packs that have kind of been
used. And you know that they're using
it for a while and have gone on all these adventures with it.
So again, I kind of think it's more of a balance.
And yeah, we get a lot of great feedback from online, from
YouTube and from Instagram, and we get a lot of feedback from
people who aren't on those platforms.
So I think that's kind of the balance for us is really trying
to stay authentic with that core group of people that really kind
of helped grow the business at the beginning.
I'd add to that, you know, that authenticity piece is really
important for, you know, especially for our users or
people that are going to these places and have big goals in
their life and big objectives. And, you know, so, you know,
working with, with athletes and guides and, and people who would
just have ambitious goals. I mean, and we're helping them
achieve those goals. You know, we'll, we'll get more
orders and, and more influence in the market through that
versus some of the actual influencer programs where you'll
see someone wearing a pair of jeans, you know, and a button
down shirt on the top of a mountain like, and it's a staged
photo that that does not work for us.
Yeah, absolutely. And I, I sometimes when I'm
buying certainly outdoor stuff, I, I mean, obviously people are
always going to show the cleanest, most pristine product
in all settings. I sometimes am like, OK, I'm
buying a 4 by 4 to go and drive like off road, show me some mud.
Like I want to see mud being splattered.
I want to see it in a lake, you know, like all these, all these
kind of going through a river like that.
That's where I want to see the products being used.
Complete side question. And this just came off actually
talking about the authenticity and those initial users, so
initial kind of influences or customers that you guys had,
where did the logo come from? Like is there any story behind
how you guys actually developed that as a as a logo to create
the symbol that people now recognize?
Yeah. I mean, that was the second
iteration of our logo. The very first one was like a
little bit of a mountain that just said Hyperlight mountain
gear underneath and and that worked for us for the first like
5-6 years. But in time we felt the logo
didn't match the quality and the aesthetics and the feel of the
products. So we worked with a local agency
here that's a amazing group of people, and we went through 50
different logo designs. And I remember this was this.
The current logo was the one that was served up first.
And I hated it when I first saw it.
But then it quickly started growing on me.
And then that's when I knew there's probably something
there, and it's been a great logo ever since.
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just going to, if you
guys just wait there one moment, I'm going to grab one of our
T-shirts for the podcast to make the exact point of something I
hated. So we've got these bright pink
T-shirts and I absolutely loathe them.
Pink is not my color. It's not.
I like subtle branding. My house is quite minimal
colors. My wife and I are quite
minimalist. This is bright, which is why I
don't wear it very often, but we keep it locked away in the
studio. So no one says you should wear
that to this conference because then I end up wearing it and
it's bright pink and it's not my color.
But the point being, actually, I love the fact you built the logo
for the audience. Like when the designer said to
me, we're going to make it bright pink because like now
you're fired. That's a stupid.
And then when he showed me on actually the podcast casting
platforms and said, look what happens when you scroll past the
bright pink one, they're all dark backgrounds.
Yellow doesn't really pink bang. Everybody sees it.
And he was absolutely right. And that's what we paid him for.
So he wasn't fired. Our listenership went up because
more people were intrigued. What is that bright, bright pink
thing? And I've quite a loud voice and
I can talk a lot as my wife would vouch.
So actually pink does suit the brand overall, even though I
wouldn't want to wear that T-shirt on a regular basis.
But I think it's interesting. Again, you just described to me
the, the way you develop the products, how you got your first
few sales in, even the logo, it's all orientated around the
customers. And am I right in saying then
that that's been a huge part of the brand story, the success,
the growth is having that communication with customers so,
so directly? Absolutely, you know that we
strive very hard to be a consumer centric brand and we
need that, you know, like, you know, even to your earlier
question, like you never know where a good idea is going to
come from. So I love to collaborate.
That's one of our core values here at Hyperlight Mountain
Gear. And, you know, if we want to do
something, a lot of times we take an idea and it's, you know,
just drop it on the table and it's a seed at that point.
And we pull the right teams together and we start
brainstorming like, hey, what could we do with this idea?
And, and we get some crazy ideas and then we get some that are
not so awesome. But then we start to sift
through that and we figure out what makes the most sense for
our customers, for us. And and that's how we kind of
develop, you know, the ideas that we go forward with.
Amazing, amazing. And I mean, I've kind of, I've
got it in my notes about an amazing question about your
growth. And I feel like we've spoken
quite a lot about this, but there's a second part that I
really want to ask. It's one of my favorite
questions to ask. With all your growth, are there
any pivotal moments that completely stand out to you guys
as being like that was a game changer or that was a day when
just things things changed better or worse, but that's a
day things changed. Yeah, one for me was the actual
transition to the new logo. We saw, you know, significant
growth through those years and, and, and several years beyond.
You know, I'd say COVID was another, you know, a big pivotal
moment when, you know, the lockdowns were happening and the
only thing people could do was get outside.
So I mean, that was a great time for the industry.
But yeah, there, I mean, there's, there's, there's some
big ones and there's so many little ones.
Every day I wake up, I hear some new story, something really cool
that happened, and it makes me proud to know that we were part
of making those experiences happen for our users.
Amazing, yeah, yeah, amazing, amazing.
And, and over to your side as well.
Jackie, from a marketing perspective, what have been some
of the biggest strengths in the growth of the brand?
Because this is one reason I love having you both on as well
as Mike. You're looking at stuff from the
cockpit and going what a beautiful set of scenery.
Like we've made some tough decisions.
We've made some really good decisions like over the time and
all this is kind of change. But you're Jackie, you're much
more on the ground of like, what are we spending on Google Ads?
What's Meta doing? What's SEO doing right now?
Who are we acquiring? What does that look like on the
ground? Then having the weight of these
kind of big ideas, very, very customer kind of centric brands,
what are some of the things that have been pivotal to the growth
kind of on the ground with marketing then?
Yeah. I think we're in a moment right
now for sure on kind of like pivotal growth for us.
I think a lot of the strategies we had last year coming into
this year was how do we really identify a lot of the internal
kind of value propositions that we know people are choosing
Hyperlate, why they're coming back to the brand.
And then how do we think about packaging that up and
communicating it externally to consumers in a way that can
really be like digested and understood?
Because we would talk about in the office and rattle things off
like, oh, like the products are just so durable and it's so
lightweight. And we'd go to like these values
kind of it, but we never really packaged it together as like
this whole proposition that could be a real big benefit for
the consumers in a way that they can understand it.
So we're doing a lot of campaign pushes right now specifically
around this better backpacking idea where it's all about
education. And it's about kind of sharing
our value proposition and what we built and how we're standing
on it and just why at the end of the day, going with lighter gear
is just better for anyone trying to do any kind of adventure.
So we're leveraging different platforms, we're trying new
strategies and we're really kind of pushing how we're serving up
some of these ideas to our existing consumers and to some
new consumers, so. And as a fellow marketeer, I
know I can almost sort of hear some of the pain in that of
going, we've got 50 reasons why this is amazing product, which
two or three of those 50 is the best one to say to a customer to
get the best conversion rate. And the reality is like every
customer is like, I want those three and someone else like
those three were the reason these three, The reason is
getting that across on pixels on a screen.
And then some genius decided to develop the phone that you could
go on the Internet on. And it was like, like, now we've
got less pixels on the screens. Like, OK, we're going to scroll.
We're going to scroll up and down.
But it is a real challenge, isn't it, to work out what
really makes the brand tick. And I guess to ask the sub
question on this, have there been any really important
moments for you guys where you've had to make a decision
and almost go? We love the hyper light, the
durability, but actually there's something really, we think very
plain, boring and quite vanilla that people buy the product or
based on. Like it's actually, it's got
amazing packaging and it's a gift and I just want to watch
someone open the packaging. Or have there been any learnings
like that that have come out of the woodwork at the same time or
or do you feel actually we managed to get quite close to
the core from the get go? I mean, I'd say there's a couple
and we've obviously tried lots of things over the years.
And you know, another like real kind of value to us is trying to
keep it as simple as possible, whether that's the messaging or
the processes that we put in place.
And as some of us may know, like getting to that simplicity is
actually very difficult. And to me, it's a process of
elimination. Like tell me everything that we
could possibly do, OK, how are we going to whittle that down to
the two or three things that are the most impactful?
And we do that on campaign ideas.
We do that on our products. We do that on everything.
I mean, you look at even the color scheme that we have, it's
black or white. That's your only choice for
colors of products. We joke.
Apparently color's too heavy, so we don't offer.
I love that. But you know, but striving for
that simplicity is something that we're constantly doing and
and I think that's what resonates with people when they
see our marketing messaging or our value propositions or or the
features on the products. I, you reminded me of a really
funny, I'm half writing it down. I don't know why I'm saying it
now, but the, the thing I remember is there was an agency
we used to partner with quite a lot called Monochrome.
And obviously monochrome is black and white.
And they had a thing on their website where you basically like
a little light switch like on a lamp that was hanging down.
And you could click on it and it would make the website full
colour. And then you click it and it
would go black and white. And it would say you are now if
you, if you were to look at this site, and I think it's for
something like 7 1/2 years in black and white versus 7 1/2
years in colour, because black and white is easier for a screen
to project. You've planted like 1/3 of a
tree. And it was like a statistic like
that, that there's less server capacity and screen capacity
itself to show something that's black and white versus colour,
which I thought was hilarious. But I mean, it almost sounds
like Henry Ford that you can have whatever colour you want,
but it's black and almost saying, let's take the choices
out that actually people struck. And I wonder, I don't know if
you've got any stats on this, but I wonder if, and maybe it's
just that today it's purely, I wonder, I wonder how many people
and now buy more products because you've taken too many of
the hard decisions away from them of going 0.
Do I like the green, the blue? I mean, even just think about
this polo shirt I'm wearing and it's first polo shirt I've owned
in years. And even then I was like, I was
like, I'm just going to buy a blue polo shirt and I bought a
green one. But there was like another
minute decision of like, oh, look at all the models wearing
all the different colours. And so I don't know if you guys
have any stats now or people say like, you know, it's so easy to
buy from you because I don't have to.
The colours of the two colours are just really nice and that's
it. And I don't have to think about
it. You know, there's a lot more
thought and process and technology behind that whole
conversation, which we can we can get into as we start
thinking about fabrics. But really it was the fabrics
that drove that to use, the fabrics that we do and the
fibers we use, which is dynamic fiber, which is the strongest
man made fiber in the world and that's what's incorporated into
every single one of our products.
But they cannot add colour to that fibre because it basically
is an impurity and the fibre loses its strengths by adding
colours. OK, I'm slightly stumped now
because I was thinking like it's just a marketing.
I mean it probably makes your job slightly easier Jackie like
we don't have to muck about with all the different things.
But I mean that that in itself then said to ask you guys
probably quite a tough question. It might be for you Jackie on
web content here. It might be for you Mike and
just how we but how do you present that?
How do you you explain everything you've just said in
like a sentence that where you've got 2 seconds to get that
message across on the mobile web page they scroll through?
How do you guys achieve that? I think that's a really good
point. We don't even really go into too
much on just the color choice between black and right, because
I think it's just comes down to the material choice.
And like Mike said, you know, the innovative materials that
we're using, that's our limitation on color, which is
almost harder from our side. Like, yeah, it might be easier
on the consumer side. You've got 2 choices.
But then if you think about growth and you think about
product innovation and how you're going to add skews into a
line, like it really comes down to making sure that everything
we're adding is based off of a necessity.
And to Mike's point early about like the simplicity on design,
like we really lean into the functions that are there.
Why do we make this choice? What's the design element?
So I don't want to say it's as frivolous as is it blue or is it
green? Like, like it it's, you know,
it's going to be black or white because of the innovation on
technology there. But then it comes into like the
feature sets that are being built out and what's needed and
what's really the consumers and use of the product and why is it
right for them? And yeah.
Yeah, amazing. I would add it goes even kind of
deeper than that too. I mean, like to use the
strongest fibers in the world. These are the lightest,
strongest fibers in the world, you know, 10 times stronger than
steel by weight. And it's basically an extruded
polyethylene fiber that they do some magic to, right?
But if you're talking about lighter weight products to get
up mountains and be in the Backcountry, whether you're
skiing or climbing or hiking or whatever it is that you're
doing, the lighter things go, the tendency, there's a tendency
to be less durable. So that's why we use the fibers
and the fabrics in the Dyneema name that we use is because it
brings that durability while also bringing the lightweight
nature that we need for products that are going up mountains.
Amazing, amazing. And I love how much like I love
how much both of you go into so much detail about we know
exactly what we're doing. In my opinion, and I could
probably prove this with data, there are too many brands in the
world that are just like, we're selling the same product as
everyone else. We're going to find a faster
delivery, slightly lower price. You guys are like, no, no, no,
forget all of that. Like the competition can go and
do whatever the, you know the heck it wants.
We're doing this and this is our product range.
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What what is I mean, I think you kind of went into some of that,
Jackie and a little bit you mentioned as well, Mike, what is
the product development process when you guys are like there's a
new product coming out? If we work backwards, what was
the first thing that happened then LED into the discovery,
into building the product, testing the product and then
putting it on the shelf? Yeah.
I mean kind of the necessity is like the mother of invention,
right. So I mean, we, we are constantly
looking at opportunities for new products and some products that
we get feedback from consumers that have needs other products.
We've designed things that we see how it could really benefit
you out doing whatever it is that you're doing.
And the consumer had no idea that they even needed that.
And there's plenty of examples of products that we've launched
that have been wildly successful that no one ever knew they
needed, but then they'd use them and they're like, wow, how did I
do without this? But I mean, we, we, we, we're
constantly striving for, I mean, this is purpose driven
equipment, you know, so we have to understand the activities and
the consumers. Once we do that, we can kind of
take the idea again, we'll drop it on a table or into a room and
we start brainstorming and getting creative around it.
Or what could we do here to solve these problems?
And, and how do we keep it super simple?
And then I'm a big fan of going straight to rapid prototyping.
I would rather take a concept and build something rude and
crude that we could go use that weekend and go try it out.
We're going to learn more from the failures of that product in
its very early stages than doing CAD drawings and you know,
computer design, whatever. And you know, it just takes too
long to do that. So we come up with a concept we
will cut and so that as fast as we possibly can get it into the
field and into our hands in in the field as fast as possible.
And then we start this iteration product of continuing fine
tuning until we get the product to where we want it to be.
And I, and I never really know where that is.
What I do know is that the product, the product tells me
when once we've kind of run out of things to tweak and we can't
find a way to make it better, like things start getting quiet
around that product idea, that's when the product is becoming
ready in my opinion. I think to like your earlier
question too about the collaboration and even like
working styles together coming into this.
I think even what Mike's talking about is a really good example
of kind of that collaboration on different styles coming
together, right? Like taking what Mike said and
then how do you turn that into a replicable process that can
actually like kind of bring product out in a cadence and in
a calendar? We created like a timeline in a
product development go to market calendar.
That really took a lot of those principles, but made it into
something that was repeatable and actionable to kind of bring
product to gear. But it really always LED with
what is the right product at the end of the day that's going to
be right for the consumer. And something that I think is
really different and and special about what we do at Hyperlate
Mountain Gear is our entire calendar on bringing product to
market is built around a testing window.
So that's one area that like we'll never skimp on is like,
you know, it has six months, three months, a year worth of
like real rigorous testing with the kind of users who are going
to really push it and understand the elements of where they're
going or the elements of design to, to get that kind of final
product. That's like definitely a hyper
light product. Yeah, yeah.
That's, I mean, that's amazing. And there must be so, so many
frustrations going. This product's amazing and we've
got 11 months still to go testing before we can launch it.
But but also, I mean, even that that testing process that you go
through of taking it up a mountain, see how it performs.
How much of that do you guys then use in social content, web
content to tell the story of you're not just buying something
that, as you say, CAD drawing sent to someone in China,
Vietnam product made. We sold it before it even hit
the shelf and you know, you've sold it off to you guys.
How do you bring that story to life again?
Then in social content, in web content to say you're buying,
this is brand new, but it's already a year old.
It's tried and tested and here's how it performed.
Like do you kind of create scores and stuff like that
within the marketing? And I think a really good
example of that is kind of something that's happening right
now in relaunching our core packs.
So the core packs that might kind of have talked about the
Junction Wind rider in Southwest really built the brand that was
started over the past 15 years. And this is the first time on
July 15th that we're relaunching these products with new
materials that I'm sure Mike will dig into.
But when we started this project, it was really daunting
of like making sure that you're making changes that are right
for the product that improve them, but not too far away from
what consumers originally love about the products.
So when we started thinking about this a year ago, the
people who we tested with are the ones who kind of been core
users of these products for the past however many years.
And so we gave it to them first. And we're like, OK, like take
it. Really let us know what you
think. Is this too far off what you
love about the core packs? Like what are improvements that
do need to be made and document the whole story?
So we have photos of the different iterations that
they've used from a year ago. And we kind of continued the
entire like product evolution story with some of the same
users. So we can go back and like, oh,
that was version one. That was version 2.
And we have their feedback on like, OK, when you tweaked this,
we really liked it compared to whatever the version was or the
original pack. And you know, in a lot of the
launch assets we use, it's, it's photos from them testing, it's
blog posts with their quotes and their journey.
And then they talking about it from their perspective.
And they're really documenting the process for us.
And they're also the users and the testers and a lot of kind of
our, I wanna call them like social, but social proof users
at that point too. Amazing.
I'm going to explain something in my world that relates, I
think perfectly to what you've just described that I think
business miss a lot when they're looking at, certainly when
they're looking at content for web.
And The thing is, I sat down a few of our clients and said, why
do you buy agencies? And one of the things that came
back is it's the people and who's referred me.
And then the obvious thing, which kind of Trump's both of
those is the result. But actually I could even get a
good result if I if I didn't like the people, I probably
still wouldn't work with them or if no one had said or no one had
endorsed them. So I took that referral thing to
think, how do you refer some how do you feel referred without Bob
telling Dave to phone Nick? But how do you make that happen
or make them feel like that? And the answer is case studies,
which in your world is customer reviews and customer review
content and customer reviews, which is what you've you've
created in a kind of nice little lab environment with those
specific customers about the products and the development.
Use that as the story, the amount of brands.
And we and we see this in AB tests that have reviews from
customers. They have emails from customers,
they have blogs happening, they have Reddit threads going on
their Facebook groups, they have Instagram comments, and they're
all happening in silo. And not one of them, not one
person internally is grabbing all of that and saying, hey,
you've landed on our website because you like the look of
this product. You're a potential customer.
People love this. Look at the journey we've been
on this community and all this sort of stuff.
And we did an AB test. I've pretty much 1000 times in
the podcast already, so I won't go into the detail, but we did
an AB test and basically just went rather than saying we're
rated excellent and Trustpilot, here are some of the actual
reviews from customers, presented them a bit more and
revenue pretty much doubled across the whole site.
And we've had that happen more than five Times Now.
And we're talking just in the last sort of nine months.
It's that powerful. So I love, I love what you've
just described of just by doing that exercise.
Yeah, there's some really cool Instagram posts and some tick
tock posts. But actually the blog posts are
saying, here's how we've developed this product.
Again, it comes with the challenge of there's only so
many pixels on the screen. But that's where I think, like
you were saying earlier, I think you mentioned it, Mike, of like,
we've got all this information. How do we drill it down and keep
it simple? And it's just like 5 people took
this backpack out. It broke for four of them.
So we've changed the material as an example of something that
might have come out. But Mike, tell us about what you
just mentioned, Jackie. Tell us, Mike, about the new
material as well. Like how has that come about?
Was that A, we found an issue here and we need to find a new
material? Did it come out by accident?
Tell us about that. I'd love to.
I'd love to just expand one second on the top here just on
too. Obviously we market and social
proof, it's usually important, but you know, it's really
interesting. You know, there's a lot of
people that still don't know who we are.
And we see usually a significant increase in orders on Mondays.
And that's, I think because people are going out on the
weekends and doing these activities.
And the people with the Hyperlite products you're seeing
are exerting less energy. They're having more fun.
They they can go farther, they can go faster.
And when other people see that and, and they see this iconic
white backpack out there, people are, they're stopping and
asking, Hey, what is that? Like, why are you smiling when
you're busting your butt going up a trail?
Like, like, and, and we, we hear that a lot, right?
And then, then they kind of like, oh, it's a hyper like
mountain gear. So then they come into the
website and they start seeing all the stuff.
That's awesome. It's a really cool process.
You know, the people are like real world, you know, seeing the
results of the products out there from other people.
Which I think I'll add something as well before we come back to
my my question, just to say that I mean that is, that is real
world evidence that if you invest in your product and your
product development Monday morning, we're just making more
money. It's not a we, we spent this on
Meta ads and we had a return of it.
It's like Monday morning, we just made more money because
people aren't using our products.
We've got the branding, right? We've got the product, right.
Yeah, we're still evolving it. We're still evolving it to make
it better. And I think that is absolutely,
you know, people always say like, oh, the product is king.
You've got to have the best product, whatever.
A lot of people then go, oh, I've got to spend more on the
product and try and work away. Not that at all.
It's I think it's absolutely evidence that like it's a
product that fixes a problem that lots of people have.
And if anyone else sees it, they want it.
And I think you've absolutely nailed it in that.
So thank you. It's amazing.
Not even in the Backcountry, but you walk through an airport with
our products and, and people will run after you and be like,
I have one of those or what is that?
That's amazing. It's it's really interesting.
We had a, sorry, just just on that, just a funny Side Story
quickly is we had a company that had so many pictures of their
T-shirts and hoodies and trousers and shoes and stuff
relating to surfers. And we did a customer feedback
survey. How many of you do surf?
And it was like 10% of the 10%. Like, you know, how many of you
guys have taken our products when you've gone surfing?
It was like 2% of the total customer base.
It was like, but when we put surfboards, people buy stuff.
It's like brilliant. That's, that's fine.
But it shows there's lots of use cases for every product.
Right, right. Sorry.
So back to the question then. So the new fabrics, how did you
evolve the new fabrics? Yeah.
So you know, we depending on whether whether it's a backpack
or a tent, those are separate fabrics, but it's also made by
Dyneema. That is the number one fiber,
again, the strongest fiber in the world.
It's an extruded polyethylene. It's, it's basically called
Ultra ultra high molecular weight, ultra high molecular
weight polyethylene fiber, right?
So. You said about keeping things
simple. You need an acronym.
Yeah, it's an extruded polyethylene fiber.
They found a way to align the molecules in these long form
change, which makes it unbelievably strong.
It's what you see in all dock lines for major ships now,
military ships. You know, it's, it's, it's
replacing steel cables in a lot of different industries.
All bulletproof vests have gone to these kinds of fibers now
instead of Kevlar. But you know, our fabrics, you
know, we, we started with a tent fabric 15 years ago and then we
were like, OK, we need something a little more durable for
backpacks. So we worked with Dyneema and
we, you know, basically put a face fabric on top of these non
woven composite laminates that they were creating and that face
fabric was giving more durability to the product.
And we ran with that for the last 15 years.
But the technology of the dynamic fiber was really
embedded inside layers of this fabric.
So over the last several year, actually the conversations
probably started about four years ago, but it's been 2 years
of development and testing that we not only took the fibers that
were embedded inside that material, but we had them, that
fiber woven into a cloth and which is extremely difficult to
do in its own right because of how strong these fibers are.
So if something got caught up in the machinery or in the weaving
process, chances are it's going to break the machines.
So they needed very specialized equipment and and expertise to
actually even weave this stuff into a woven cloth.
So we then took that woven cloth and laminated it back to these
non woven composite laminates and made this huge sandwich that
brings the Dyneema from the inside to the outside and vice
versa. And it is just an unbelievably
lightweight, very durable, very brazen, resistant and 100%
waterproof fabric. 100% I see. I, I, I was a marketing person.
I don't know if you get the sword jacket, but as soon as you
mentioned Mike about statistics, it is the strongest fabric in
the world is 100% waterproof. Suddenly my world lights up
because I'm like there's boxes on Google Shopping I can fill
out now with these bits of information where most people
are saying like it's a cool colour, it's a good price.
It's actually we're saying we're really hitting people's things
like it's the most lightweight backpack in the world.
It's the strongest backpack in the world, It's 100% waterproof.
I won't say the brands because they're not anywhere near as
cool as you guys, but I did buy waterproof backpack a while ago.
I filled it when I first got it for Christmas.
I filled it with newspaper and I sprayed it with my get washer in
my front garden. My neighbors thought I'd gone
mad and I left it for a couple of minutes just for the
drippings, opened it and the newspaper was still dry.
And it was one of those like, I've never worried about putting
my laptop, my MacBook in a waterproof bag before, but now
I've got one. We're testing that.
And I love the detail you've gone to though, and we won't
cover this again because I know we said it several times, but
what an incredible brief. Then you get Jackie and the
marketing team to go. I've got so much to work with
here. Like I can basically drilling
down to what, as I said, the most important points out of
these these things. And but I want to finish on this
last question. I mentioned this at the start.
I think, I think it's a really good question to ask is if you
could go back, Mike and start Hyperlite again, Hyperlite
Mountain gear is going to reform itself.
It's we've re round the clock 15 years.
What would you guys change? What would you do differently?
And I'd love to ask you the question after as well, Jackie,
from your point of someone who's come in and grabbed all these
tools and made made things happen with them.
But yeah, over to you first, Mike.
Yeah, I mean, I've been kind of thinking about this one for a
while. And, and it's a question that's
been I've been asked before and you know, there's definitely a
couple learnings that I've made over the years and you know,
especially around hiring, hiring the right people from the get go
or learning to let go of people when you need to in a timely
fashion. But you know, when I, when I
really think back on this, you know to, to build a brand that
has that level of authenticity that we have.
Like, I don't know if we could have done it any other way than
what we're currently doing. I don't know if I would change a
whole lot outside of some of the, you know, operational
things with, with inside the business, you know, But as far
as like how we design products, how we seed the products to
people, how we build, you know, how we get them into the right
hands. Whether you're on the top of
Mount Everest or in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, you know,
the products have to go through their paces with these users
and, and, and they have to be on these adventures and, and on
more than one adventure. So you can start to learn that
durability and then how, how, how much better this is than a
competitor. So, you know, I don't, I don't,
there's not a whole lot. I feel like I would change
around how we built Hyperlite. You know, there's things myself
as an executive that I've there that I would change or learnings
that I've had over the years and, and how I could do
something better, maybe speed something up.
But when it comes to Hyperlite, like, I don't see a better way
forward than what we've kind of done.
That's amazing. I'm just going to echo something
you said about the hiring bit as well.
I, I get asked a lot by store owners like when should I hire
my first person or I get people who've got 2050 a hundred staff
say your team's amazing like, and it's kind of like they are
amazing, but it's been hard work to get them there like and to
with both personnel training my leadership.
People buy into the small business owner.
I I mean I'm, I'm sold. I'm sold into you Mike, if
you're hiring I'm I'm definitely interested.
Just the way, the way you talk about the product, the passion
behind it, the fact that we know exactly what we stand for, where
we're going. People buy into that.
I years ago I used to kind of moan and be like this staff
member. They're just so wrong.
I can't replace them. And actually what I've learned
over the years is everyone has their place in any economy, any
set of jobs. And actually just because
someone, someone I find kind of, I would say boring, not much
personality actually. You get 10 of those in the right
job exactly where you don't want people kind of, you know,
drinking Diet Coke, wearing trainers and having banter all
the time, which I like a level of that in the office.
Actually, some environments I'd think about and go, I wouldn't
want to like, you know, go into a courtroom and find that I
wouldn't want to go to my local accountant.
And they're all just having a bit of bands.
Like you're accountants. I'm expecting you to be on top
of the numbers, you know, and like focus on a very kind of
focus. I want you to be smart.
I want you to be in suits. Depends on what sort of
accountancy you want. But I think everyone's got their
environment. And I've certainly, I can
certainly echo I've made, I don't want to say mistakes
because I used to call them that and I don't think they are
mistakes. They're absolutely learnings.
And I wouldn't know what I know now unless I'd had some
situations we've had to deal with over the years, which I
definitely shouldn't announce on the podcast in front of
thousands of people. And but it's a journey, isn't
it? It is, it is.
And I'd love to give you 1 quick example before Jackie has a
moment. Yeah, please, with question.
You know, and this is something that we learned or I learned
over the years of, you know, running Hyperlite.
And but we, you know, we, we've tried hiring all these big
outdoor industry marketing executives and CMOS and, you
know, and I, and to be honest, none of them really worked.
We, we hired Jackie originally as a director of operational
integration. I wanted to tear down the walls
between the departments and have more of this horizontal
organization where everyone's talking no matter what
department you're in. And we then promoted Jackie.
She did such a great job. We promoted her to the the
director of the marketing department.
And I think that was interesting because, you know, we trusted
someone who didn't have this playbook of how you do it.
You know, we and, and I found we're trying to differentiate
ourselves from the rest of the outdoor industry.
So by bringing in the season, the outdoor industry marketing
executives, all we were doing was just looking like everybody
else. So I mean, Jackie's done a great
job for us. She's really grown into the role
and it's, it's an amazing, it's, it's so fun to work together.
And I think she's done a great job.
And we took it. We took a chance there, but it
paid off. Yeah, and most of my team are
like that as well. We hired them with very little
experience in what they're doing today.
But it was like, I want problem solvers.
I want positive thinkers. I want people that are
proactive, people that are polite, people that offer to
take their cup back to the kitchen when they come to a
meeting. Like that's someone I want to
share a working environment with.
You know, you kind of start stick of these.
But what a segue, Jackie, I mean, over to you.
What you know, what would you change if you could go back to
when you first started? You know, are there any
learnings? Would you just repeat the
journey again? And, similar to Mike, have been
any kind of key moments? I think repeat the journey
again. I don't think there's any real.
I think everything had to happen the way it happened in order to
get to where we are now, which seems probably like a lame
response, but I feel like, I feel like to answer your yeah,
you can't. No, but I feel like to answer
that question, I think I think in a few years it's going to be
where we are right now. Because just even how fast
looking at Shopify and what's happening on kind of like the AI
front and different things that are happening within our
specific Shopify platform. There's a lot of things that
we're testing and we're trying and there's new technologies
coming out every day. And it's changing so fast that I
think in a few years we'll look back to this time and kind of be
like, oh, I wish I knew that that was the right tech stack
that we needed to kind of get to this growth.
And I wish this personalization or this A&B testing or you know,
I mean, like I think that there's just so much happening
right now that we're trying and we're testing and we're dabbling
that once we figure out the right way, it's just going to
kind of really propel growth. But it's going to, it's coming
with some trial and some errors and some growing and, you know,
everything's just kind of changing really quickly right
now, so. Yeah, yeah, which is it's a
really interesting point and something we, and this is for
all of you guys listening at home as well as as Mike and
Jackie here. But something we're exploring at
the moment is something that's come out of looking at where
we're getting the most success as an agency for brands.
And one of the things we found is people don't use the
technology they've got anywhere near well enough.
It's almost like you've got the most incredible armoury of
swords and Shields and bows and arrows and everything else, and
people like you've got swords, people firing arrows in the
wrong direction. And so it's like, Oh yeah, SEO.
Yeah, we've got SCM Rush that does all our SEO.
It's like, no, it doesn't. It's just it tells you what's
wrong. You still got to get up and do
so. And it tells you there's a box
missing, isn't it? What to put in it doesn't say
how to do marketing. That's what SCO really is, is
marketing. And and I think it's, it's
really interesting, as you say, about what's the best tech
stack. Shopify has reached that point,
I think at the moment where it's on the, the sharpest part of its
bell curve of growth. And AI is part of that.
And we, we've got AI don't know if we've even released it yet,
but we've got a trailer for winning Shopify.
That's basically there's all this noise of like, download
this app. It's the best app ever.
It's going to help. The guy writes it down and then
it kind of says he watches the next video.
It's like, never use this app. It's the worst app ever.
It will share your info you'll get ohh.
Then he like crosses it out and it's we're trying to just help
people with like here's the information go and find the tech
that's going to work or the process or the the way of doing
things. But I completely echo what both
of you guys have said about the growth.
I think they're I, I always look back on the journey and I used
to look back being like, I still haven't nailed it.
I'm still not a billionaire. And I actually look back now and
be like, wow, what a great ton of lessons we've made and just
change. I say just changing.
It takes a lot of things to change that mindset.
And part of it is the people you have around you and part of it
is the decisions you make. But I mean, look, guys, I've
written a page and a half of notes that's like at least three
times what I normally write in one of these.
So first to you, Mike, I want to say a massive thank you for
joining us. Appreciate your time, appreciate
your honesty sharing so much in the journey as well.
So thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you very much. It's great to be here and it was
a pleasure to share this time with you.
Amazing. And to you as well, Jackie, like
Mike loves you to bits and I can see why.
So thank you so much, including some amazing things for the
brand. But yeah, thank you as well for
your time and for joining us. Yeah, thanks.
It's a great brand and a great team to be a part of, so it's
cool. Awesome, awesome.
And I think some of us at home would be sitting there thinking,
I wish I could say that about my job.
Well, there's a big place. So maybe have a quick look or
change what you're doing and be a massive thanks to these guys.
Thanks a lot to your your colleague Matt, who's put this
together and it's part of our community here as well.
And yeah, if you want to join us next week, guys, we post every
single week. We also they might not be out.
I was I'm going to mention these, but Tuesdays we're going
to start launching little solo episodes from me with some
really cool little bits and pieces and very short snippets
compared to these long form episodes.
But if you haven't already, hit subscribe button.
Hope you can join us, our newsletter as well so we can
send you some really cool things and we'll see you again next
week. Thanks for joining.
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