Thursday, August 24, 2017

Iconic Canadian Brands: 5 Questions with Adam Ketcheson, Arc’teryx

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Arc’teryx is one of the first names in technical outdoor clothing. Whether climbing, skiing, or hiking, their innovative clothing is sought after by outdoors enthusiasts the world over. The Vancouver-based outerwear and equipment brand recently made forays into footwear, and continues to impress with its urban Veilance and military / tactical LEAF collections.

Adam Ketcheson, Global Vice President of Marketing and B2C, in conversation with Rob Manne, VP of Client Services at Interbrand Canada, discusses the brand’s inclusion in the Interbrand 150: Iconic Canadian Brands report and their outlook on their industry and the design process.

Adam Ketcheson

As one of the Interbrand 150 Iconic Canadian brands, what are the main ingredients that contribute to your success across Canada?

They are probably the same ingredients that contribute to our success globally. The brand has always had a very strong point of view from a design value standpoint. Ever since the get-go we’ve broken new ground on technical innovation, design aesthetics for apparel and industrial design. We’ve always positioned the brand as being market-leading and best-in-class. It’s always stood out in its space regardless of whether that was in Canada or that was abroad. So the same values that worked for us here really worked for us everywhere.

How does Arc’teryx differentiate from competitors and carve out its own space in the segment? Do you deal with the same customer segments, or is there a special customer that may be different than some of the other brands you’re up against?

The big difference between us and our competitors is that we have the ability to be way more focused. We can really be relentless about driving technical innovation and being consistent from the design value standpoint because we don’t try to be everything, we don’t try to appeal to everyone. That really allows us to stand out from some of those bigger and broader brands.

I think we’re all pulling from a broad outdoor consumer for sure. Our bread and butter tend to be the people that are the most active. It tends to be the people that are spending the most time in the outdoors and it tends to be the people that are looking for a competitive edge.

Where do you see tastes changing in the outdoor category? What are customers going to be looking for in the future from a brand like Arc’teryx?

Well, I think it’s a little bit different around the world.

In North America. There’s definitely a real sort of casualization of the space, especially among younger consumers. More and more people are looking for things that can bridge different of parts of their lives. They have a style, an aesthetic that they’re looking for. They want authenticity and performance, but they also often want something that they can wear in their daily lives.

In places like Europe, that change is slower to come. It’s a very technical market; people expect their gear to look very technical, and look very “traditional outdoor”. Color trends change faster there. They’re definitely less timeless than some of the stuff that’s going on in North America.

And then in Asia it’s a whole other case again. There are three big markets: Korea, China, and Japan, but they’re all very different markets, and the consumer trends are moving differently in each. China’s is really an emerging outdoor market. A lot of people are coming into the middle class and looking for opportunities to connect with nature and be outside more. Whereas in Japan, it’s gone very lifestyle. And Korea has gone very technical. So all the trends are a little bit different. We tend to believe that long term the North American millennial trend will probably influence all of those global markets. But you can’t lump them all together today.

You recently opened a new retail outlet in Vancouver—how are you thinking about the retail experience, and how is that guiding where you’re going be growing in the future?

We try to think of things in three-to-five year windows. We probably haven’t seen the biggest changes that are going to come in and disrupt our industry. But the thing we do know is that consumers are moving around between all the different brand experiences they have, whether that’s an online, product, community, or a retail experience. So we need to make sure we’re present in all of those spaces, and that we’re super consistent and totally on-brand. And we really take those opportunities to enable people to get what they need, to inspire them to do more things outside and to connect with them on a human level. And that’s the one huge advantage to a retail store.

What role does data play in your decision-making, and has that changed over time?

We use it a lot to run our retail and digital e-commerce businesses, we use it a lot on the marketing side. But from a from a creative strategy standpoint, we still try to have our own point of view and drive our values regardless of what we get from a data report.

There’s a lot of products that we’ve built over the years that, if we had paid too much attention to what everyone was telling us, we wouldn’t have brought them to market. Our thermo-laminated backpack panels, or our Gore-Tex based footwear. You can use data for clues and insight, but you also have to be fearless about going into spaces where maybe it’s counterintuitive.

If you build a product that doesn’t have a vision, it almost always fails. But when we’re fearless and we really follow our gut and are really stubborn about how we want it to look, how we want to build it, we often do really cool stuff.

Get more insights in our Q&A series and suggest a Q&A at editor@brandchannel.com.

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