Product ecosystems are everywhere. Especially in the tech world, companies work incredibly hard to include software and hardware features to keep you purchasing their family or ecosystem of products and services. Intuit has integrated data connections between Quickbooks, TurboTax, Credit Karma, and their other applications; Apple turns texts from Android phones into infamous green bubbles; Milwaukee sells a stacking and nesting tool box and management system called Packout (which is actually quite nice if you want to pay up for storage), and the list goes on.
Brands provide benefits for buying into their exclusive ecosystem of products, and consumers typically jump into them— so why is that you see most people (myself included) skiing the slopes, running the trail, fly fishing the creek, and doing other outdoor activities using a mixed set of outdoor gear (both clothing and equipment) from various companies? Why don’t most people buy into one brand for all their gear in a given activity? Well, the answer might be a combination of structural forces within the outdoor gear space, and also the simple fact that sports brands haven’t yet created the marketing and business mechanisms to make such a leap. Whatever the case, though, I pretty firmly believe that the outdoor gear space will slowly move away from the mix n’ match nature we see today to something more stove-piped, even at the individual consumer level.
To help dissect why we haven’t seen a concrete drive towards ecosystems within the outdoor gear companies, it’s useful to understand what makes a good ecosystem to begin with, and highlight what is possible or not possible within the outdoor gear industry before predicting what comes next for the industry. There are almost certainly more factors that contribute to a successful product ecosystem, but four that stand out to me personally are listed below:
- Consistent, unique aesthetic
- Broad coverage of products with linked usage
- Seamless integration of products
- Secondary ecosystem benefits
In general, you’ll find that companies with strong product ecosystems check most of these boxes through the set of products they offer.
Consistent, Unique Aesthetic
The simplest way to maintain customers, and simultaneously signal to them that you are serious about maintaining a product ecosystem they can buy into, is to have a unique, and consistent aesthetic for your products at a given time, and maybe more importantly, year-over-year. There is a LOT that goes into overall aesthetic of a product, but a few more prominent factors are: color, material choice/finish, and geometry. Notably, this is an area that outdoor gear companies struggle the most, in part due to the nature of their industry, and partially through their own choices.
In regards to unique and consistent product color, this is where you see companies really struggle. Colorways for outdoor gear are not like many other products: they change almost every single year, and most companies follow similar macro trends (e.g. pastels, fluorescence, etc.). This means that it is extremely difficult to associate most brands with a single color, and it’s easy for a consumer to swap to a new brand because another company offers similar colors and they know that their current ski jacket brand won’t offer color ways that blend well with their jacket in the near future anyways. If you asked a group of outdoor enthusiasts what color they most associate with Patagonia or North Face or Salomon, you’d get a grab bag of different answers— if you asked a group of general contractors what color they associate with DeWalt or Milwaukee or Makita, you’d get a single answer for each of them.
I am not suggesting that outdoor gear companies should lock the same color palette permanently, but it is interesting that no major company really pursues that type of consistent color scheme whole-heartedly. However, you do see some efforts to create unique brand identifiers beyond just a logo, with most involving unique highlight colors on all their products. Helly Hansen is a standout in the jacket industry, by adding an orange stripe to the top of their jacket hoods. I would argue that Rapha’s white arm stripe and Black Crows’ consistent, vibrant, mono-tone ski colors both succeed in this area as well. Because of their color choices, these products are easy to identify even as new models are released, and the more of these products you have, the more you want them to all match.
Similar issues extend to material choice and finish on products, though this is maybe less in the control of the individual gear brands, especially as it relates to clothing. In general, there are industry gold standards for materials that need to be warm, breathable, waterproof, insulating, etc. and as a result, brands typically implement the same sets of materials. There are exceptions to this rule, but the result is that most companies have similar material aesthetic and function when comparing between two similar companies. Top of the line gore-tex rain shells will mostly have the classic grey mesh internal lining, puffy coats often have a similar, synthetic glossy sheen, and even for backpacks or ski poles, the material choices are relatively consistent between brands. It means that with rare exception like Arc’teryx with their in-house insulation Coreloft (which is still functionally and aesthetically similar to Primaloft), you can’t lock someone into buying your products because of the materials you use.
The final aesthetic trench of geometry is maybe the most difficult area for gear companies to establish a unique, consistent aesthetic. One main reason is simple any innovations in overall product form or function are relatively easy for a brand to copy (very well-positioned IP like Burton’s Step-In bindings aside). Companies are also all typically optimizing for the same set of body sizes and functions, whether its aerodynamics, warmth, or any other common gear goals. There are definitely nuances between different brands— a Trek and Giant bike look slightly different, or maybe a Mammut running vest fits slightly tighter than a Nathan. But to the untrained eye from afar, it is difficult to pick out what brand something is without a large logo or clear color identifier.
With rare exception, I’d argue that outdoor gear companies generally struggle to establish wholly unique, consistent aesthetic, which makes it difficult to use it as a tool to create a long-lasting product ecosystem. I do think that brands will begin to create gear lines that have unique color features year after year, but I don’t think that we will soon see major brands really differentiate themselves through material, finish, or geometric features of their product lines, especially when it comes to clothing. This might be the most difficult portion of an ecosystem for gear companies to establish. Gear wears out at different rates, and for consumers who need a new coat but still have older snow pants from the same brand, they may have no aesthetic reason to stick with that brand for their new coat— it’s a pattern that’s pervasive in outdoor gear.
Broad Product Coverage
I don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature of this type of product ecosystem, but if you want to create a strong hardware ecosystem, you typically end up selling a version of most products related to a specific activity. Apple and Samsung both sell smartphones, tablets, computers, and headphones— all the main modes of interacting with consumer technology on a daily basis. Milwaukee and every other tool company sell drills, wrenches, drivers, saws, hammers, tool boxes, and on and on. None of these products are particularly unique to each individual company, but maintaining an offering for each type of product within a given space is key to maintaining a strong ecosystem because your customer knows they can come straight to you with their need for a given activity.
You see this in the outdoor gear space as well— a sign that companies are already thinking about how to keep customers coming back to their own products, and an area that I think gear companies are actually particularly strong. Most major gear companies have their suite of nearly identical gear that get sold to ensure that they cover most of the main functions of their types of customers (ironically done, in part, because copying the geometry of the products is so easy):
- Patagonia, Stio, Cotopaxi, and many others all have a similar waterproof mega-tote (I highly recommend the Black Hole version if in stock)
- Salomon, Mammut, North Face, and maybe 30 other brands all have running vest with flexible water bottles up front
- Mammut, Osprey, Burton, and others offer nearly identical backcountry skiing packs, all with the same pocket structure, and in similar size ranges.
The list could go on forever, and it’s rare that a single gear company releases a brand new product that isn’t copied by others within a few years.
Honestly, there’s really not too much to add to this ecosystem driver except that quality across your product suite definitely matters, especially for more enthusiastic users. It’s difficult to have the best trail shoes and the best lightweight running shorts, but if you can do both, you should. At the end of the day, though, the simplicity of most outdoor gear makes it easy to copy, which in turn means that most gear companies can easily have pretty strong, broad coverage of the products associated with a given activity. As noted above though, this also ironically makes it easier to switch between brands without noticing much of a difference. However, I still believe that having the full suite of product offerings is required if you do want to create an ecosystem— if you sell ski jackets but not snow pants, you’re leaving the door open for your customers to switch their ski jacket out for their snow pant brand in a few years or go with a company that sells both.
Seamless Integration
The third area where companies can take active steps to establish a product ecosystem is by creating products that integrate with each other seamlessly, through whatever mechanisms they interact. This can take many different forms, whether it’s shared data communication protocols (e.g. iMessage), interlocking hardware (e.g. Lego), common dimensions (e.g. Lego), nesting (e.g. Lego) , easy attachment mechanisms (e.g. Lego), and more. For most outdoor gear companies, this gets limited to hardware integration, but there are certainly companies like Garmin and others that work on both software and hardware integration. Without diving too deep into all the possible variations of seamless integration across outdoor gear, I wanted to provide some examples of a few outdoor gear where it works well, and highlight opportunities for improvement.
Cycling water bottle holders acting as low-force snap-fits is a silly, but genius, example of interlocking hardware. I’ll also highlight a Mammut backpack, the Neon Gear 45, that nailed all the storage and interlocking hardware mechanisms needed to store climbing gear— this backpack comes with its very own hilarious review from 2015 as well. What this backpack does to well is tailor storage and interlocking mechanisms for everything you’d throw inside it. Carabiners? Got their own textile loop for clipping in place. Shoes? Have their own storage pocket sized correctly. Don’t want to get your chalk all over the bag? It comes with a sealed bag that handles most chalk bag sizes. It’s really a great bag that allows all your climbing equipment to interact with it in an intuitive and effective way. This type of product-set thinking is already extended to other areas like backcountry skiing and trail running, but likely will expand to clothing pocket sizes, travel bags, and more.
GoPro mounts and accessories may be a more fringe example of dimensional and geometric consistency, but still an effective one when it comes to outdoor gear. GoPro has really knocked it out of the park when it comes to how well their products work together in terms of shared dimension, especially when it comes to mounting and accessory hardware. Any GoPro you purchase will work with a huge variety of accessories and other hardware and integrate seamlessly, which is certainly something that I take for granted. A very different, but illustrative, example of geometric consistency would be if a brand was able to make the sinch-sacks for their crash pad and sleeping bag have the same dimensions as the packaged tent. This would make storage inside a backpack symmetrical and intuitive, and make the sizing for the accompanying backpack much simpler.
The GSI Outdoors Pinnacle Cookset line might be my personal poster-child of satisfying product nesting in the outdoor gear space. The bowls, utensils, strainer, all nestle within the aluminum pot for space optimization while backpacking. These items can be purchased as a set or separately, and if I had any individual product within the line, I would surely complete the GSI set if I needed to fill out my camping cookware set— GSI’s other gear all nests in similar ways if you are curious. Similar to the backpack example above, it would also be great if a company like Osprey would sell a line-up of travel cubes and bags with geometries that accommodated consistent nesting where you minimize the amount of empty space in the bag.
For easy attachment mechanisms, Yardsale ski poles stand out to me as a completely new brand taking a look at attachment mechanisms in a new way by using strategically placed magnets in the handles and baskets of the ski poles fasten them together without any hassle. Maybe the golden goose (I don’t know what this actually means) of this category is the Burton step-on binding and boot combo, which is entirely unique to the brand and a game-changer for most casual snowboarders. Another great example from the world of skiing and snowboarding is magnetic-swappable lenses for ski googles. I am a HUGE believer that magnets should be incorporated into more products where lower-force and/or oft-separated attachment is needed like jacket hoods, ski storage, performance sunglass lenses, snow skirts, and more.
Secondary Ecosystem Benefits
Finally, most successful ecosystems offer secondary benefits to customers in order to keep them coming back for more products. These can range widely in form, but ones that you often see are:
- Cost discounts for purchasing more than one product at a time or a longer subscription. This you rarely see in the outdoor gear space, and more broadly you almost never see a full set of gear listed together for sale, like a ski jacket and snow pants, sleeping pads and sleeping bags, or skis and poles. It’s a bit surprising, and something that I’d expect to change in the coming years.
- Loyalty or rewards programs. Apart from larger companies that sell multiple brands like REI, Backcountry, and The Feed, it is shocking to me that outdoor gear brands don’t have any rewards that I know of. It’s such a simple way to keep customers engaged or egg them on to purchase another product while shopping. Your loyalty programs don’t need to be as involved or complicated as an airline, but having anything resembling a loyalty program seems like a no-brainer, and this will almost certainly start happening with individual brands.
- Free or discounted repairs and cleaning. Interestingly enough, this type of program is becoming way more common for individual gear companies, especially those with brick-and-mortar clothing stores. Arc’teryx and Patagonia both have very involved repair programs, and Arc’teryx offers in-store cleaning of technical gear in some locations now. These trends are likely to continue, and I’d imagine that the programs offer more services and discounts over time.
- Year-over-year upgrade programs. This is most common in the tech hardware and cell-phone space, and I don’t really see it transferring to the outdoor gear space well, but honestly, you never know. I could easily see a program where you’re effectively leasing your pair of skis or mountain bike for a few years, then can return them for a heavily discounted new pair in a year or two, repeating the cycle for many iterations. It could be an appealing way for gear companies to have consistent revenue on their books!
There may also be other secondary benefits to buying into ecosystems that I am not identifying above, but needless to say, most gear brands aren’t great at taking advantage of some of the lower-hanging fruit in this area.
To finally pull all these threads back together, I very firmly believe that outdoor gear companies will begin to create their own more formal product ecosystems that will drive a more stove-piped outdoor gear industry, for better or worse. I don’t know that outdoor gear companies will establish unique and consistent long-term aesthetics, but I very firmly believe that we will continue to see major outdoor gear companies expand their set of offerings within individual activities, that they will begin to upgrade the integration of their products in meaningfully beneficial ways, and that they will all begin to provide additional ecosystem benefits like loyalty programs and free repairs. Every type of outdoor gear company from fly fishing and skiing to cycling and backpacking could benefit significantly from leveraging a more robust ecosystem of products, and I believe it will unfold that way in the coming years.
And, once you have a full ecosystem of products, you can start offering “starter packs” and other types of bundles that give a no-thoughts-head-empty approach to getting someone into your ecosystem of gear… but that’s a longer discussion for another day…
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