Most people wander into the outdoor industry sideways. Drew Eakins started at a recycling company, coordinating sponsorships and field marketing, then moved to a climbing-gear holding company, then gloves, then backpacks. By the time he landed the marketing lead for Reima's North America business, he had spent more than a decade learning one thing over and over: a technical product only wins when the right people finally hear about it.
Reima is the kind of brand that rewards that patience. Founded in Finland eight decades ago, it makes children's outdoor clothing and footwear built for weather that most kids' brands never plan for - snow, sleet, wind, and the specific chaos of a five-year-old who refuses to come inside. Its promise is disarmingly simple: gear that has been "tested by real kids." What it lacked, for a long stretch, was a loud enough voice in the United States. That is the gap Eakins was hired to close.
"For 80 years, Reima has been Finland's best-kept secret, but that secret is out and the opportunity to grow this brand in North America is immense." Drew Eakins, on joining Reima
01 / The scenic routeA career built one gear category at a time
Eakins did not train to be a marketer. His degree from Georgia Southern University is in Sport Management, followed by a master's from Sam Houston State. The marketing came later, and it came through practice - a Marketing Coordinator role at Greenstar Recycling, then a stretch running the website, promotions, and eventually the full marketing function at Great Trango Holdings, the company behind a set of climbing hardware brands.
Those early jobs were small stages, which is exactly where the useful reps happen. At the Climbing Wall Association he grew a trade show by 15% one year and 23% the next. Back at Great Trango as Director of Marketing, he pushed social growth of 222% and 560% on brands almost nobody outside the climbing world was watching. Numbers like that on a small budget teach a marketer to be resourceful before they ever get to spend real money.
Fig. 1 - Growth figures Eakins posted on small-brand budgets at the Climbing Wall Association and Great Trango Holdings.
The next move mattered more than it looked. From 2018 to 2022 he ran North America marketing for Hestra Gloves, the Swedish handwear maker, developing its US strategy across multiple brand lines. It was there he worked alongside Marc Cutilletta, who would later become Reima's head of North America. Cutilletta has publicly credited Eakins with the ability to "build brand awareness and strategically connect with target audiences" - the kind of endorsement that tends to travel with a person from job to job.
02 / Five channels, one brandThe Cotopaxi years
Between Hestra and Reima came Cotopaxi, the Salt Lake City brand known for its bright, mismatched colorblocking and its social mission. As Senior Omni-Channel Marketing Manager, Eakins led marketing across all five of the brand's sales channels. That is a specific kind of hard: keeping a single brand voice coherent whether a customer meets it in a retail store, on the website, through a wholesale partner, or in a paid ad. Do it badly and the brand feels like five different companies. Do it well and it feels like one.
A brand only sounds like one voice when someone is deliberately tuning all five channels to the same pitch.
It is also where the outdoor-lifestyle credibility becomes practical rather than decorative. Eakins is an avid runner, climber, skier, hiker, and backpacker. When the product you market is the product you actually use on weekends, the marketing tends to skip the fake enthusiasm that customers in this category can smell instantly.
03 / Helsinki meets the RockiesThe Reima assignment
Eakins joined Reima as Wholesale Marketing Manager for North America, based at the brand's headquarters in Golden, Colorado, and has since grown into leading the region's marketing. He arrived as part of a deliberate build-out of the North American team, reuniting with Cutilletta and joining new sales and wholesale-experience hires. Careers in this industry are less ladder than network, and this was a case of good people circling back to work together again.
The strategy he is marketing into is unusually clear. Reima wants to be seen as a footwear brand as much as an apparel brand, betting that kids' shoes - barefoot sneakers, "rolling steps" designs, waterproof boots - can pull the whole brand into year-round relevance instead of a single snowy season. The early numbers give the bet some spine.
Fig. 2 - The momentum Eakins's marketing is built to amplify, from Reima's North America push.
On the ground that has meant partnerships with retailers like Scheels, Backcountry, Evo, and Little Burgundy, and a pop-up store in Boulder, Colorado, to put the brand in front of the exact families it wants. It is a wholesale-and-experience playbook, not a spend-your-way-to-awareness one - which fits a marketer who learned the craft when there was never much money to waste.
04 / Still a studentThe Seth Godin habit
One detail says a lot about how Eakins works. In 2018 and 2019, mid-career and employed full-time, he enrolled in two of Seth Godin's programs - The Marketing Seminar and the altMBA. Not a sabbatical, not a resume line for a job hunt. Just a working marketer treating continued learning as part of the job description. It is the same instinct that led him onto the Highlander Podcast to talk through how students and newcomers can actually break into the outdoor industry, an industry famous for being easy to love and hard to enter.
His advice to people trying to break in is not a resume trick. It is knowing your audience better than anyone else in the room. The through-line of a decade in outdoor marketing
Fig. 3 - A full loop through the outdoor gear world: recycling, climbing hardware, gloves, backpacks, and now kids' apparel and footwear.
05 / What comes nextThe bet on small feet
The ambition Eakins is helping chase is straightforward to say and hard to do: turn a beloved-but-quiet Finnish brand into a household name for North American parents, and do it by convincing them that a kids' brand can be genuinely good at footwear. North America is a fraction of Reima's global business today, and the internal aspiration is for it to eventually rival Europe's share. That is a long game, which suits someone whose whole career has been about the slow, credible build rather than the quick spike.
If there is a single idea that connects the recycling sponsorships, the climbing trade shows, the glove strategy, the five Cotopaxi channels, and now the Finnish kidswear, it is this: great products deserve to be heard, and the marketer's job is to make the hearing happen without faking the enthusiasm. For Reima, tested by real kids, that job is now well underway.