outdoor-industry
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The Agency That Chose Three Verbs
For three decades, Portland's Sasquatch Agency has organized its business around a suspiciously simple appetite: eat, drink, play. The trick is what happens after choosing a narrow lane - and learning every shelf, trail and tap handle inside it.
Medley Communications knows what makes an editor call back
A bottle cap, an electric bicycle, a muddy race: Gary Medley’s PR work starts with the detail someone else can turn into a story.
OutsidePR knows the story starts before the starting gun
A missing bicycle, a three-year podcast pitch, and a running brand’s 17-month entrance. Inside the outdoor PR agency that makes preparation part of the publicity.
Craig Rowley Has Spent a Career Making Brands Mean Something
From Harley-Davidson and Porsche to #OptOutside and Cotopaxi’s llama herd, Craig Rowley has built a career around a stubborn idea: the strongest marketing gives people something worth joining.
Strick Walker Built a Career by Making Brands Mean Something
Across Patagonia, Spindrift, Merrell, Simms and now M72, Walker has kept returning to one useful question: does the brand's story match what the organization actually does?
Michael Dalzell Knows the Product Is Only Half the Story
From steep ski terrain to technical apparel to a century-old foundry, Michael Dalzell has built a career around the same practical question: what makes people want to belong?
Cannondale Built a Bike Brand by Refusing to Draw the Normal Bike
From a loft above a pickle factory to a one-legged fork and radar-equipped road bikes, Cannondale has spent 55 years making engineering visible. The oddness is not decoration - it is the business strategy.
Drew Eakins
Drew Eakins is a marketing leader in the outdoor industry and the marketing chief for Reima's North America business, the 80-year-old Finnish children's outdoor clothing and footwear brand. Based in Colorado, he has spent more than a decade building outdoor brands, with earlier stops at Cotopaxi, Hestra Gloves, and Great Trango Holdings. He is known for connecting technical outdoor products with the audiences who actually use them, and for leaning into brand storytelling, wholesale partnerships, and channel strategy.
Richard McLeod
Richard McLeod is the Global Chief Marketing Officer of Merrell, the hiking and outdoor footwear brand owned by Wolverine Worldwide. A former college basketball player and Brunel University London graduate, he has spent more than two decades building globally recognized brands, with senior marketing roles at Champion, Canada Goose, Foot Locker, Hennessy and Bacardi. Since joining Merrell in February 2025, he has led the brand's push beyond the trail into the outdoor lifestyle market, spearheading its first global brand platform, 'It Starts Outside.'
Specialized Bicycle Components
Specialized Bicycle Components is a Morgan Hill, California maker of high-performance bicycles, components and gear founded in 1974 by Mike Sinyard. It built the first mass-produced mountain bike, the 1981 Stumpjumper, and today designs road, mountain, gravel and Turbo e-bikes alongside helmets, apparel and the Retul fit system. With roughly 1,300 employees and an estimated $500M in revenue, it is one of America's 'Big Three' bike brands and a fixture in pro road, mountain and triathlon racing.
Joe Vernachio
Joe Vernachio is the CEO of Allbirds, the once high-flying wool-shoe brand he is now trying to put back on its feet. A 30-plus year outdoor and athletic industry veteran who started as a product manager at Chouinard Equipment and has since steered product at Patagonia, Nike, Roots, Spyder, The North Face and Mountain Hardwear, he took the top job at Allbirds in March 2024 after three years as COO. He is part product geek, part operator, and an Everest aspirant who once spent a month getting through the Khumbu Icefall.