As our industry continues to find new ways of adapting and connecting in the wake of the pandemic, the need for bona fide relationships has come into sharp focus. Smart digital tools are a critical component of keeping brands and retailers connected, but they need to be used in tandem with genuine human interactions.

Topo Designs understands this, and continues to live by the values the company was built on: making things the brand’s employees actually want to use and connecting authentically with customers.

We chatted with Sean Han, head of global sales at Topo Designs, to find out how the brand builds lasting relationships with its retailers, what it has done to support its wholesale channel over the last year, and how Envoy B2B helps Topo stay focused on core brand values.

Three Tenets of Success

It’s essential for a brand to understand the needs of its retailers and meet them where they need support. But support is more than just providing the right tools or delivering product education. It also means guiding retailers down the right path with products that will move. Below are the top ways that Topo Designs supports its retailers.

Flexibility

Meet your retailers where they need you. Having gone through an incredible period of change and uncertainty, it’s important to realize that the people we do business with are our community, and Topo Designs quickly realized that support means being flexible.

Said Han, “Changing times and situations are hard on both the retailer and brand side of the business. Whatever a brand can do to support the retailer’s ability to stock inventory and generate cash flow can help sustain a long-term partnership. Over the past 18 months, we’ve helped dealers with PO edits, worked with them on pricing and dating, and even swapped out slow-selling inventory to keep assortments fresh and focused on our best-selling items.”

Core Focus

Building smart assortments for each store is invaluable, and with a laser sharp focus on who they are as a brand, Topo Designs is able to deliver a set of core products that consumers have come to desire and rely on.

“We work hard to keep retailers focused on core styles,” said Han. “We see a lot of retailers, especially those who are new to the brand, become infatuated with the more elevated or niche pieces in our collection. Our sales team works hard to keep retailers focused on the core styles. We know they will turn over and we know there is demand in the marketplace.”

With powerful visual merchandising and assortment tools, Envoy B2B empowers Topo Designs’ reps in their mission to build orders focused around these core products and keep retailer sell-through high.

Harnessing the Right Tools

Envoy B2B gives Topo Designs the power to deliver a meaningful content and commerce experience to retailers in the wholesale channel. With engaging educational experiences, access to data to track trends, an easy-to-use ordering process, and powerful merchandising features, Envoy B2B enables reps to stay connected to their retailers, and guide them to success all season long.

“We want to utilize our available tools to their maximum potential,” Han said. “Obviously Envoy B2B has become a critical selling tool for our wholesale business. One of our goals is to utilize more aspects of the platform to their fullest capabilities.”

If you’re looking to adapt and grow like Topo Designs, download the Retailer’s Challenge Report.

Building Relationships with Envoy B2B

The tools found in Envoy B2B let Topo Designs stay close to its retailers, building human connection while also growing its wholesale channel. By streamlining processes and offering access to content and commerce tools that drive collaboration, Envoy B2B frees up the Topo sales team to focus on their core tenants and build meaningful, successful relationships with their retailers.

“Prior to Envoy B2B, we were challenged with the number of steps required to process a single transaction,” said Han. “Whether it was a pre-book order for a key account or an in-season fill in order for a couple of backpacks, the sales process was incredibly tedious and required dozens of touches before the order could make it out the door.”

Now, with Envoy B2B, Topo Designs is free of that tedious process.

“With Envoy, our customers can place orders on their own and get the full DTC style order confirmation experience along the way, including order confirmations, shipped confirmations, tracking details, invoices, and more,” said Han. “This obviously makes the ordering experience easier on the retailer, but it also reduces our internal processing time by an incalculable amount.”

Change Drives Growth

Over the past 18 months, brands and retailers have been forced to rapidly adapt to new business demands, innovating on their old models and inventing new ways of staying connected to their customers. But this change doesn’t have to be a cause for alarm. The innovations it inspired have spurred new growth and opportunities.

“Be open minded to new ideas and ways to convert sales,” said Han, detailing how Topo Designs has found new ways of supporting its wholesale channel partners. “I know that drop shipping, for example, is a pretty dirty word out there. No brand loves the idea of carrying all the inventory risk and likely also doing all the work. But we’ve found that by being selective in our partnerships, we can actually increase inventory turn while capturing inline sales from all of our drop-ship partners. We’ve gained many new customers this way.”

Your brand has a number of systems and processes in place that you’re accustomed to using. But the world is always changing. It’s imperative that you stay ahead of the curve like the folks at Topo Designs, focusing on efficiency, core strengths, and making smart choices about what tools you use. That’s how you grow your wholesale channels and strengthen your partner relationships.

Now more than ever, your retailers are faced with unforeseen challenges, with a greater need for support and collaboration from their brands. If you’re looking to adapt and grow like Topo Designs, then it’s imperative that you stay connected to your retailers and understand their needs. You can learn more about what retailers are looking for from brands by downloading the 2021 Retailer’s Challenge Report below.

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In the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn and Los Angeles, outdoor lovers take refuge in a naturally lit, well curated gear store, Hatchet Outdoor Supply Co., stocking only the most fashionable and functional products. Keen, Mystery Ranch, Mammut, and FjĂ€llrĂ€venÌęblend tastefully together on tables and racks with urban fashion brands Folk, Orslow, Battenwear, Dr. Martens, and more.

Hatchet Outdoor Supply Co. came to life in 2013 when Brooklynite Gene Han figured he couldn’t mix the gearhead lifestyle with the sneakerhead lifestyle in his streetwear and sneaker boutique, Alumni, which opened in 2005 when he took over his family’s footwear store, Rugged Sole. Outdoor gear needed its own store. The similarities between styles in New York and Los Angeles then led him to open a second Hatchet location in 2016.

“How would city dwellers, people in Los Angeles and Brooklyn, interpret what the outdoors means to them?” Han said, recalling the question that started it all. “We’re trying to introduce the outdoors to a city setting…My experience with buying and curation, and assessing products and quality got translated over into [Hatchet]. I knew it could just be a home to a bunch of cool stuff that I would use and wear.”

Fashion and Function, First

Han grew up in Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts, and while his troop couldn’t afford high-end gear, he always ogled and admired it. Now he has a store full of gear he always wanted, from down sleeping bags and Yeti coolers, to crisp menswear and felt hats, and of course, hatchets from Hults Bruk.

Han has a sharp eye for design, and looks for the “best of the best”—items both well-made and useful. He says that every single item he brings in has to have some kind of functionality for the outdoors, and he doesn’t let price points—ranging from $20 to $800—limit his taste.

“Just the word ‘outdoors’ encompasses a lot,” Han said. “It could mean something really hardcore like ultralight trekking over the course of several nights or just getting on a subway here in New York.”

More recently, the fashion world has been flirting with the outdoor industry, and vice versa. Terms like “Patagucci” and “gorpcore” are tossed around. Brands like Canada Goose, adidas, Topo Designs, and Arc’teryx toe the line between both audiences. Italian fashion and sportwear brand Fila launched its Explore adventure-focused collection this summer. The North Face has collaborated with Supreme, Raeburn, and other urban brands. And there are countless other examples.

But Han says it’s more than a trend. “There’s definitely a huge surge of outdoor meets fashion going on in the last two to three years, which is great. Business has never been better,” he said. “But we’re not trying to bring in stuff that is riding that trend or is trying to be super cool or something. It’s stuff that we really like and find useful.”

And as it turns out, outdoorsy people do live in Los Angeles and Brooklyn, and have kept up their appetites for Hatchet Outdoor Supply Co.’s offerings. Han says he’s even fostering more partnerships with local guides who contribute blog posts about nearby hikes.

Friend of KlÀttermusen and Yeti

Hatchet Outdoor Supply Co. carries more than 150 brands, but Yeti and KlÀttermusen get somewhat special treatment for different reasons.

Hatchet has a drop-ship program—a means of ordering directly from the manufacturer—with Yeti, a brand that “has been on fire for us,” Han says. Yeti has its own shop on Hatchet’s website, and the program is also available to in-store customers.

As for KlĂ€ttermusen, a Swedish mountaineering brand with a cult following in Europe and Japan, Han says he approached the brand about bringing them into the shop a few years back because he was attracted to the “funky” and “totally out-of-the-box” designs and approach. But the brand decided to make Hatchet a wholesale distributor and North American sales agent. That means Han attends Outdoor to exhibitÌęKlĂ€ttermusen.

“Their designs are very left field and that’s what we like,” Han said. “A lot of modern outdoor brands will sleek it out or black it out, and then you’ve got the whole retro look with straps and such. But these guys [are] totally weird and funky.”

More collaborative projects with outdoor brands are in Hatchet’s future, as well as more doors—possibly even abroad, Han said. He loves what he does and what Hatchet provides.

“Any time a customer comes back with a story about their use of gear or clothing that they purchased makes me smile,” he said.

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Meet the future of the outdoor industry. These four have a fierce determination to create a new path forward for the outdoors, and they’re doing it with a degree of awareness and intersectionality we’ve never seen before.

1. Outdoor Education

Pinar Ates Sinopoulos-Lloyd, 30, co-founder of Queer Nature

Queer Nature, based in Nederland, Colorado, is a “queer-run nature education and ancestral skills program serving the local LGBTQ+ community.” As a queer and trans person of color, Pinar found more connection and empowerment through time spent in nature than immersed in urban queer culture. So Pinar founded Queer Nature to provide space for people feeling similarly marginalized to find healing through wilderness self-reliance skills and ecological literacy.

As one of its participants noted, “Queer Nature has changed, shaped, and supported my life in profound ways. It’s given me a space for my queer soul-searching, which has given me health, passion, and purpose.”

2. Conservation

Agnes Vianzon, 41, executive director of Eastern Sierra Conservation Corps

After experiencing firsthand the liberating and restorative powers of the wilderness on a 22-week backcountry trails program in Kings Canyon National Park, Agnes Vianzon was hooked. But the more she got outside (she worked for the National Park Service for five seasons), the more she realized that there’s not much diversity in the conservation world. So Agnes founded the Eastern Sierra Conservation Corps, “a development and leadership program committed to building a stronger and more inclusive community,” and created backcountry conservation opportunities specifically for women, people of color, and indigenous youth.

Accessibility is at the core of ESCC’s work, and Agnes is creating a direct pathway to the technical and leadership skills necessary to apply for entry-level corps, state, or federal positions. This provides an economic opportunity for underserved populations while also changing the faces we see wielding those Pulaskis.

3. Politics

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29, U.S. Representative of New York’s 14th District

Already leveraging her new position as a Congresswoman behind “The Green New Deal,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other like-minded representatives aim to cut U.S carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement and increase green energy jobs across the country.

The youngest woman ever elected to Congress and first woman of color to run in New York’s 14th district, Ocasio-Cortez walks the talk. From Flint, Michigan, to pipeline protests in North Dakota, she has a long record as an activist fighting for environmental justice. “Historically, people tend to think that the environmental movement is homogenous,” she said in a press conference at the Capitol after she won her seat, “[but] among black and Latino communities, rates of environmentalism and environmental beliefs are actually much higher than average.” Why? Because communities of color tend to experience the impacts of climate change first.

As an industry dependent on the conservation of natural spaces “AOC” could become one of our biggest allies in this fight.

4. Design

Khristian Gilham, 25, apparel designer at Topo Designs

“There isn’t one type, and we don’t have to be one thing,” said Khristian Gilham of the “typical” Topo Designs consumer. That’s why she loves designing there. She’s had a hand in nearly every product from the Fall 2017 line onward, and is particularly proud of her Sherpa Jacket and Tech Trench 3L.

For Gilham, Topo Designs is the perfect balance of fashion and the outdoors. Because of this “fluidity,” Gilham believes Topo can reach aÌęwider array of consumers and help the industry evolve the narrative of who does what outside. She also wants to see continued growth in sizing options that allow all people to feel and look good on their adventures.

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To put it bluntly, Supreme is the cool kid on the block. The one whose lack of effort seems unattainably chill, whose attention you’re dying to grab but can’t ever seem to figure out how to get.

Even if you think you don’t know them, you’ve almost certainly seen riffs on their block-lettered logo. Supreme started out as a clothing brand for skaters, and along the way, it became the ultimate hype brand. Millions of followers around the world eagerly await Supreme’s regular “drops,” their co-branded collaborations with clothing, outdoor, lifestyle, and home goods brands across the board.

Part of what makes Supreme work is its scarcity model: there are always more fans than there is product available. Drops sell out in seconds worldwide, in spite of mass quantities available, which makes nabbing a collab with Supreme a slam dunk. Karl Fritzsche, category manager for SealLine, told us that the See Pouch they produced for a Supreme drop early this year accounted for more than ten times the amount they typically sell in a full year.

“People are buying it because it says ‘Supreme,’ that’s the crazy thing,” he said. For the most part, they don’t even need a drybag. “It’s super mind-boggling.”

That’s essentially Supreme’s whole model: find cool stuff, slap their name on it, sell it en masse.

If you scroll through their recent drops, you’ll find a lot of normal stuff like clothing—a fair amount of it produced in collaboration with The North Face—a lot of outdoor gear, and a heck of a lot of stuff that’s just plain weird. (Who needs an anatomically correct model of the human body with Supreme’s logo on the base?)

But while a fair bit of it ends up on eBay, selling for many times the original asking price (Fritzsche’s seen SealLine See Pouches go for about $300, compared to the MSRP of about $50), there’s another unintended consequence, too: urbanites from major cities across the world who might not otherwise care to go kayaking or camping pack up their new gear and head for nature.

“Supreme comes up with some really funny things, and I think they’re very calculated in what they’re doing,” said Ryan Pugh, a product designer for Advanced Elements, which produced untold thousands of inflatable kayaks (he’s not allowed to say exactly how many) for a Supreme drop in July.

The kayaks sold out in seconds—we’re not exaggerating—and Advanced Elements had expected that they’d mostly stay in their boxes, serving as collectors’ items. But to their surprise, they’ve seen scores of YouTube videos and Instagram posts of people kayaking for the first time thanks to Supreme. “They’ve figured out that, with millennials, being outdoors is catching on,” Pugh said. “They understand that their clientele is at least thinking about getting outside, doing things outdoors, and engaging in that realm.”

To be sure, collaborating with Supreme can seriously boost your brand’s clout and recognition. So how do you get a deal? That’s the tough part—you can’t. Supreme is very much a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” kind of company (case in point: they didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment on this story). Even SealLine didn’t work directly with Supreme on the See Pouch collab; they went through a third party agency hired by the company.

So, outdoor brands shouldn’t hold their breath and wait for Supreme to come knocking. But collaborating with other companies—both within the industry and beyond—is still good for business.

Here Are 5 Types of Collabs That Your Brand Should Consider.

1. The Co-designed Collab

By designing products together that wouldn’t exist if not for brand collaboration, you can achieve some serious brand awareness. Take, for example, their Topo Designs x Chaco collection. Chaco made sandals and dog leashes and collars with Topo-inspired patterns. And Topo made packs featuring the same designs. Products like these, and similar projects like the sleeping pad collab between Poler Stuff and Therm-a-Rest, or the tent, sleeping pad, and table collabs between Big Agnes, Helinox, and Burton, play up both brands’ assets and appeal to both of their audiences. Brands like Power Practical, Rumpl, and Ravean take it a step further when they innovate by building on one another’s technology. In 2016, the three brands worked together to create the Rumpl Puffe-, a rechargeable electric puffy blanket.

Check Out These Succesful Co-designed Collabs

Burton and Big Agnes Tent Collab

Nomadix and Wylder Goods Towel Collab

Chaco and Topo Designs Sandal Collab

Therm-a-Rest and Poler Sleeping Pad Collab

Power Practical, Rumpl, and Ravean Blanket Collab

2. The Co-branded or White-Labeled Collab

This type of collaboration is fairly run-of-the-mill. You make backpacks, for example, and you want water bottles with the company name on them, or vice-versa. If the brand you want to work with has a following you want to tap, it may be beneficial to keep both companies’ logos on the product. But if you want to have full “ownership” over the product, you can white-label it. Sock companies like Nester Hosiery the parent company of Farm to Feet, for example, produce socks on behalf of other companies without ever mentioning their involvement.

3. The Social Collab

Perhaps the easiest type of collaboration to secure is one in which you work with some like-minded brands to tap each others’ audiences. Maybe you put together a sweet prize package, and to enter, Instagram users have to follow all the brands involved, like the post, and comment by tagging a friend who may be interested. Or, maybe consumers enter online with their email address, and then you end up with 10,000 new newsletter subscribers. Emails are great leads to new customers, says Yoon Kim, who runs Blogs for Brands and frequently executes social and giveaway collaborations between brands.

Social Media Collabs That Work!

Topo Designs, Big Agnes, REI, and others collaborated on this trip giveaway.

Wylder Goods collaborated with Hydro Flask, Sun Bum, Toad&Co, and others for this summer gear giveaway.

Retailer Feral Mountain Co.Ìępartnered with several local groups for a spring giveaway.

4. The Press Trip Collab

If you work with an external PR agency, it might be easy for you to organize a press trip where costs are shared with another gear company (or maybe several gear companies). If not, look around you—there may be other gear companies in your city that you can approach on your own. If co-hosting a trip is out of the question, you can also try to support an existing trip by offering up product to pass out to writers for potential review.

5. The Out-Of-Industry Collab

Just because you can’t hunt down a Supreme collab doesn’t mean you’re out of luck for increasing your brand recognition beyond core outdoor users. Just look to Woolrich, for example, which made a co-branded “Pennsylvania Tuxedo” beer a few years ago with Dogfish Head Brewing. It was a pale ale brewed with spruce tips from Pennsylvania and Delaware forests. Stormy Kromer has worked with a tattoo shop in Michigan to do “Hats for Tats.” Major fans could trade a free lifetime supply of Stormy Kromer hats in exchange for tattooing a hat somewhere on their body. And if you’re tight on budget for your upcoming catalog but want to go somewhere exotic for killer photos, you can seek partnerships with destination tourism boards, too, who may be able to help lower your costs.

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