Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2017 - 30

IDEAS
I believe our retailers are the foundation of our industry. We turn
people on to outdoor activities and the outdoor lifestyle for life. That's
what we do. We create advocates.
I was raised in the outdoor industry. I started working in a bike shop
when I was 14, and really, I look at my career and I can draw a straight
line all the way back to that moment in the shop.
True friends stab you in the front.
It's not about big ideas and data analytics and finance. As many
jobs as I've had, I've always had the same customer. So it doesn't feel to
me like I've had all these jobs because I've been taking care of the same
people all the way along. Those basic, original lessons of taking care of
customers have carried me over all these years.
I love Chop Wood Mercantile, a store in Crested Butte, Colorado.
The name came from the old adage, "Before enlightenment: Chop
wood, carry water. After enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water."

Zen Master
The new head of the Grassroots Outdoor
Alliance has been seeding success
and forward-thinking disruption in the
outdoor industry for decades.

I don't consider myself visionary. I consider myself a historian because as much as things change, we have to go back to where it all started. I think the biggest challenge, and it's a challenge I relish, is reminding all the participants in the outdoor world of what's important. What
our true values are. What makes what we do special.

Name: Rich Hill
Company: Grassroots Outdoor Alliance
Founded: 1994
Titles: President
Location: Asheville, North Carolina
Downlow: Has anyone in the outdoor industry put their fingerprints on as

Wired Magazine once claimed that multi-author, anonymous
blogs were a hit. So I started one. We poked fun at the industry. We
poked fun at ourselves. Our first post made fun of Yvon Chouinard-
and I worked at Patagonia at the time.

many iconic brands as Rich Hill? The California boy began as a shop kid
and then spent a few years as the vice president of sales at Marmot while
the brand was building its cred in the 1990s, before moving on to become the VP of sales at Patagonia. Next up, president of Ibex, and then
vice president at prAna, steering that brand through its return to independence. He's consulted for Amazon on the outdoor market and created his own independent lifestyle car-camping brand, Ticla. Somewhere
in there, he was also an anonymous voice on a semi-secret, disruptive
blog that served up a healthy dose of snark and criticism at the industry.
After some time as a principal at consultancy Compass and Nail, he's
now at the helm of the Grassroots Outdoor Alliance, a group of over 60
specialty retailers working together to build a poweful voice, as well as
host the Grassroots Summits and annual Grassroots Connect show.

30 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ Winter 2017

Don't try to please everybody.
We need to get back to story-telling around experience and not
around technology. We need to hang on to our rebel nature.
Amazon is fantastic and an amazing thing, but it's wholly transactional; that's it's only purpose. Without the experience and service to
the community of specialty retail, we will cease to exist as an industry.
The person who's in the aisle with no idea what to buy because there are
too many options? We take that person by the shoulder and say, "let me
help you out."
What about the outdoors-and all the lessons it offers you-is
not Zen? O.R.

Courtesy Rich Hill

THOUGHT LEADERS

It's not just about talking to millennials. It's actually everybody. If you
look at the difference between generations, Patagonia is built around
the shared values of boomers and millennials-without it being a strategy. It really is. If you look at the traits of each and highlight what the
shared traits are, it's Patagonia.

Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2017

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