Think of your favorite brands. What do they mean to you? Great brands have a soul, a personality—a positioning that is uniquely theirs. When we joined Nike many years ago, it was largely because we felt a gravitational pull to the brand. They were irreverent, they celebrated moments of greatness, and they had an incredible ability to use sport as a broader platform of culture.
As we prepared to launch SMMT, we narrowed our vision of exactly what the brand would stand for. Having lived in Park City for years, we obviously had a strong emotional connection to the iconic outdoor lifestyle. But there were already a lot of great outdoor brands connecting on that level—and, well, we weren’t exactly an “outdoor” brand. Our focus was on delivering lifestyle products with the quality and durability of the best outdoor brands.
But then it hit us. It wasn’t simply the active outdoor lifestyle that inspired us or so many like us. That was only part of the equation. What we absolutely love about this lifestyle is the combination of an active day in a beautiful outdoor setting, and the moments afterward where we get to gather with great people to break bread and celebrate.
In skiing this is called “aprés”—for golf it’s the “19th hole.” Working hard, being active, and leaving it all out there is how we earn moments of relaxation, beer or coffee with friends, or a barbecue with family.
With this insight, all the puzzle pieces came together. We would still celebrate the outdoors, and we’d certainly gather plenty of inspiration from our favorite landscapes for product designs and techniques. But our brand positioning would be all about connecting you to those amazing moments and memories that come before or after a long day of effort.
What Comes After Is Earned.
We all have moments we look on fondly where a great day led to a great night of shared moments and memories. In so many ways, this is the lifestyle we both aspire to. And this is the lifestyle we want to connect our consumer to. We love that our products are positioned to take you from earning it to enjoying the moments after.
There’s a reason we finish all of our products with a small (or not-so-small) hit of our pinkish-purple brand color, which we call Alpenglow. Some of our all-time favorite moments have come after a day on the beach or mountain, sharing a moment of indulgence with close friends or family that’s signed off by an incredible pink sunset. Our kids, Jack and Finley, call this “cotton candy sky.” To us it’s the perfect symbol of a well-spent day—and now it’s our symbolic finish to a well-crafted product.
Here’s to what comes after,
Jamie and Michelle