Last year our yearly recap ‘growing a brand, takes a village’ was our most read and appreciated blog post of the year, so we thought we’d wrap this year up as well. Authored by our amazing Jon and the marketing team we bring you 2023 in review. Enjoy.
One thing I’ve always known as a weakness is my planning. Yes I try and set goals, yes I try to get ahead of things but I suppose dating back to hitch hiking around France a few years back I love the fact that with travel it's the unexpected friends you meet along the way which is what makes a journey and it's not just the act of going from a to b. I suppose that’s why Truls since day 1 has always spoken about enabling meaningful journeys. This year has been no different. What started with some good looking plans on presentations quickly got thrown out the window as the year accelerated at a pace none of us could have imagined. Before shutting the computer this year however, Marcus reminded us of one of last year's best performing blog posts summarizing 2022; Growing A Brand: It Takes A Village, and asked for one to sum up this year. Being Marcus he managed to ask a) when he was already feet up on vacation somewhere warm and b) whilst we’re trying to finish the year's work. But regardless, here goes.
In January we kicked off (as always) by activating somewhere in the snow. We held an event with Sam Favret at Snowleader in Chamonix - a perfect location for a winter getaway. With a vernissage and drinks afterwards at Hydromel it was a great way to keep up some relationships we’d made at High Five the year before and meet new friends.
From there we headed to Backcountry in Salt Lake City with Sage Kotsenburg for the launch of his edition hosted by our man of many talents, Luis Medearis. Backcountry always provides a great venue, good people and a crowd that always shows up which helps things to go as smoothly as possible. With Sage and Luis on hand, we had a couple real pros in terms of engaging with people.
In March we stopped by London to signal the start of a new relationship with a new rep for us, Robin Fairweather. Robin is a man steeped in outdoor and streetwear culture and has been leading the charge in resetting our business. In a case of perfect timing, our ambassador Chris Burkard was visiting from the States, so we held an event at Shoreditch Arches where he spoke with friend of the brand Matt from Looking sideways. We invited 100 Db Black members to come listen, ask questions, get books signed and join us in a nice East London pub for a couple of pints (something that’s proving somewhat of a tradition). Matt and Chris know the outdoors, know the issues at play and are wonderful hosts for an intimate event like this. Their full podcast from the event is available to listen to. This Shoreditch Arches event was also the first time we met a couple new friends, Ron Timehin and Andrew Alexander King who we’ll be working with on Pack Heavy, Chase Light season 3.
This was also the first time we met Mason and the wonderful crew at Goodhood for a coffee. That meeting will always be a special one as we learnt about their business, the role the culture of stores like this play within London and globally. All in all it was one of the best flat whites we’ve ever bought anyone.
This year was also when we kicked off season 2 of Pack Heavy, Chase Light. It meant the awkward call of asking Sam to record himself for a trailer again and the result of a few months of heavy workload for Sam and Hallvard. This season we met some amazing creatives including Hannah Bailey (photographer), Hannah Da Silva (GorpGirls founder), Thomas Molin (Swedish House mafia tour manager), Lucas Beaufort, (Artist and creator of HEART), Guzman (Marcelo and Carlos Seinz social media lead) along with featuring some of our ambassadors including Aynara, Kevin Backstrom and Craig Anderson which racked up the most views at nearly 100k.
Season 3 was also the first time we made an episode with a skateboarder - Sarah Muerle, our first ambassador in space. There's lots more to come with skateboarding for us in 2024 but I already sense this blog is going to be a long one so let's see how far we get. Lets just say with Sarah, Ishod Wair, Hugo Boserup and many more using our bags now we’re excited for the future (stay tuned in April/May).
Lucas Beaufort
Pack Heavy, Chase Light S02E09
Working on a YouTube channel is quite a labor of love. Creating enough content to feed the beast is one thing, starting from scratch is another. Little known fact - we locked ourselves out of Instagram in 2021 for a couple of weeks so you can imagine the impact. That week we kind of looked at each other and said we need to get better at other channels. Anyway, thankfully YouTube is working now and we just hit 10k subscribers. If you aren't subscribed please jump on it here. It helps us do more in the space if we can show it's working. 2023 was year we got kickstarted on TikTok, and we’ve already got a few videos with multiple millions of views. Give us a follow over there while you’re at it.
In April we also hosted our first live creative exchange, something we have spoken about for a year. Partnering with Aethos hotels we invited 10 Db Black members to Portugal for a photography workshop, brand building presentation and product insight sessions. We met some amazing people, ate at some glorious spots (O’Pescador, hello), shot sunsets and learnt we were onto something. So, from that point on, we then committed to a monthly online workshop.
April also saw us partner up with our friends at Tidal for an art show art show in Laax which was an amazing experience featuring many of the best artists in our space including Aaron Schwarz, Scoph and Hannah Eddy
As the days really cranked into summer mode in May we headed back to the US for the launch of the Craig Anderson collection to debut it as Saturdays NYC. This store has long been one of the iconic doors in surf and so to get in there, have a couple cans together and kick off summer felt like a big moment. The expense reports also reflected the energy the team felt but I’m assured the late night bar tabs were all part of the “building the brand takes a village” philosophy.