Channel Mastery - Ep. 39: Christian Gennerman, Paul Kirwin and Pete Labore, Thin Air Innovation Festival

THIN AIR INNOVATION FESTIVAL

Today’s panel is a summation of a panel presentation that occurred on April 6 at the third annual Thin Air Innovation Festival. This year, the SnowSports Industry of America (SIA), was the title sponsor for the three-day event in Park City, Utah, from April 5-7. The Festival’s goal is to inspire, elevate and collaborate, thereby creating inspiration for going bigger in business and with the reach of business, at altitude. I was proud to be featured as one of 50 impactful speakers, hailing from tech, retail, hospitality, sport, recreation, travel, entertainment, healthcare and finance.

episode preview

I was honored to research and present a panel for this year’s Thin Air Innovation Festival in Park City, focusing on providing solutions and what’s working today for business leaders intent on building and growing a consumer-centric company. It all comes down to building a remarkable brand, and ensuring that the brand’s purpose remains in tact and remarkable across all channels (touchpoints). My panelists and I explored challenges and solutions to creating a brand with purpose, conveying the purpose and soul of that brand to the exact target consumer, and how to caretake the brand across multiple channels. We discussed the best practices around delivering an exceptional brand experience today to today’s connected, omnichannel consumer.

featuring

Christian Gennerman

Christian was the first employee/co-owner of Backcountry.com and was instrumental in creating the online leader in outdoor retail. He also developed the Jans.com portfolio of online entities and omnichannel strategy. And today, he’s able to create a path that minimizes channel conflict and raises perception for all of 180commerce’s partners.

Paul kirwin

Paul is the founder of Kirwin Communications, Experticity (formerly 3point5) and now Channel Signal. All of these landmark businesses have focused on what most influences product consideration with shoppers. Today, he leads Channel Signal, which exists to help brands translate the passion of product reviews into brand opportunities

Pete labore

Pete has been in ecommerce since early the 2000’s and the outdoor industry since 2007, and since that time, he’s held multiple influential leadership roles at Backcountry.com, where he now serves as COO. Pete leads Backcountry’s marketing, merchandising and customer service and serves as the General Managers of each of sites in the Backcountry Portfolio.

select quotes

“The idea that people want to interact physically with product in awesome settings, I just don't think that changes.”
“People are going to have basically what I call strategic specialty retail, [which is] specialty retail stores that are awesome. Brands want their products in those stores, and to some degree, they'll pay for it.”
“You're starting to see these [channel] models sort of blend and be hybridized.”
“One of the things that everyone has got to wrap their heads around is it's up to the brand to keep their own marketplace clean.”