At Free the Powder Gloves we spend most of our time focused on our ski gloves and customer service. In fact, truth be told, that's all we do because we absolutely detest spending our time on promotion and especially "marketing."
My poor business partner and wife Shannon has to listen to my incessant ranting about my disdain for marketing. So why do I feel this way?
My professional background is in marketing.
What I have learned from my experience is the truth of what marketing actually is:
1) It is selling an overpriced product that the consumer doesn’t really need.
Sorry, that might sound too cynical for you, so I will tone it down a little:
2) It is selling a product that someone might need or want for the maximum amount that you can get in the short-term.
Still too cynical?
3) Ultimately “marketing” is creating a short-term perception that a product is better than it actually is, for a price that is higher than it should be.
CREATION OF SHORT TERM PERCEPTION !
This fundamental purpose of “marketing” is the reason for ad agencies, marketing consultants, professional photographers, professional film-makers, and an incredible army of “experts” who will guarantee all manner of success and exposure for your struggling start-up company.
It’s all snake oil sold by con artists. Companies choose this strategy because it’s a short cut, it's lazy and it's cheap.
It’s much less expensive in the long term to create short perception through “marketing” than it is to invest the time, financial resources and MASSIVE amount of patience to pursue a strategy of real marketing.
Real marketing is creating a product or service that is so good and at such a great price that people buy it purely based on its merits. Then that purchaser tells someone and they tell someone and on and on. Word of mouth is real marketing, created by the product itself.
Real Marketing is the product.
So if you are wondering, why Free the Powder Ski Gloves doesn’t invest more time and money in advertising, sponsoring ski events, producing high production-value films for Youtube, posing for professional photographers, attending ski industry conventions, cross promotion with other brands, and all the “marketing” that everyone else in the ski industry does, that’s because we believe in what’s real and what’s long term: the product and the price.
Chase Stewart
Founder Free the Powder