Transcript of Holden Outwear video on Change

Adapted from source: http://www.cengage.com/introbusiness/book_content/kelly_busn5_9781111826734/video/holden.txt accessed April 26, 2017

>> Michael LeBlanc: I was definitely interested in stylistic garments and, you know, the fashion forward side of things, but I love snowboarding. It's my passion, and being outdoors and all, you know. So to put them together seemed like that's a real idea, and, you know, you go snowboarding or skiing, or you might just be in New York City in a, on a rainy day or it's negative 20 in Quebec, and you just want to feel good. Hi.I'm Michael LeBlanc. I'm the founder of Holden and I'm one of the guys who helps with marketing around here.

>> Nikki:I had a friend that her dad was a footwear designer, and I was just, like, super inspired by that and just in awe of, you know, how he would sketch by hand and just turn these, like, insane detailed drawings into an actual, like, 3D model. Hi. I'm Nikki.I'm the design and development manager at Holden Outerwear. I just knew I had to do something creative and something that was never the same and that always changed.

>> Michael LeBlanc: Well, definitely when Holden came out, we were the new and improved outerwear. For the first five or six years, it was people just waiting to see, and they still do. I mean, a lot of our accounts come in, and they say I can't wait to see the collection. What have you done this year? What new fabrics, what new designs do you have? So, yeah, and it really affected the industry as well. I mean, we had competitors at our big shows showing pieces in their line. [Inaudible] this is our Holden piece. This is our Holden-esque garment. We've been kind of labeled as the person or the brand that pushes that, the style portion of technical outerwear.

>> Nikki:That's probably what I love most about Holden is the fact that they take cues from fashion, and that they're not looking at what everyone else in the outerwear market is doing. They're looking at high fashion and figuring out a way to apply it to, you know, a garment that someone would wear up on the hill.

>> Michael LeBlanc: We've brought an element of Old World tailoring into our stuff. So we really deal with paper patterns and fit. I think we stand out on the floor in women's especially because we are designing for women. I think most of our competitors is designing for girls. So they're designing for a 10 to 12 or 15 year old girl whereas we're designing for someone who's 18 to 50 years old.

>> Nikki:You know, the pants especially are extremely slimming, and that's really rare to put on a pair of snowboard pants and actually make your butt look good and not look like you're wearing a diaper.I have a pretty solid background in both development and design. So I actually do really get excited about technology and working, you know, whether it's with the fabric mill or with a, a garment manufacturing on, man, manufacturer on, you know, taking something that everyone does every day and doing it slightly different and how are we going to do it different and how are we going to present it to the market in a way that's still acceptable and functional -

>> Michael LeBlanc: And when we started the company in 2002, Scott and I wanted to make a natural fiber waterproof breathable fabric, which didn't exist. So we had a ton of vendors. Every time we meet with a fabric supplier, we would say do you have anything natural waterproof breathable. They're, like, look at you like you're crazy. So basically we had to put the pieces together. We developed the world's first natural fiber waterproof breathable fabric in 2005, which was a hemp poly mix fabric. We won a ton of awards for it, and, you know, we had our major competitors, again, chasing us right after that.

>> Nikki:I think our denim that we're doing is really exciting. You know, a lot of companies in outer market are doing, you know, cheap nylons that are printed to look like denim, and we're actually doing a, a true cotton twill that it denim and, you know, laminated with a 20K waterproofing and as performing on the mountain as, you know, high-performance outerwear, and also looking like a real, true jean [inaudible].

>> Michael LeBlanc: Yeah.We're a small brand, and we, we aren't able to, you know, have all pieces of the puzzle. We don't own factories. We don't own fabric mills. We can't fill a factory so we got to have really great relationships with all of our vendors.

>> This is a 100 percent polyester twill two layer.

>> Nikki:It's definitely getting harder and harder to be able to push our vendors to do new developments. Costs are going up, you know, and they don't want to develop something that may enter, not get used.

>> Michael LeBlanc: We might go on with a new design they've never seen, and they're, like, well, that's not possible, and then you say, yes, and they say no, and you say yes, this is how, and then they're, like, wow, cool. And then their brains start working, and they're, like, wow, this is great. This is something new our factory can do and offer to other people.

>> Nikki:That's how we do our business is to be able to, you know, push our manufacturers, our vendors in ways that they aren't pushed. That's how we come up with something new -

>> Michael LeBlanc: The industry loves change, especially the shops and the kids. So the shops and the kids are psyched about Holden. It meant, wow, this is something that looks radically different. The industry really embraced it, and also the brands embraced it. They've all basically followed suit. If you look at Burton to Bomb Fire to Sulliman and see what, you know, in the ski garage [inaudible], a lot of brands have fallen to Holden's lead and gone down that fashion route. Yeah. There are a lot of ways people can rip you off. So we're very secretive as much as we can be.

We don't want to be too paranoid, but we don't hand out catalogs to anybody that's not a certified Holden dealer or distributor, and we don't do a lot with PDF imaging just because that starts to float around. One brand in particular that really copied a lot of our stuff, and I didn't [inaudible]. Their conscious wore on them. They came up to me at a major trade show and, literally, the girl started crying.She's like, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to, but I gave all your designs and some pieces that you gave me to one of our designers and they copied it exactly. Her punishment was her own remorse. Definitely!Her punishment was her own torture.Like I said, we turn over designs so much, and that's the fun thing about Holden, I think, is we design a collection rather than reacting to the current business. We're actually creating stuff every year new things. So that'll always be a part of Holden, and then, and then if people want to copy us, they're probably going to sell a lot of pieces so I don't blame them.

1.Part 1 SOR: In the subject line stated in the first line of Rich Text Editor box, list the external/internal factor, first2-3 words of one creative organizational characteristic, and the implementation tactic you explain in your SOR.(Example of Subject line: Weather,Reward System, Manipulation

Part 2SOR:Given Holden Outerwear's missionandstrategies (of Growth & Differentiation), briefly explain why one internal factororexternal opportunity or threat creates theneed for Holden to innovate/change. Please know that you may refer to a factor &/or competency