Outdoor Industry CEOs

Lise Aangeenbrug’s first day as executive director of Outdoor Industry Association was March 4, 2020. Less than one week later, our country was in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic. It wasn’t exactly what she signed up for. Just over one month into her new gig as the leader ...read more

Jen Gurecki, founder and CEO of Coalition Snow and editor-in-chief of SISU magazine, doesn’t mince words. “I really just want to curl up in bed all day, and I’m having a hard time pulling myself away from CNN,” she says. Gurecki knows that she is far from alone, and that the ...read more

Evo’s story starts like many outdoor endeavors: Bryce Phillips as a college student was slinging ski gear out of his apartments in Seattle and Whistler in the ‘90s and launched the website evogear.com in 2001. The former professional skier’s startup business merged outdoor, ...read more

Tom Adams, who has held the post of director of the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation (UOOR) since 2016, is moving onto to the private sector. Adams will become Petzl North America’s COO. It will be familiar turf for him: He served as Petzl’s North American sales director for ...read more

If you were one of the few people who attended the 2018 Outdoor Retailer Winter Market when it debuted in the November time slot, you know it was pretty grim. “Ghost town” was how many people described it. What happened? Industry members didn’t find it relevant, so they didn’t ...read more

The outdoor industry has lost One Tough Mother. Gert Boyle, Chairman of the Board (she hated the term “chairwoman”) and former CEO of Columbia Sportswear, died on Sunday, November 3, 2019, at the age of 95.  Gert never retired; she loved going to her office at the brand’s ...read more

John Sterling, who has served as executive director of the Conservation Alliance since 2004, announced this morning that he’s stepping down. Sterling has accomplished a lot during his 15 years at the helm of the organization and he walks away having achieved the specific goals ...read more

Over the past couple years, it’s been encouraging to see brands and organizations elevating their messaging and efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the outdoors. While there’s evidence of change – products that meet the needs of many communities and ...read more

Joe Prebich has exited Mammut North America only months after he was appointed CEO and managing director in March. In a bizarre twist, SNEWS was first alerted of the news around noon Mountain Time, after someone posing as an official from Mammut North America sent an email ...read more

For six months, Cotopaxi’s founder hung out with past presidents in their presidential libraries. Davis Smith recently joined 240 alumni after graduating from the Presidential Leadership Scholars Program, and he says it has helped shape his view of dedicating his life to serving ...read more

Diversifying the outdoor industry is critical, says Jeff Wiguna—not only to sell more gear, but ultimately to expand the reach of its environmentally friendly, sustainable, and healthy-living philosophies. That’s the goal for Wiguna’s newly established Outdoor Diversity ...read more

There was no such thing as modern snowboarding before Jake Carpenter strapped into a novelty board in the late 1970s and felt the future. Today, that start has ballooned into a $400 million industry, and Burton Snowboards, which holds about half the market share, continues to ...read more

Oh, 2017 you were a wild one. The outdoor industry made a loud, cohesive stand for public lands, our trade show landscape got a major shakeup, women raised their voices on gender issues, and retailers across the country struggled to stay relevant in a world where consumers are ...read more

Eight years after becoming the first wool company in the world to incorporate traceability into its products (with its innovative “Baacode”), and just two months after announcing its acquisition by VF Corp., New Zealand’s 22-year-old Icebreaker turns the spotlight on its own ...read more

Brian Vargo has a thing for titanium. His love affair with the superlight, superstrong, and quite expensive metal began on the Appalachian Trail in 1995. He simply wanted a lighter load for his thru-hike. He began his quest for minimal weight by developing titanium tent stakes, ...read more

Scott Kerslake, CEO of prAna, will step down next week to take on a leadership position in an adjacent industry, the brand's parent company, Columbia Sportswear Company, announced Monday. Kerslake has been CEO of prAna since 2010, and was previously its president. The brand has ...read more

On July 5, Ibex CEO Ted Manning announced to company employees that fall 2017 will be the last season the merino wool outdoor clothing company sells product through wholesale channels. Ibex shifts completely to a direct-to-consumer model in spring 2018. “We’re pivoting toward ...read more

Carsten von Birckhahn, the CEO and brand manager of Edelrid, died Saturday in a paragliding accident.  Von Birckhahn was a “pioneer and a hands-on man, a mountain enthusiast and a gear innovator, according to a press release from Edelrid on Wednesday. He died after a crash ...read more

If you’re running a small to medium-sized outdoor brand today, there are so many competing forces trying to shape your business. It’s easy to freak out and be too scattered in your focus or retreat altogether and stubbornly stick to an old way of doing things. Neither approach ...read more

One of the first things you’ll notice about Wes is that he’s a very affable guy. You can tell right away that’s he’s someone you can trust and I later came to realize how important this DNA is to the success of Sunlight. I had a lot of conversations with Wes, his wife Melissa, ...read more

It’s been at least ten years since I’ve been a proper outdoor consumer. I fell in love with ice climbing—and about a dozen other outdoor pursuits—when I was a freshman in college in 1994. I spent pretty much every spare dollar I had for the next decade assembling my stash of ...read more

Sue Rechner, who spent 10 years as CEO of Confluence Outdoor, has been named president of Merrell. She has a long history of building brands in the outdoor industry, and was president and director of Victorinox Swiss Army, Inc., before joining Confluence. “After conducting an ...read more

Take a look at the numbers: Outdoor recreation contributes $887 billion per year to the U.S. economy. But take a closer look, and you’ll see something staggering: Only 21 percent of that money is spent on the gear and apparel we’re producing. The rest? It’s spent on travel, ...read more

Bryan Timm, long-time executive of Columbia Sportswear, has stepped down from his role as president. It's unclear why he's left. CEO Tim Boyle said Tuesday in a press release that Timm, who started with the brand in 1997 as corporate controller, had "played an integral role in ...read more