The North Face Team
As the inaugural OIA member columnist/ blogger, it would have been too obvious to talk about our great products, which is an opportunity that is painful to sidestep. I am a salesman at heart. On reflection though it’s easy for me to single out my colleagues – The North Face team – as worthy of attention in this article. People are central to any business, be they customers, suppliers or colleagues and it’s an important theme we can all relate to.
The team I work with has always been and continues to be the single most important and rewarding aspect of my time at The North Face. Why? I guess a lot of this comes down to the shared experiences we have as a group of individuals who have gone through various stages of life together – like any family does. And this family shares a common bond (interest is too lame a word) in our love and passion for all things outdoors. Starting with an intimate team of only five, we have grown to 20. Everyone who has been grafted onto the original group has added something unique and diverse to the team whilst at the same time absorbing the team ethos and spirit.
Key to this has been very low staff churn. In the last ten years there has been very, very little staff turnover within The North Face team UK. Those shared experiences on the mountain, on the hill, on the road and in life have all shaped us as people and formed a strong bond that has helped and continues to help, in shaping the team and creating the successful business that The North Face has undeniably become. Indeed this team ethic and bond is readily apparent to new team members and for all of us is the key reason our work continues to be rewarding and, above all, enjoyable.
All well and good then, isn’t that nice. What a great place The North Face is! What’s the point in sending this to the OIA? What relevance does this have? Well, as I cited above, the main reason for our team spirit and camaraderie is limited staff turnover. I believe this is solely down to recruiting the right individuals who fit into our team, enjoy the banter, relish the work and respond effectively to the demands of the business. Recruitment represents a huge risk and challenge for all businesses and it is costly to get it wrong. So is there anything we can learn here about how we, as an industry, can do more to grow our human capital and retain and develop the talent we already have? Are there creative, innovative ways that together we can encourage connections between our businesses that would enable us to do this? For example, we have found that people who have joined our business from retail bring a fresh insight into what is needed on the shop floor. Perhaps there is a reciprocal link that could be forged between a supplier and a retailer to cross-fertilize the knowledge and talent within our respective patches? Downstream, surely this might yield benefits for our customers too?
Imagine if we joined all the different sectors within the outdoor trade – manufacturer – supplier – retailer – training – marketing – sales – into a scheme, coordinated through the OIA, that would enable students studying outdoor qualifications to gain some worthwhile work experience throughout the diverse range of career possibilities this spectrum represents that would inspire them to make a passionate choice. Such a scheme might set off a virtuous cycle by attracting a larger pool of new talent into the “business”.
I’m thinking out loud here but what has prompted these nascent thoughts has been my own recent protracted head hunting mission. It has been brought home to me this year just how difficult it is to recruit the right caliber of individuals. I have been looking since February for three people to join our team and it is only now that I am nearly at the end of my search. Fussy? Possibly. Picky? Maybe. Mainly I’m mindful of the low turnover the team has enjoyed and I want to ensure that this continues. If I could work with an industry body like the OIA that had a database of people who had a passion for the outdoors, allied with a qualification and some work experience across retailers, suppliers etc, I’m sure that would have saved me an awful lot of time.
Alex Beasley
UK Country Manager, The North Face
Alex
Very well put. Low turnover is one of the key ways to build a good business. I work with all the next generation of designers & know how frustrating it is for a company to have to train up a designer in the culture of that particular company – only for them to leave for their rivals (taking with them the secure fabric & manufacturing contacts – thus encouraging brands to further look like each other as they all end up using the same suppliers)
The outdoor trade will never be the highest earning industry, but it will be a very enjoyable one. I choose to stick with it because I like the environment of the business & the people within it. It generates more pride for me than working in other sectors
Anyway – great blog to lead off
regards
charles
I agree with Alex’s sentiments but fear that once again the ‘outdoor trade’ tag has too limited a scope in its community. The OIA stands for the Outdoor Industries Association but in reality is regarded as being for clothing, footwear and equipment manufacturers, distributors and retailers.
The FMD crisis several years ago highlighted the wide variety of aspects involved in the outdoor leisure and recreation industries and the lack of strong coherent representation of complementary interests.
It would be great to think that, in a few years’ time, an outdoor industry career might encompass the seamless transfer of skills, experience and training between, say, outdoor centres and retailers without individuals having to ‘start again’ when switching focus. There has always been, of course, great fluidity in such individuals moving around – often paying the price of having to ‘start again’ each time.
Agreed John. We need to take a more holistic approach to the definition of ‘outdoor industry’ as at present there are two parallel outdoor industries rather than one overarching one. As an association we are proactively working with those other sectors, including the outdoor learning sector, to try and encourage this natural synergy. In turn this will hopefully lead to a larger human resources pool where skills are much more transferable across all the outdoor sectors – thus encouraging retention and retaining that talent.