From a professional snowboarder to a CEO that eliminated his role by distributing his responsibilities into a leadership collective, get ready for a fascinating interview from Zurich with Oliver Brunschwiler, and meet retailer Freitag Freitag is a super innovative and agile retailer that takes truck tarps and fashions them into unique handbags and accessories. Oliver takes us through his origin story, which is also the origin story of Freitag. How they approach product development, and the customer-created design is a masterclass in modern retail. The organizational structure, a holocracy, is a lesson in running a next-generation global retailer.
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
From a professional snowboarder to a CEO that eliminated his role by distributing his responsibilities into a leadership collective, get ready for a fascinating interview from Zurich with Oliver Brunschwiler, and meet retailer Freitag
Freitag is a super innovative and agile retailer that takes truck tarps and fashions them into unique handbags and accessories. Oliver takes us through his origin story, which is also the origin story of Freitag. How they approach product development, and the customer-created design is a masterclass in modern retail. The organizational structure, a holocracy, is a lesson in running a next-generation global retailer.
Oliver then takes us through his perspective on global expansion, retail in the somewhat post-covid, European war, the inflationary period we're in, and how the DNA of agility built in their management model will create outsized success for Freitag
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven’t already, be sure and click subscribe on your favourite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week, and check out my other retail industry media properties; the Remarkable Retail podcast, the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and the Food Professor podcast. Last but not least, if you are into BBQ, check out my all new YouTube barbecue show, Last Request Barbeque, with new episodes each and every week!
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company & Maven Media, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co! Have a safe week everyone!
About Oliver
A former professional snowboarder and multiple entrepreneur, inclusive leader, coach, strategist, designer, innovator and constant learner. Oliver currently energizes various holacratic (https://www.holacracy.org/) roles. His mission is enabling the brand’s strategic vision, unlocking sustainable growth, fostering organizational progress and designing it's circular business model transformation with a team of dedicated impact-seekers.
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated on thought leadership panels worldwide. Michael was recently added to ReThink Retail’s prestigious Top 100 Global Retail Influencers for a second year in 2022.
Michael is also the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts, including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus the Remarkable Retail with author Steve Dennis, Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Most recently, Michael launched Conversations with CommerceNext, a podcast focussed on retail eCommerce, digital marketing and retail careers - all available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music and all major podcast platforms. Michael is also the producer and host of the “Last Request Barbeque” channel on YouTube where he cooks meals to die for and influencer riches.
Michael LeBlanc 00:05
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Michael LeBlanc 00:10
From a professional snowboarder to a CEO that eliminated his role by distributing in his responsibilities into a leadership collective. Get ready for a fascinating interview from Zurich with Oliver Brunschwiler, and meet retailer Freitag.
Michael LeBlanc 00:24
Freitag is a super innovative and agile retailer that takes truck tarps and fashions them into unique handbags and accessories. Oliver takes us through his origin story, which is also the origin story of Freitag. How they approach product development, and the customer-created design is a masterclass in modern retail. The organizational structure of halocracy is a lesson in running a next-generation global retailer.
Michael LeBlanc 00:46
Oliver then takes us through his perspective on global expansion, retail in the somewhat post-COVID, European war, the inflationary period we're in, and how the DNA of agility built into their management model will create outsized success for this innovative company.
Oliver Brunschwiler 01:03
And our organization of form really helps because decision making, as you asked before, is distributed all over the organization.
Michael LeBlanc 01:13
Let's listen in now. Oliver, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing?
Oliver Brunschwiler 01:17
I'm doing very good. Thank you for having me.
Michael LeBlanc 01:19
Well, fantastic. It's great to have you. I'm very lo-, very much looking forward to our conversation. Now, where in the world am I finding you today?
Oliver Brunschwiler 01:29
Well, I'm a homegrown Swiss. I'm sitting in Zurich. Well, close to Zurich, I'm looking at Lake Zurich, currently. The weather is really nice. No more masks around here. Really warm. A little too warm for the time of the year, but yeah, beautiful.
Michael LeBlanc 01:50
Fantastic. Well, listen, let's jump right in. Let's talk about let's talk about you. So, tell me a bit about yourself, your background and what you do for a living.
Oliver Brunschwiler 01:59
Fantastic question. I was made in Phoenix, Arizona when I was zero years old. And then my Swiss Family actually moved back to Switzerland. So, I grew up in Switzerland, in the middle of Europe, I started my education in the arts and graduated in economics while traveling the world as a professional snowboarder for some years.
Oliver Brunschwiler 02:26
I then founded my own winter sports apparel brand, which we couple years later sold to investors, then worked for creative agencies for different brands in the sports, consumer goods and luxury sectors, before founding one of the first stitch C's in 1999.
Oliver Brunschwiler 02:48
And then after selling the company to actually an American agency network, I had the pleasure to join recycling pioneer, Freitag. It was actually one of my first employment. So, I was always an entrepreneur before that. And those two guys that founded this influential brand, were always some kind of my heroes. So, I said, if I want to join a company, I would probably join Freitag.
Oliver Brunschwiler 03:14
So, since 2014, I was fortunate to help to transform and grow the company in various roles. In around 2018, I was appointed lead link and strategist, which in a world of hierarchical organizational charts translates into the responsibilities of a chief executive officer in traditional organization forums.
Oliver Brunschwiler 03:42
And then by the end of 2021, I decided to distribute most of my operational roles into a leadership collective, fostering inclusive organizational progress, and to focus on strategic projects for myself, for my peers, and enabling the brand's future potential outside of the bags and accessories business.
Michael LeBlanc 04:10
Well, it's so interesting, there's a bunch of threads that I can pull on, so to speak on that conversation. So, let's go back to this whole professional snowboarder bit that you had. That's not I don't hear that very often. But you know, I do often find or see professional athletes creating their own lines of apparel was that the genesis so to speak of trying to create something that you couldn't find in the market? I mean, is it what was it, you know, other, other than the driver of this could be interesting was that was there something missing that you thought you wanted to wanted to fill a gap that you saw that you wanted to take advantage of?
Oliver Brunschwiler 04:46
Oh, definitely. At that time, it was the first boom years of the upcoming sport. It was a hyper trend. As a Canadian, you might know that it was all about skiing in the 80s and but the curve was somehow so decreasing. So, snowboarding came right at the right time. But it came from surfing, skateboarding influenced by, by people that were like more like hippies, and punks and rock stars. And so, for us, in Europe, or actually as a global movement and I took advantage of, of the combination of cultural elements. And, and we saw a gap there to start a brand out of Europe as one of the first brands that was dedicated to snowboarding, soft goods brand. And we just took an opportunity to, to be in that market at the very first wave, and that was a lot of fun. Yeah, definitely.
Michael LeBlanc 05:45
No kidding. Now, let's, let's let me also talk about this, your idea that you mentioned, not your idea, your practice of this collective leadership. So, unpack that for me a little bit. I mean, we've got a lot of things to cover in our discussion today. But I just want to touch on that for a little bit. So, talk about the way that decisions are made. And, you know, you can't always all agree on something. So, how is there finally, a single decision made just speak a few minutes on how that works?
Oliver Brunschwiler 06:14
of course, it's called holacracy. It's a self organization form, very agile. Because in 2016, we were looking for something agile, not constantly or every two years, you have to reorganize the company. But instead of doing that all the time, so you're working on the company governance all the time, and everybody involved in the organization can actually do that. It was actually designed by an American. It's a hierarchy of specialists.
Oliver Brunschwiler 06:46
So, the company is organized in, in Hollands in circles, independent circles. Employees embarrass or all make decisions based on their responsibilities. But sometimes people miss mix that up a lot with some kind of a hippie setting in which it's not. So, it's very clear who in which role makes decisions. Because there are no traditional managers doesn't mean holacracy does away with hierarchies. It's the opposite. holacracy is deeply hierarchical. But one that consistently revolves around expert roles and current needs. This way, hierarchies are distributed across the entire organization, and every member can participate in changing the organization by all facilitated processes. So, it's for us, it's something that works quite well considering a DNA of our founders because our founders were in classic managers hierarchical thinking.
Oliver Brunschwiler 07:45
So, this is a self-organization forum. And I, for a couple of years, after two years, in the pandemic, I saw that trust is the most important element in all organizations in all teams probably. So, we went one step further and said that we actually don't have this primus inter pares anymore. So, there's no more like that boss person in the company. It's a collective of five and plus eight in another role, that are like leading the company.
Michael LeBlanc 08:17
Interesting. Now, in your specific role, let me give you an example. And then we're getting into all about the business and, and sustainability in the product and how you approach it. If you wanted to decide you've got to, I think you've got one location in North America. But you let's say you decided we wanted to have more or we wanted to go to a country we're not in. Does that, is that part of your role in, in kind of strategy? Or is that, is there a collective of people who decide on expansion kind of issues? (Crossover talk), -
Oliver Brunschwiler 08:43
I love that question. Because expansion is absolutely on, on the mind of every entrepreneur. And I think what we foster in this organization is an entrepreneurial thinking. So, in general, there's always has to be a visionary person. But the thing is that you don't need like the old leaders, or classic bosses to be visionary thinkers and move organization forward or expand, in that case, the markets.
Oliver Brunschwiler 09:14
So, I had one of these roles that was called a (inaudible) runner. So, in a role as a (inaudible) runner and not as the lead link of the company, I was accountable to write expansion plans, and make them bomb proof. And then take the next step of, of or-, of projects, and finding out if these markets will work. For example, the US was on our map before, before the pandemic, but first we said we will enter the UK because it's not a big market for us. It's a reactive market like same as the US.
Oliver Brunschwiler 09:46
So, we said we would take the UK first and then we would go to the US. And that was our plan before the pandemic because we actually wanted to close the cycle around the world was were very strong in Asia. When you traveled to, to Japan, to China to Thailand to Taiwan, you see Freitag all over.
Oliver Brunschwiler 10:05
It's like, a very present brand and in the United States you don't do that. But or in Canada, not even in Canada. But if I tell the story to the US to the Americans, they everybody wants it. So, we said, of course, there's so much potential, but it will cost a lot. So, and then you have this role being accountable, spending over a certain sum. They are responsible to make the final decision on project level, for example. So, it's a bit complicated, but entrepreneurial behavior, expanding a brand, growing your brand is all over the place in our culture.
Michael LeBlanc 10:41
Oh, fantastic. It's a, it's a great bit. And it's funny, a lot of retailers I talked to, international retailers, they come many come to Canada first and then go to the US because we're, we're very close similar markets, not exactly the same but, (crossover talk), -
Oliver Brunschwiler 10:56
we should talk about that.
Michael LeBlanc 10:58
Yeah, it's it's a very, I think, in the past, well, pre-COVID and of course, these things slow down during COVID. But pre-COVID. I think there's 50 or 60 international brands that established a beachhead here just to get a vibe, you know, for the North American market, because there's enough similarities. Anyway, enough about that. Tell me all about you as a retailer and tag.
Oliver Brunschwiler 11:20
No, you say fried tag, a German name and it stands for Friday. So, in, in, in German, or in English, it's Friday, but it's fried talk, Freitag.
Michael LeBlanc 11:31
Freitag, all right, tell me all about Freitag, where you operate, scope, scale, what makes you different a bit of the origin story?
Oliver Brunschwiler 11:38
Freitag is a recycling pioneer. So, we sell unique bags and accessories made out of used truck tarp, and other recycled materials or (inaudible) materials. And each product we make is unique because it's cut out of used truck tarp, which we source from transport companies all over Europe. But actually, the truth is, it's that we sell purpose.
Oliver Brunschwiler 12:04
So, sustainability is everybody's lips on everybody's lips, we have an advantage because Freitag was and remains a first mover which started recycling, upcycling abandoned materials into unique timelessly designed functional urban lifestyle products in 1993. So, that's quite a long time ago, it's, 30 years next year. So, we have this advantage of being one of those first (inaudible), at least in the markets, they know us. Not in Canada yet. But then a lot of other markets.
Oliver Brunschwiler 12:37
So, before many other major brands went viral with greenwashing, we promised to extend product life cycles by repairing products way ahead before conscious lifestyles became the talk of the town. So, it's, it's in the core of its business model, its selling unique bags made out of us truck tarps, and that's has a "Beauty and the Beast", in the business models. But I can tell you about distribution maybe later on about this.
Michael LeBlanc 13:08
You know, it it's often the case as you say you're, you're, you're a real originator from that perspective. It is often the case that I find brands struggle between this you know, that, that material sustainability around the material and fun and innovative and great looking how, I was on your site, you know, you have wonderful looking products. I mean, they are well design, there's a sense of fun and, and humor to it and style. How do you pull those two things together? Because they're not often they're not often always found in the same place at the same time?
Oliver Brunschwiler 13:40
Yeah, right. I mean, currently, we love to see how awareness concerning planetary health grows in societies across generations. So, conscious consumerism makes its way close to the exit floors finally. But I mean, it's still just a drop in the ocean considering the challenges and opportunities the next generation will be confronted with.
Oliver Brunschwiler 14:06
So, Freitag has a purpose driven (inaudible) brand. Our, our purpose reads intelligent design for a circle of future, which is a pretty serious purpose, company purpose, but you're aiming for, right?
Oliver Brunschwiler 14:16
So, design everything can be intelligently designed, organizations, production processes, not just products. But in our case, values become come before strategy. So, it's a brand driven from within the company through a so-called sales organization. As I explained before, and considering serious meaningful values which are reflected in our manifest for example, we only own objects that last. We promote a very unique and playful tone of voice as we how we do things at our customers touch-points.
Michael LeBlanc 14:16
yeah, -
Oliver Brunschwiler 14:58
So, we see a lot of things we do as a work in progress, or as the Japanese say, "Wabi-sabi", finding beauty in imperfection. So, the beauty of imperfection, somehow releases a certain kind of trust to a brand, because you see, they're not perfect. And this is also reflected in our base material, which is a used material. So, it always looks slightly fucked up, which is never perfect. And tell me who is perfect, which human being is perfect? So, you can see yourself in our brand. And you're closer than being just a perfect device, for example, you know, so, and that makes us very accessible. And that's how I think the serious purpose or a serious goal to solve or help to solve planetary issues. Combining that with our tone of voice of how we do things. Makes, makes us as an accessible brand.
Michael LeBlanc 15:52
Yeah, I want to talk about the, your experience and your reflections on the COVID era. I mean, I don't want to dwell on it. It's more hopefully in the rearview mirror than in front of us. But there's no question it was two years of tremendous consumer change. I mean, it's been described as an accelerant. Now, you're a purpose driven brand. Have you found or have you alter-,? I don't think you've changed the strategy by the sounds of it. Did you change the purpose? But have you found consumers different? Did did, did it, did it move consumerism forward, backward or, or sideways? And I mean, initially, you know, many thought that people would be more conscious about one thing or the other, but there's the powerful regression to the mean. But have you detected or as a group, have you reflected on how consumers and, and the market is perhaps been changed or moved forward by the COVID era?
Oliver Brunschwiler 16:43
Absolutely. I mean, this was a major change, shock for some people. We might not even know about it, because it was, narratives had to be rewritten. For us, the pandemic was a real challenge, because basically, operational wise selling unique bags and accessories is not comparable to mass products. While most brands had no issues shifting from omni-channel, or retail to digital channel distribution. For us, this was harder.
Oliver Brunschwiler 17:16
So, imagine a product page from Freitag website, and you see many different colors, playful, a good mix of colors and designs. And so, there's nicer colors and nicer designs. So, imagine that if you if all your customers are going online, and everybody wants nice colors, the only thing is left is the not so nice colors, which is you only have like reds left and blues left and, and this is then and then the conversion goes down really, really quick.
Oliver Brunschwiler 17:48
And so, this is the, the beast of our business model. Shifting to eComm was a huge struggle for us because you have to not just use your organization forum, which in our case was an agile organization form. So, that helped a lot. But technically, this was, was of course, we had to adapt. And this took a while to get back to the growth path we had before which was really steep. And it also allowed us internally to reala-, recalibrate on our long-term strategy. I think for a lot of brands, you know, they, they got shaken up. And that was actually good.
Oliver Brunschwiler 18:29
So, for example, we created an ambitious circle roadmap, which we now follow. And this wouldn't have happened if we went just to UK or maybe Canada first and then the US. So, we were just would have expanded the brand without the COVID. And now we recalibrated strategy that might be more sustainable than just expanding and growing.
Michael LeBlanc 18:56
You know, I talked to a lot of businesses and one of the things they, they took away from the COVID era, was agility it sounds like it's baked into your entire the bones or the DNA of your organization. Let's talk about the playbook for what's happening today. There's always a crisis of some sort, but we seem to have you know, the merging of many crises all happening at the same time from what's left of COVID of course in China if you operate in China you would know there's zero tolerance policy is shutting down cities you've got war in Europe, you've got inflation in North America what what's the playbook for your business now has changed or is it is a, how are you adapting to the you know, the current situation with your agile format?
Oliver Brunschwiler 19:38
Yeah, you said it before we it's woven into the whole organization agility is, was there already, that was our advantage. But the only constant from now on is definitely change everywhere. So, as an organization you need the right recipes, processes to tackle disruptive change or external shocks. And then to become the leader in a, in a constantly changing world, your priorities must be aligned to your purpose, because that's what we have to believe in. So, I, I have to repeat, it's definitely a strong purpose with an agile organization forum helps. But for me, as an old-world leader, trust was first, because people, you know, the, the, they were all over the place, there still are. So, we have projects going on, in markets far, far away, we never met, and, and we invest a lot to actually grow again there and create new experiences, but we never met. It's crazy, -
Michael LeBlanc 20:45
Let's talk about that for a little bit. And, you know, when I talk to folks like yourself, leaders like yourself, you know, there's various schools of thought pre-COVID, about whether they want people with their bums in the seats in the office, many, many senior leaders would admit they wanted that. And now, post-COVID, they realized they didn't need that, but they are struggling a bit. We all are, I think in how to form those other bonds in a company culture. And you know, how to inculcate new employees into what the culture is, when you don't really you might not see them, they might not be located. How do you? How do you master that? Is this the format of your business very amenable to that? Or do you take extra steps to kind of, this is the culture of the organization you just joined, and, and bring people together talk about that for a few minutes?
Oliver Brunschwiler 21:31
We cannot direct company culture, there's no way this has to come from within. And as I said, I can most other people and our organization form really helps because decision making, as you asked before, is distributed all over the organization. So, this helps, of course, to create this culture of being in iLevel. And for me, also working in different roles, and not as the lead link or as the CEO, I can actually adapt to that pretty well, because I get asked as an expert in some kind of work. And that creates a very focused way of working on, on, on topics and not around people.
Michael LeBlanc 22:22
Interesting. Let's, last couple of questions, let's talk about the, the contradiction of consumers a little bit. You know, I was I was noting there is a big release that the, the retailer shine is now the number one downloaded app, but a fast fashion hasn't gone away.
Michael LeBlanc 22:37
So, there seems to be a contradiction, even in my own household, you know, with my daughter, who's very, you know, very sustainably oriented, yet she buys from some of these companies. And, and I said, well, how do you square that circle? I mean, you know, clearly, you know, at the mass level, there's movement, significant movement towards sustainability around fashion, but there still is lots of fashion that is less sustainable. How do you, how do you think consumers and how do you? How do you think they're thinking about squaring that circle? And do you do you forecast a great future ahead for the next 20 years?
Oliver Brunschwiler 23:10
It's a fact, it it's a work in progress. There are the Freitag and for example, the Patagonia and target customers, we call them young, conscious urbanites, or urban outdoors in the millions. And there's the billions of people who might know about some planetary urgencies with conscious consumers and didn't really hit the nerves yet, -
Michael LeBlanc 23:33
right, -
Oliver Brunschwiler 23:34
So, consumers tend to combine all aspects of buying from luxury to greenwashing fast fashion and our product is rooted in the purpose so it's our (inaudible) strategy if we can inspire more brands by being suspe-, successful with growth and reach, doing how we do it or Patagonia does it others might would want to follow so loyal users in our case don't buy the brand they buy into the brand and I'm not sure if, if Shein, Shein can promise a brand you can buy into so this is for me this is a trend that will find its way to a more sustainable business model, I'm quite sure. So, it's a work in progress. I'm not stressed by this I see this as natural habits arising from, from all kinds of product.
Michael LeBlanc 24:34
Right, point, point in time kind of stuff. All right, last question for you what's next for the business and, and importantly, what's next for you? You've had quite a journey attached to through your entrepreneurial retail and you're and this brand. What's, what's next for the business and what's next for you?
Oliver Brunschwiler 24:48
Well, for the business, we're exploring the truck tarp of the future fully circular material. As you might imagine, we're a small player, there's the transport industry in Europe and they transport millions of tons of PVC around on European transit routes. And we actually want to change that picture or that material, and in order to profit, and this is far away from our business model. But as grownup entrepreneurs, we have to start to shift from linear materials to circular materials. It's our intrinsic motivation.
Oliver Brunschwiler 25:26
So, we need to transform a leaner economy to circular economy. And this also affects our business. So, if we can at least transform a couple of million tons of PVC, into circle material will do that. Because at the end, it all comes back as a beautiful unique bag. So, for our business, this these are projects that really drive us further, according to our purpose. I'm personally more getting involved into circular business model transformation too. And changing organizational structures at board level because I see a lot of potential there in companies also as an influencer, helping others how to organize your shift, your transformation into a circular world.
Michael LeBlanc 26:14
Well, I think you certainly have a lot of lessons to share to the retail industry. So, thank you, Oliver, so much for coming on to The Voice of Retail podcast, I'll be keen to check in and, and see how the transformation continues. But for now, thanks again for joining me on The Voice of Retail, sharing your story and, and I wish you much, much continued success.
Oliver Brunschwiler 26:34
Thank you very much. I can't wait to travel to Canada and, and maybe talk about expansion one day.
Michael LeBlanc 26:41
That'd be fun. Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure and click and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week.
Michael LeBlanc 26:53
And check out my other retail industry media properties, the Remarkable Retail podcast, Conversations with CommerceNext podcast and The Food Professor podcast with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my all new you to barbecue show Last Request Barbecue with new episodes each and every week.
Michael LeBlanc 27:11
I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company and Maven Media. And if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website at meleblanc.co.
Have a safe week everyone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
brand, organization, people, markets, retail, company, business, purpose, role, material, bit, consumers, product, world, inaudible, talk, podcast, retailer, greenwashing, Canada