John Winsor

Nau 2.0

The day Eric Reynolds came over to the house a few years ago to talk about his idea for a new apparel company, then called UTW (Unfuck the World), I was excited by his vision and his passion. As the team came together with brilliant editions like Chris Van Dyke, Stephen Gomez, Hal Arneson, Mark Galbraith, and Ian Yolles I got excited enough to make a small investment in the company. So, with a great deal of momentum Nau was launched.

Nau did so many things right. It changed the way outdoor clothing looked, the way it was made, the fabric that was used, and the way it was distributed. Some would say that the Nau team was too ambitious, trying to change the culture of the outdoor business. It did cause quite a stir in the industry changing the way people looked at apparel. Unfortunately, this spring Nau ran into funding issues and ceased operations. It was a sad day.

Yesterday, I found out that Hal, Mark, Ian and a few others will join Horny Toad and restart Nau. I am again full of excitement. These guys will make Nau 2.0 even stronger and continue to change culture in a positive way.

Good luck Hal, Mark and Ian. We're rooting for you.

More Bus Stuff

The always positive, Dave Kingsbury, had a chat with Fox News about the CP+B Bus. I'm not sure why the newscaster was so obsessed with the design. I guess that happens. You gotta be a little different to be noticed.

Co-creation Momentum

Co-creation seems to be in the air. Yesterday I was talking with Michael Perman from Levi's about it. Soon after a McKinsey Report came across my desk talking about "distributed co-creation."

"Distributed cocreation is too new for us to draw definitive conclusions about whether and how companies should implement it. But our research into these online communities and our work with a number of open-innovation pioneers show that it isn’t too soon for senior executives to start seriously examining the possibilities for distributed cocreation or to identify the challenges, such as the ownership of intellectual property and increased operational risk, they face in adopting it."

What else is happening out there in the world of co-creation? Everybody always sites Wikipedia and Threadless. Who else is doing interesting work around open innovation?

The Invisible Badge

I just finished the new Change This Manifesto entitled, The Invisible Badge: Moving Past Conspicuous Consumption, by Rob Walker. He's always got great stuff to say. Here's a sample:

In his book about luxury, Living It Up, scholar James Twitchell compared the effect of certain rarefied, high-end brands with a dog whistle. As an example, he pointed to the various sorts of logo treatments on a Prada bag. A bag with a small logo would likely be more expensive than one with a big logo--and one with no logo whatsoever would be the most expensive of all: Only true cognoscenti would "hear" it. "This was connoisseurship applied to consumption," he wrote. During the course of reporting my book Buying In--which deals with the intersection of personal narrative and consumer behavior in some detail--I had many interesting conversations with young creators of a newer generation of brands (I call it the "brand underground") that take Twitchell's dog whistle idea into a new realm.

These brands--like Barking Irons, or The Hundreds--may be unfamiliar to you if not are a participating in the subcultures they are part of. But they do communicate participation in a subculture, and in a way that has a lot more in common with Twitchell's dog whistle than with, say, the aggressively flamboyant regalia of punk: As in the luxury arena, you need the proper background to understand what you were seeing. To everyone else--underground arrivistes, Twitchell might say--the brand symbols mean nothing and probably don't even register. Brand underground badges are, in effect, invisible.

And this is not a failure; it is the goal. It suggests a tighter relationship between the brand producer and the brand consumer, and speaks more directly to that most crucial relationship: the relationship between the consumer and consumed.

If the underground logo is a badge, it's one that is most noteworthy for how few people can see it.

Tip of the hat to Core 77.

I've been Seduced

My dad had a plane. And, some of my most memorable childhood moments were in the air. One thing I regret was that I didn't get my pilot's license. Maybe it's time. When I saw the A5 from Icon I couldn't help but dream. What a cool idea to have a plane that can land on a runway or water, then fold it's wings back and pull it behind your car. Amazing.

Learning to Lose

Today was the Annual Sayulita Fish Tacos kids surf contest. What a cool thing it is to see 40 or so kids under the age of 12 out there shredding the waves. It was a little scary considering the waves were big today. Both Charlie and Harry entered the event. Charlie was psyched. Harry wasn't. We even entered the tandem category and had a blast. While Charlie is still learning to surf his passion got him into the finals.

During the awards ceremony I was the proud parent for Charlie but saddened for Harry watching him, as a six year old, try to understand why other kids were getting the trophies instead of him. Part of Harry's difficulty in understanding is that every sport he and Charlie have done thus far in Boulder he's gotten a trophy for participating. It seems that nobody wants kids to lose these days in our American culture. It might damage their self-esteem. While I'm all for getting kids stoked for a sport but awarding them for participation seems a bit much. In my mind it raises expectations too much.

Learning to lose is so important. With it comes the ability to be graceful. If you don't learn it when you're young it comes as such a shock when you're older.

A New Stage of Life

Today was a big day. Bridget and I paddled out at Burros to surf a nice head high south swell, with a sweet off shore blowing. It's the first time in six years that this has happened. You who are parents will understand the joy in this. You see, it was the first time we felt comfortable leaving Charlie and Harry hanging on the beach by themselves. They had our little lean to and a lot of beach to explore. Being out from under the parental thumb was probably as much of a joy to them as it was to us. All the while, they were in full view for us.

What a breakthrough.

Where Does Innovation Come From?

Everyone has a theory of how innovation works and what makes it happen. When you watch kids it's easy to tell that creativity and innovation come from one place, time to play. Hanging out here in Sayulita, Harry and Charlie don't have many toys so they have to go figure things out. Harry's latest experiment is to freeze his trucks in yogurt containers. While this might not seem like innovation, it's amazing how it's laying the groundwork for Harry. He's creatively figuring out how the dynamics of freezing and thawing. After the trucks are frozen he's been chipping away at the ice examining and exploring what's colder, metal or rubber? This afternoon he moved on to freezing bugs. He thought he might be able to freeze one then bring it back alive. Who knows, he might be right. At six this ability to play is making him really happy. And, at the end of the day, isn't that what it's all about, anyway?

Techno-Loneliness

I was traveling yesterday and noticed something that has been bugging me for a while. While we got on the plane a number of people were continued to talk on their cell phones and check their emails even after the stewardess had asked people to shut off their electronics. It was as if they were skin divers about ready to take a deep dive. The fear and stress of being cut off was in the air. As we were five minutes away from landing many had their phones out, ready to turn them on and be reconnected to life.

How many times have you been with someone when they continued to check their emails as you were trying to have a conversation with them? Honestly, I've been on both sides of the table. Isn't this causing ADD? If we aren't comfortable with were we are and would rather be connected to someone elsewhere, after time it's bound to cause a sense of loneliness, longing to be somewhere you're not.

Maybe all of the technology has given us the ability to connect with people but in such a superficial way. At the same time, it's cut us off from the world directly around us causing techno-loneliness.

Disruptive Thinker's Express

How does a company change culture and become a better citizen of the community in which it lives? One of the ways CP+B has been doing it is by starting our bus service that takes people from many of Boulder's popular coffee haunts and drops them at work. (the CP+B office is 9 miles from downtown Boulder.) The bus even runs into Boulder for lunch.

Even though the bus is fun and convenient we're still working on changing people's habits. I'm certainly not using the bus as much as I should. It's so easy to hope in your car and drive by yourself. I'm confident that there will be a cognitive shift for CP+Bers as Creative Director, Evan Fry, leads the charge to figure out how to shift this paradigm. It's gonna be a fun and worthwhile experiment.