“I see trees of green, red roses, too, I see them bloom, for me and you. And I think to myself, What a wonderful world.”
Ahh…Mr. Armstrong (as in "Louie"), we love the way you think….and sing!
Now, we’ll be the first to admit that, at Coeur, we see the glass as “Half Full”. Even to the point of having someone once tell us that we'd be better served to “see the world as it is, not as it should be”. Seriously, we’re not making this up. That being said, if it is just the same to you, we’ll keep our rose colored glasses on and continue to hope for the best.
In our last post, we spent some time talking about how we work with our professional athletes and we made an appeal to other sponsors asking that they join us in guaranteeing hard dollar compensation in all of their sponsorship deals. Based on events that have occurred over the past couple of weeks, we are of the opinion that sponsors are uniquely positioned to collectively provide enough income so that more professional triathletes can race and train full time. Now this isn’t all altruism on our part. We believe that this will create deeper and more competitive fields, and that will help draw new participants into the sport. Those new participants will need to buy their bikes, shoes, nutrition, and clothing from someone and we believe they will gravitate toward sponsors that go out of their way to treat their pros fairly.
Kate Bevilaqua is one of our Pros and an amazing role model
Now today, we’d like to talk about our amazing team of sponsored age-group athletes and what we expect from them. Similar to our pros, we have a nuanced view on what we expect. You won’t be surprised to know that we do indeed hope that potential customers might consider buying Coeur because they interacted with one of our ambassadors. However, you might be a little surprised to know that we’re not freaking out if one of our ambassadors actually mentions a competitor to someone just getting into the sport.
One reason we’re ok with this is because, while we truly believe we have the highest quality gear in the market, we also know there are some other terrific women’s brands out there.
Another reason is because (similar to the pros), we want our Ambassadors to represent the sport above all else. These ladies are the tip of the spear when it comes to interacting with first timers and in that position, they can be incredibly influential in growing cycling, running, swimming and triathlon. I’m sure most everyone can remember how intimidating it can be to start a new sport and we can’t help but wonder how many women gave up because one of their early interactions with a more experienced individual was less than positive.
On the other hand, we know first-hand how incredibly uplifting it can be at the start of a race to have someone who is more experienced, take a minute and say good luck. Or help you set up your transition area, or hold your bike while you’re nervously fumbling with the air pump. In those minutes before the gun goes off, when your stomach is in knots, small gestures like these are worth their weight in gold and we think they can be the difference between keeping someone in the sport or having them decide it is “one and done”.
More than anything, we want our ambassadors to be role models. To be the person who races “lights out” and goes for the win, but who is also willing to share information. The type of person who views the other athletes as brothers and sisters in sport, not as the enemy. And the beautiful thing is that that is exactly what they do. In addition to supporting each other, we consistently see our ambassadors explaining where to ride to people who are visiting their towns. We see them responding positively when they get questions via social media, and we see them sending public well wishes to ladies racing around and (shock of shocks) even against them.
Coeur Ambassadors at Wildflower
Now, we’ll let you in on our secret wish. In reality, we don’t want this to just come from Coeur ambassadors. We hope that everyone wearing Coeur will model these behaviors.
We realize that this is a tall order and that our ability to influence people is probably a lot more limited than we’d hope. Still, we can try…right? We can ask all the sponsors to support their pros and we can ask all the Coeur customers to support each other and the new entrants into the sport.
And if we’re successful, well…“what a wonderful world it will be”.
Happy Training and Racing Everyone!
Your Friends at Coeur