“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
This is one of our favorite literary exchanges. To us, the conversation from Alice in Wonderland romanticizes the idea of wanderlust. Go! Just pack your bags and let destiny chart your course.
But alas, it may be an entertaining way to travel, but it's probably not the best way to run a company. So, right after the awesome women's race in Kona, we sat down and did some planning at the house we rented on the Big Island.
Truth be told, first we had a big ole honkin party. Then we did our planning
Two members of the Coeur team, Jess and Lisa, work remote and our company trip to the Big Island for Ironman Hawaii was the first time that we have all been physically together in years. So, we took advantage of our proximity and the incredible location to do some thinking about Coeur. We wanted to align on where we want to go and what we want to do as a company going forward
Before we talk about that, it's hard to describe how awesome it was to see the female pros having their own day in Kona! It was also incredible to finally get to cheer for all of our customers and ambassadors who had qualified over the past couple of years!
Marisa flying up Palani Hill
Margo is all smiles heading out on the bike
Amy handing water to teammate #AndScott on the Run
We can't wait until next year when all of the women will have the course to themselves!
In any event, the timing of the race is good for us because it's right before our busy holiday season but close enough to the end of the year that we can do some planning.
During our session, we talked about our three-part mission to create great clothing, provide "off the chart, great customer service" and to build an encouraging & supportive community,
Kebby's roots as a business consultant started coming through as she encouraged us to put specific goals down for each of the three parts of the mission. Eventually, we managed to stay on topic long enough to come up with our plan.
Then, as we talked about marketing, the idea of having a tagline came up. It seemed like a fairly straight-forward request. Let's add a tagline to our name. Not super hard. Right? We're a values-based company, so let's just identify the thing we think is most important and describe it with a punchy, clever phrase.
Au contraire, mon ami! To our great surprise, the answer for us was elusive and quite hard indeed. We spend so much time obsessing over the clothing that we desperately wanted to say something about performance and style. Unfortunately, despite spending significant dollars on aerodynamic testing, the phrase "Coeur Sports Stylish and Fast "just didn't seem to capture our ethos. It was true and performance is super important to us, but no faces were lighting up when we gave that phrase a test run. Or ride as the case may be.
Aerodynamic testing for our gear at ERO Sports
To be clear, we'll continue to go out of our way to develop designs that we hope you love. And we'll continue to obsess over fabric, the sewing, and our seam-free chamois, but we decided to look elsewhere for our tagline.
Next, we discussed our deep love for the Coeur Community. Now, we're getting somewhere! We absolutely love our TCB members, our ambassadors, our internal team and all of our customers. But how do we capture all that with a tagline?
"Coeur Sports, we love you more than we love coffee"???
Whelp...it's is true and that means we love everyone a lot because we really do have a thing for coffee. Even so, that one just didn't have..."It".
Whatever "it" is.
So, we talked about some of our favorites from other companies. BMW has a great one with "The Ultimate Driving Machine" and we even gave props to Disney for "The Happiest Place on Earth". And of course, there's the famous "Just Do It" tagline from Nike.
Still no luck. We eventually ended our planning session without a tagline and left this block unchecked.
Then weeks after we had returned from Kona, Kebby came up with it. Mid-conversation, she just stops and blurts out..."Kindness you can wear"!
That's it! That's really what we're all about. In the long run, it's what matters and it's what gets us up each day. Yes, we think we make great clothes. Yes, we want to have the most customer friendly policies in the industry. Yes, we love speed. But, what really matters. What we want to change about the world. What we want to really promote. Is kindness!
Kebby and Lauren are both so creative that we'll probably find a way to have a word montage where we spin through a couple of words like "Performance", "Speed", "Comfort" and end with "Kindness" followed by the phrase "...that you wear", but ultimately, kindness is what matters and it's what we strive to put more of out in the world.
So, there it is.
Coeur Sports, Kindness that you wear.
Thanks for reading and please...stay kind.
Your friends at Coeur.