Cotopaxi CEO Lindsay Shumlas is on a quest to grow the outdoor clothing and backpack maker. The brand is set to take in about $150 million in sales this year. Its rivals include Patagonia and L.L. Bean which are each about 10 times bigger by revenue. But Cotopaxi is set apart by one thing: color.
“Color is at the core of our DNA and will continue to be,” Shumlas says. Whimsical, bright colors have stood the brand apart from rivals since its founding in 2014. What’s more, colorful items are a bigger hit with women, who generate 60% of sales, than male customers, many of whom are finance bros who sport its llama-logoed vests.
At the same time, Shumlas says, not everyone wants super bold colors. So Cotopaxi’s color palette runs from “mild to wild,” as she puts it, as she faces the perennial challenge for a small but popular brand looking to cast a wider net. Growing without losing what made a brand special to begin with.
Shumlash became CEO in December as part of a “leadership reset” replacing a CEO who had been put in place to succeed one of the Salt Lake City-based company’s founders after he took leave to go serve as a Mormon missionary for a few years. Earlier this year, a funding round valued Cotopaxi at $366 million, barely up from one a year earlier, putting pressure on Shumlas to successfully foster growth.
Courtesy of Cotopaxi
She is taking a gradual approach to growing Cotopaxi, focusing on products that have technical qualities but can also be “lifestyle” friendly. “There used to be ‘outdoor’ brands and there used to be ‘lifestyle’ brands and now you’re seeing the two merge,” she says. An illustration of where she thinks Cotopaxi can fit: Something you can wear working from home, to walk the dog, wear at your kid’s soccer game and go for a hike.
One way Cotopaxi is taking a different tack from its outdoor industry brethren: the manner in which it advocates for the outdoors. (Cotopaxi gives away 1% to 3% of annual revenue to poverty alleviation programs.) Patagonia famously sued the first Trump administrations over its plans to shrink two national monuments and REI expressed regret in April for supporting the second Trump administration’s interior secretary nomination.
But Shumlas does not want the company to get pulled into the culture wars that seem to engulf a different CEO, from Target’s to Cracker Barrel’s, every week. “It’s difficult as a leader in this time because you’re always navigating that,” she says. “We’ve been outspoken on public lands use but in our brand-right way, which is taking a non-partisan view.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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