To celebrate the NHL All-Star Weekend in Toronto, luxury outerwear brand Nobis hosted a private concert by The Reklaws and a special lounge for NHL players. I was lucky to interview Nobis co-founder Robin Yates and chat about hockey, brand partnerships and sustainable fashion.
If you could pick any celebrity brand ambassador for Nobis, who would it be?
Robin Yates: Probably Ryan Reynolds. I think he’s just an amazing human being. I think he’s sincere and passionate about what he’s involved in, so I can’t imagine a better person.
What advice do you have for brands tapping into pop culture moments like the NHL All-Star Weekend?
Robin Yates: Relationships are the foundation of everything. Good brands aren’t just a label, they have a soul. You have to find synergistic partnerships that embrace the same DNA that you have within your brand. And then you go after them. It’s futile to do it if it’s not genuine.
I come from a hockey background and we’ve got a tremendous amount of friends in the hockey community. This is just an extension of an inner circle of friends that evolved into something much larger than that.
How did you make hockey connections?
Robin Yates: I played hockey all my life. 25 years ago, I ended up doing a fishing show with Bob Izumi and Bobby Orr. I flew back from China, arrived at 3 am, walked into the cabin, and I heard the words, “Yates-y, I hope you don’t snore.” And I realized that I was cabined up with Bobby.
We’ve been inseparable friends ever since. I got involved with Bobby’s golf tournament for years, I’ve now taken that over. That was the lead into some amazing people that I met over the years, the celebrities that we had out, and some from personal experience as well guys that I played with in the past.
The culture of hockey is very team driven. Those lessons have been profound in my life and the way I move forward. So success for me is something that’s a shared journey. It only effectively and truly happens when you surround yourself with excellence and try not to get left behind.
How do you determine if a partnership was a good idea and how do you measure its success?
Robin Yates: Metrics are more about the community you build these days than the conversion to sale. We know that we expand awareness with events like this. Whether it’ll convert to sales today, it may not, but there’s been probably 100 people over the last few days that have come up to me and said, “gonna come back with my wife, come back with a kid”. As a brand that’s subtly branded in our product offering, it’s important to have that face time with potential consumers so they can understand the value proposition. The answer is not as easy as it used to be.
You can’t just align yourself with a personality with a million followers, hundred million followers and it’s instant success. That’s not how it works anymore. You need to be purposeful; you need to be genuine. And you need to have a sound value proposition that’s also aesthetically pleasing. So, growth has to be looked at in a much longer term than it did before.
What makes Nobis unique compared to your competitors?
With Nobis, we’re a very different company than our competitors. We often get asked are we as technical as another brand. I’m like, we’re 1000 times more technical because they’re not technical at all. We invest in membrane lamination, seam-seal construction, breathable nylons, exclusively use Canadian white duck down in our production, magnetic closures to minimize the velcro and so forth.
Now we’re finally hearing about quiet luxury and things that that are resonating with consumers. Fashion no longer can be painful. The fashion consumers rightly so are demanding performance attributes within their premium outerwear purchase. And similarly, the outdoor community that was always performance driven in their product, but didn’t really demand the aesthetics from it have shifted, they want it all as we all do. And the other caveat we have is ours is all home washable, no dry cleaning bills. We just tried to build the best product I know how to make and we’re the innovator in marrying function with fashion in this lifestyle category.
I have great memories shopping on Queen Street West, but some of my favourite stores have closed. Aside from hosting this event, how are you bringing people into the store?
Robin Yates: You have to present a culture. To be the best, you can’t just have the best product. You have to tell the story, you have to buy into it, you have to share that DNA within the community of people that represent the product. We do a lot of events, we promote on social, we do all those things to try and drive traffic to the store.
We also complement the stores’ inventory online so they can come and shop and order the jacket to be sent to their home. Really try and make it as convenient as possible to convert the consumer into a product that should bring them satisfaction for the long-term.
It’s been about a year since Next by Nobis launched. How’s it going so far?
Robin Yates: It’s interesting. I think we deliver a new spin on the resale platform. We use certain logoed QR codes that are unique to every product that we make, physically a fingerprint on the jacket. The authentication component of products that are on our site have given the consumer an extended amount of confidence knowing they’re buying our first quality product.
One of the things that hasn’t been talked about a lot is that the resale platforms become an excellent place for black market counterfeit products to be liquidated and sold without any authenticator. So, for us, they have to scan the QR code to log in on the Next by Nobis site.
We have a moderate amount of conversion, but we have a huge level of satisfaction in the product purchase journey. The platform that we use to qualify the condition of the jacket as well as the opportunity to not lose a discount for the platform’s fees has been a unique positive in the way we’ve approached the resale market.
Thank you Nobis for inviting me to your event! Here’s a clip of The Reklaws performing their hit song Long Live The Night: