InsideOutdoor | WINTER 2022 26 By MARTIN VILABOY The Right Time to Re-Start At a time when it seems as if every other week, we hear news of an outdoor brand being acquired or rolled up under a larger entity, Eagle Creek is traveling in the complete opposite direction. Earlier this year, the 46-year-old pioneering brand officially began its reemergence as an independently owned company. Back in September of 2021, longtime outdoor industry executive Travis Campbell purchased Eagle Creek from VF Corp. and began the rather unique, though not unprecedented, journey of re-establishing an already established and trusted brand. “We can put some of the toothpaste back in the tube, rethink some of the decisions that have been made in the past around discounting and distribution, and product assortment, and move forward in a way that is authentic to the brand and our customers,” said Campbell, who previously served as president of emerging brands for VF Corp., upon the company’s official stepping out earlier this year. What might be even more interesting about the story is the timing of Eagle Creek’s re-emergence. If there was ever a good time for a company to be re-examining and rethinking its operations, processes, systems or people, it’s now. After all, disruptions to workflows and workforces have represented the ever-changing norm across most business sectors for the past few years. For many companies up and down supply chains, much of the 2020s have been spent reexamining and rebuilding processes and readjusting to new and unseen challenges and conditions. As operations were forced to remold around remote realities, and existing systems cracked under pandemic pressures, the race toward digital transformations rapidly accelerated. In turn, the characteristics generally associated with being a start-up or small business (agility, forward-thinking, nimbleness, risk-taking and an openness to emerging innovations and technologies) never have been more important to success. The new Eagle Creek enters this environment now able to move and think like a start-up but with the loyal following and built-in business of a core outdoor brand. “We’re essentially starting from scratch organizationally so that means many new people and all new systems,” said Campbell. “While daunting to implement all our operating systems at once, it allows us to have state-ofthe-art systems and processes across our business.” Eagle Creek’s Travis Campbell Brand Watch Eagle Creek begins its unique journey at an opportune time “Every other business I’ve worked in has had many legacy systems that have held back their operations in some way,”
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