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Kirstie Pike CEO Prois – “Take Pride in NOT Being One of the Guys”
But what, in your background, gave you the inkling that you could be an ER nurse and all of a sudden be in an outdoor apparel company? Poor planning. Actually, coming from Gunnison I think it’s such an outdoor-driven area where pretty everybody does…they ski, they mountain bike they run and so just knowing that there was performance gear out there for everything that we would do, but there was nothing out there for hunting. So we just started playing with it, but given my background as nursing, wow, yeah, it was a complete about face from what I was trained to do, definitely. Kirstie Pike CEO Prois – “Take Pride in NOT Being One of the Guys”
It was one of those things we really never saw it happening
Well, basically we were down in Denver we went down to one of the big box stores which shall remain nameless, and we’d go try to find gear for myself and ready to get completely set up for archery season when literally there was nothing down there. And so we left there, I was frustrated, Steve, of course, got completely outfitted. And started talking about, gosh, we could do this and this is what we would do, and this is the kind of fabrics we’d want to use and we just started kicking it around on the drive back home to Gunnison. And we let it sit for awhile and percolate and we came back to it again and started making some sketches and just started actually thinking seriously about it. Kirstie Pike CEO Prois – “Take Pride in NOT Being One of the Guys”
And I think from that point on we started just looking into the process and literally one door opened to the next, to the next. It was one of those things we really never saw it happening but we thought we’d give it a whirl and wow, it really did take off.
We’re still a small manufacturer but I still take pride in the fact that we’ve ridden out the recession
I think that’s a big part of it. We’ve a long way to go. We’re still a small manufacturer but I still take pride in the fact that we’ve ridden out the recession, and we’ve ridden out other female companies, we’ve ridden out some very large companies that have come out and men’s companies that try to do women’s gear and there’s a few recipes for why that’s worked, but I’m proud of that fact and I definitely have talked to Steve because he’s the one, really who taught me that failure’s not an option. You have to risk failing but you gotta fight every way you can to try to be flexible and smart. Kirstie Pike CEO Prois – “Take Pride in NOT Being One of the Guys”
She’s turned into such a great asset for the company
Now how did Katherine Grand come into this whole mix? And I’m like, “Oh, cool.” So we’re both talking and obviously, hit it off well, and so I asked her to do a photo shoot for us the next week, and she was awesome. And from that point on she worked for me, actually for no wage for about a year she’d just volunteer some time and come in and help me out with things until I could get her a part-time job and a full-time job. She’s turned into such a great asset for the company, she’s hysterical, we have a great time working together. She’s loyal,
Merino which we’ve just found is more efficient
Once your layers get completely wet you’ve got a problem there if you’re in the cold temperatures. So we’ve historically used a lot of polyester fabrics which are great, I really like them, but we’re making a transition to Merino which we’ve just found is more efficient. I think mother nature got it right with wool and down. So Merino why I would almost figure it’s better, it’s got a great property it’s warm and it also breathes well, it also doesn’t maintain any odor. So I think that’s where we’re going in the future, we’re working on prototypes right now and swapping out that fabric liner.
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