The power of dreams

Simple, straightforward and successful: this has been the approach for Al Gosling, CEO of Extreme, the world’s leading extreme sports and lifestyle company, which today has a turnover of US$45 million. Established on the tightest of budgets in the modest surroundings of his bedroom, Al’s unbending desire to marry his love of extreme sports with business has netted him his Extreme empire of TV licensing deals, drinks, theme parks, shops, mobile phones clothing and credit cards. It’s a marketing man’s dream – and one he created with absolutely no formal marketing knowledge whatsoever.

Al founded Extreme alone 10 years ago, aged 24, with “a love of sport and a spare room.” By April 1999, his TV licensing business was a 24/7 TV channel. Today it reaches 38 million homes across 55 countries.

“When I started out, I had absolutely no plan at all,” he confesses. “I only knew that I was passionate about extreme sports, and about the idea of making it in business, and I had this TV licensing idea. That’s as far as any big plan went. After that, it was just decisions day by day… and more than a fair bit of grit and determination. I just stayed on the phone and got meetings with network people, and then I persuaded them to use us. I had to make those distribution deals. By 1998 I had those, and I could think about a channel. Before that it was a goal, sure, but not a plan.”

Nothing unusual so far – lots of people do that. So what strategies helped him grow Extreme so quickly? “One: I reduced my overheads to zero. Nothing. I was 24, and all my friends were out there having fun – and I was back living with my parents. But that took the pressure off compromising the business idea to meet overheads.”

It might just have been Al’s marketing náivety that saved him from the brand-first rush that doomed so many 1990s media startups. “Not having that marketing background, I was actually a good filter of the language!” he laughs. “So I decided to follow how the best in my field built their businesses – not just jump on marketing trends. That meant emulating the men behind the great TV operations, people like Ted Turner of CNN.”

The brand, he says, “came along as we got the business side right. I had no idea at all when I started of the things you’d call marketing, or branding. Forget dreams of owning some kind of all-powerful brand – I was just trying to make the nuts and bolts happen. And even that took me four or five years. It felt quite strange at the time to be doing what we were doing, which was bascially letting it grow organically, but it was the right thing to do. We ended up with a really strong brand quite naturally.”

Al believes the brand’s strength today is down to that slow, backburner approach. “We never rammed the brand down people’s throats,” he says. “And until we launched our own TV channel, we didn’t even go out of our way to make the brand that visible. We decided against licensing it out at all for that whole initial period. Why chuck away all that goodwill you’re still trying to generate?”

Today, he says, it’s other marketeers he fears most. “I get pitched at five days a week,” he says. “I’ve made mistakes, too. Every opportunity someone brings you, always looks good from the outside!”

Tips to get ahead

• Process, process, process
Carry out simple research. Successful marketing is all about indentifying, anticipating and satisfying customer needs. Having a system for collecting and analysing feedback from customers will help you to keep generating fresh ideas

• People investment
Happy, skilled and motivated staff make happy customers

• Promote your business
Advertising, sales promotion, PR, direct marketing, personal selling – a mix of promotional tools is the key

Find more tips at www.cim.co.uk

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