3-minute read:

THE CHALLENGE

A heritage ski apparel brand faced a problem that looked like a product gap but was actually a perception crisis.

The brand had loyal customers: older, affluent skiers who valued quality and were willing to pay $700+ for technical gear. But younger skiers saw the brand as out of touch. Despite multiple attempts to reinvent itself as relevant to younger audiences, every effort came across as try-hard rather than informed.

Leadership decided to launch a new brand entirely. New name, younger aesthetic, more competitive pricing, better social presence. By the time they reached us, the product was already designed. Now they needed to know: who is this for, what do they actually value, and how do we bring this to market without guessing?

They needed validation and direction before committing marketing dollars to a strategy that might miss the mark entirely.

OUR APPROACH

We designed research to understand the gap between what consumers say drives their purchasing decisions and what actually moves them to buy.

Listen: Understanding the Real Buyer

We conducted 20 in-depth 1-on-1 interviews with skiers across the U.S., all active on social media, all skiing 5-10+ days per year:

• 5 generalist skiers (broad baseline)

• 10 core target market participants (self-identified freeskiers, ages 16-24)

• 5 fringe target market participants (ages 24-35, testing the boundary)

We also analyzed purchasing data from the parent brand, conducted retail interviews, studied social media behavior, and mapped how competitors were positioning themselves visually and culturally.

To test how brand story and athlete partnerships influenced perception, we created visual moodboards from 8 brands: 4 assumed competitors identified by the client, and 4 fringe brands we added to diversify the sample. We removed all logos and asked participants to describe what they saw, who each brand was for, and what different types of skiers would like or dislike about each one. Then we ranked preferences.

We also tested early creative concepts from the client to get live feedback on visual direction, messaging tone, and what to avoid.

Locate: The Perception Paradox

The research revealed something counterintuitive. When asked what mattered most when buying ski apparel, nearly every participant said technical performance was their top priority. A few mentioned brand story and athlete partnerships. Almost no one said price mattered.

Yet when we looked at actual purchasing behavior, no one was buying premium gear. Almost no participant had ever spent more than $500 on a piece of apparel. Premium brands retail at $700+.

Consumers genuinely believed they were making rational, performance-driven decisions. But they were actually optimizing for psychological value, not functional value.

Here's what was happening: entry-level brands had figured out how to make $250-400 gear feel like elite performance equipment. They did this through:

• Social media content showing professional athletes doing backflips in the backcountry while wearing their gear

• Bright colors, bold prints, over-branded designs that signaled "this is for serious skiers"

• Progressive fits and distinct (often impractical) styling that felt advanced

Consumers didn't have the language or awareness to decode what technical design actually was, what it looked or felt like, or why it mattered. So they used social proof as a proxy for quality. If a pro athlete wore it in a viral video, it must be performance gear.

Premium brands, meanwhile, were creating psychological barriers with their own technical superiority. The quiet luxury of their design, the expedition-level credentials, the price point itself all whispered: "This isn't for weekend warriors like you."

Consumers weren't rejecting premium brands. They believed they were already getting premium performance at a fraction of the price.

Lead: The Strategic Trade-Off

The insight revealed a brutal choice. To compete in the mass market, the new brand would have to sacrifice the language and positioning that resonated with core skiers. That meant:

• Heavy social media presence with viral-style content

• Aggressive athlete seeding, influencer partnerships, and giveaways

• Performance-forward messaging that emphasized "doing cool things" over technical specs

• Pricing and accessibility that matched where younger audiences actually shop

This was effectively the opposite strategy of the parent brand.

The research also revealed a hard truth: most of the revenue in this industry lies outside the core demographic. Brands have to choose either relevance to core skiers at the cost of revenue, or mass market appeal at the cost of respect from the people who know the difference.

WHAT WE DELIVERED

This was a 4-month engagement focused on validation, strategic direction, and go-to-market planning.

Core deliverables included:

• Research report documenting the perception gap and behavioral insights

• Positioning framework defining who the brand was for and how to speak to them authentically

• Messaging concepts translating technical performance into socially accessible language

• Creative direction showing what visual cues and cultural signals would resonate with the target audience

• Go-to-market strategy outlining where to invest marketing dollars, what channels to prioritize, and how to structure sell-in meetings with retailers

• Presentation support including language and framing for internal alignment and sales conversations

THE IMPACT

The research gave leadership the clarity and confidence to move forward with the launch.

Strategic outcomes:

• The new brand was confirmed and is being sold into retailers for fall 2026

• Marketing budgets were allocated based on behavioral insight rather than assumption

• Go-to-market strategies were built around how the target audience actually evaluates gear, not how the brand wished they would

• Internal alignment on the trade-off: mass market appeal requires mass market strategy, even if that means speaking a different language than the parent brand

Key insight adoption:

• Leadership embraced the idea that "performance" is a perception game, not just a product truth

• The team recognized that social proof (athletes doing cool things on Instagram) functions as a proxy for quality in audiences who can't decode technical specs

• The brand understood that price sensitivity wasn't about affordability, it was about psychological permission: consumers needed to feel worthy of premium gear before they'd pay for it

The work proved that sustainable growth often requires choosing your audience deliberately. When you understand the irrational psychology behind rational-seeming decisions, you can design positioning that matches how people actually buy, not just what they say matters.

This engagement demonstrates how behavioral research transforms brand strategy from feature wars into psychology-based positioning that creates market advantage.