Don’t Rain on Weatherman’s DTC Success Parade
How samples, partnerships, and long-term thinking around data is helping the company break through in a forgotten industry
Some products are new and cutting edge. They’re exciting and they make people rethink how they live or work. And then other products are … umbrellas. There’s nothing wrong with umbrellas, most people just don’t find themselves thinking about or buying them very often. And that’s one of the problems that Tyler Kupper says they are facing at Weatherman Umbrella.
“We sometimes see a little bit of a struggle though — it’s an umbrella,” Kupper says.”The connotation of umbrellas is like, ‘Oh, I don’t need it. I’ve bought a thousand things and an umbrella is not one of them.’ I think that’s our challenge. It’s am I going to go out and buy the last umbrella I’m ever going to buy at $55 to $85 or am I going to buy five $10 umbrellas on the street that’s going to basically be disposable and end up in a landfill?”
Kupper is the Chief Revenue and a Partner at Weatherman, part of his job is to figure out how to get consumers to make that investment in a product they rarely think about and don’t need every day. The way to do that, Kupper and his team have figured out, is multifaceted. And it starts with making sure that the product is rock solid.
“Product innovation is at the forefront of who we are and people want to align with that,” Kupper says. “And people want to align with a brand that is on the cutting edge of durability and quality. And we’ve been vulnerable. And that’s one of my things that I think has gotten us to kind of where we are, is vulnerability and asking for favors, but asking for the right favors. I think if we were just another umbrella brand that came around that had the same technology and the same features that everyone’s had, yeah, we wouldn’t have a chance. But I think putting time into the R&D and what makes a better umbrella and asking our customers all over the world, customer feedback, customer listening, it’s really allowed us to get to this next level.”
Through this listening process, Kupper and his team have developed umbrellas that have been highlighted by trade publications, named to best of lists, and chosen for partnerships with some of the biggest names in golf — Arnold Palmer and the Ryder Cup.
“We’ve had an unbelievable roster of partners that have allowed us so much credibility to go in and scale our direct consumer business… we’ve been the official supplier for the US Ryder Cup team in 2018, and again in 2020. And so for us to be able to supply the top golfers in the world at the largest event in the world, our product, and being able to use that storytelling capability and to use that to sell our product on the website, to sell more product at retail has been a huge thing for us.”
With sales strong and customers flocking to Weatherman’s DTC site and downloading the Weatherman app, Kupper says that new opportunities are opening up in the data space. Weatherman has big plans to leverage all the data its collecting to find even more ways to bring value to customers. But he also is quick to point out that the mission of the company is always the same, regardless of what the forecast is showing.
“We’re always trying to figure out what’s next,” Kupper says. “But I know at the end of the day, we only want to make amazing umbrellas. That is our goal. We never want to be one of those brands that has 3,000 skews, where if you look at the rack, you’re like, is the $10 one the good one, or is the $100 one the best one? We just want to be seen as, Hey, it’s Weatherman, it’s going to be amazing.”
To hear more about Weatherman, tune in to Up Next in Commerce.
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