To put it bluntly, Supreme is the cool kid on the block. The one whose lack of effort seems unattainably chill, whose attention you鈥檙e dying to grab but can鈥檛 ever seem to figure out how to get.

Even if you think you don鈥檛 know them, you鈥檝e almost certainly seen riffs on their block-lettered logo. Supreme started out as a clothing brand for skaters, and along the way, it became the ultimate hype brand. Millions of followers around the world eagerly await Supreme鈥檚 regular 鈥渄rops,鈥� their co-branded collaborations with clothing, outdoor, lifestyle, and home goods brands across the board.

Part of what makes Supreme work is its scarcity model: there are always more fans than there is product available. Drops sell out in seconds worldwide, in spite of mass quantities available, which makes nabbing a collab with Supreme a slam dunk. Karl Fritzsche, category manager for SealLine, told us that the See Pouch they produced for a Supreme drop early this year accounted for more than ten times the amount they typically sell in a full year.

鈥淧eople are buying it because it says 鈥楽upreme,鈥� that鈥檚 the crazy thing,鈥� he said. For the most part, they don鈥檛 even need a drybag. 鈥淚t鈥檚 super mind-boggling.鈥�

That鈥檚 essentially Supreme鈥檚 whole model: find cool stuff, slap their name on it, sell it en masse.

If you scroll through their recent drops, you鈥檒l find a lot of normal stuff like clothing鈥攁 fair amount of it produced in collaboration with The North Face鈥攁 lot of outdoor gear, and a heck of a lot of stuff that鈥檚 just plain weird. (Who needs an anatomically correct model of the human body with Supreme鈥檚 logo on the base?)

But while a fair bit of it ends up on eBay, selling for many times the original asking price (Fritzsche鈥檚 seen SealLine See Pouches go for about $300, compared to the MSRP of about $50), there鈥檚 another unintended consequence, too: urbanites from major cities across the world who might not otherwise care to go kayaking or camping pack up their new gear and head for nature.

鈥淪upreme comes up with some really funny things, and I think they鈥檙e very calculated in what they鈥檙e doing,鈥� said Ryan Pugh, a product designer for Advanced Elements, which produced untold thousands of inflatable kayaks (he鈥檚 not allowed to say exactly how many) for a Supreme drop in July.

The kayaks sold out in seconds鈥攚e鈥檙e not exaggerating鈥攁nd Advanced Elements had expected that they鈥檇 mostly stay in their boxes, serving as collectors鈥� items. But to their surprise, they鈥檝e seen scores of YouTube videos and Instagram posts of people kayaking for the first time thanks to Supreme. 鈥淭hey鈥檝e figured out that, with millennials, being outdoors is catching on,鈥� Pugh said. 鈥淭hey understand that their clientele is at least thinking about getting outside, doing things outdoors, and engaging in that realm.鈥�

To be sure, collaborating with Supreme can seriously boost your brand鈥檚 clout and recognition. So how do you get a deal? That鈥檚 the tough part鈥攜ou can鈥檛. Supreme is very much a 鈥渄on鈥檛 call us, we鈥檒l call you鈥� kind of company (case in point: they didn鈥檛 respond to multiple requests for comment on this story). Even SealLine didn鈥檛 work directly with Supreme on the See Pouch collab; they went through a third party agency hired by the company.

So, outdoor brands shouldn鈥檛 hold their breath and wait for Supreme to come knocking. But collaborating with other companies鈥攂oth within the industry and beyond鈥攊s still good for business.

Here Are 5 Types of Collabs That Your Brand Should Consider.

1. The Co-designed Collab

By designing products together that wouldn鈥檛 exist if not for brand collaboration, you can achieve some serious brand awareness. Take, for example, their Topo Designs x Chaco collection. Chaco made sandals and dog leashes and collars with Topo-inspired patterns. And Topo made packs featuring the same designs. Products like these, and similar projects like the sleeping pad collab between Poler Stuff and Therm-a-Rest, or the tent, sleeping pad, and table collabs between Big Agnes, Helinox, and Burton, play up both brands鈥� assets and appeal to both of their audiences. Brands like Power Practical, Rumpl, and Ravean take it a step further when they innovate by building on one another鈥檚 technology. In 2016, the three brands worked together to create the Rumpl Puffe-, a rechargeable electric puffy blanket.

Check Out These Succesful Co-designed Collabs

Burton and Big Agnes Tent Collab

Nomadix and Wylder Goods Towel Collab

Chaco and Topo Designs Sandal Collab

Therm-a-Rest and Poler Sleeping Pad Collab

Power Practical, Rumpl, and Ravean Blanket Collab

2. The Co-branded or White-Labeled Collab

This type of collaboration is fairly run-of-the-mill. You make backpacks, for example, and you want water bottles with the company name on them, or vice-versa. If the brand you want to work with has a following you want to tap, it may be beneficial to keep both companies鈥� logos on the product. But if you want to have full 鈥渙wnership鈥� over the product, you can white-label it. Sock companies like Nester Hosiery the parent company of Farm to Feet, for example, produce socks on behalf of other companies without ever mentioning their involvement.

3. The Social Collab

Perhaps the easiest type of collaboration to secure is one in which you work with some like-minded brands to tap each others鈥� audiences. Maybe you put together a sweet prize package, and to enter, Instagram users have to follow all the brands involved, like the post, and comment by tagging a friend who may be interested. Or, maybe consumers enter online with their email address, and then you end up with 10,000 new newsletter subscribers. Emails are great leads to new customers, says Yoon Kim, who runs Blogs for Brands and frequently executes social and giveaway collaborations between brands.

Social Media Collabs That Work!

Topo Designs, Big Agnes, REI, and others collaborated on this trip giveaway.

Wylder Goods collaborated with Hydro Flask, Sun Bum, Toad&Co, and others for this summer gear giveaway.

Retailer Feral Mountain Co.聽partnered with several local groups for a spring giveaway.

4. The Press Trip Collab

If you work with an external PR agency, it might be easy for you to organize a press trip where costs are shared with another gear company (or maybe several gear companies). If not, look around you鈥攖here may be other gear companies in your city that you can approach on your own. If co-hosting a trip is out of the question, you can also try to support an existing trip by offering up product to pass out to writers for potential review.

5. The Out-Of-Industry Collab

Just because you can鈥檛 hunt down a Supreme collab doesn鈥檛 mean you鈥檙e out of luck for increasing your brand recognition beyond core outdoor users. Just look to Woolrich, for example, which made a co-branded 鈥淧ennsylvania Tuxedo鈥� beer a few years ago with Dogfish Head Brewing. It was a pale ale brewed with spruce tips from Pennsylvania and Delaware forests. Stormy Kromer has worked with a tattoo shop in Michigan to do 鈥淗ats for Tats.鈥� Major fans could trade a free lifetime supply of Stormy Kromer hats in exchange for tattooing a hat somewhere on their body. And if you鈥檙e tight on budget for your upcoming catalog but want to go somewhere exotic for killer photos, you can seek partnerships with destination tourism boards, too, who may be able to help lower your costs.

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We, the independent specialty retail shops, did all the legwork to create these customers. Without us, these companies wouldn’t be here. I鈥檓 not sure there are many vendors that could survive without us, so I鈥檓 trying to help vendors balance capitalizing on the opportunities that direct-to-consumer sales have without undermining our ability to build that relationship with the consumer and profit on our inventory.

What outdoor specialty does the best is introduce people to products. You have consumers who don鈥檛 know anything about a new category, if they鈥檝e invented a new kind of shoe or a new old fabric in the case of wool from Icebreaker. It took a tremendous amount of work on the part of a big retail network in America to put Icebreaker products into people鈥檚 hands and help people see the value in it. Growing a brand from its infancy to the point where it has relatively broad market awareness is something that retail stores are still going to do better than selling direct to consumers online.

We sell consumers on the brand, but we have a very limited assortment of it because it鈥檚 hard for small retailers to pioneer a brand and you can鈥檛 buy all of the available products and colors. So you introduce people to this new brand and eventually they go, 鈥淚 wonder what else there is?鈥� And that consumer ends up going to their website to look at the product breadth that we don鈥檛 have.

Immediately after consumers engage with their website, vendors hammer that consumer with email blasts and specials like free shipping and throwing in a pair of gloves or a free hat. They really work to steal that customer away from us.

Ibex is another serious offender. We essentially create the brand disciple and they steal them. I don鈥檛 think a company like Ibex could survive without direct-to-consumer business, but I also don鈥檛 think they ever would have been able to get off the ground by only doing direct-to-consumer business. We鈥檙e not going to win every battle, but if Ibex continues to do business that way, it鈥檚 going to be harder and harder for retailers to support them.

I recently threatened to drop Scarpa, one of the most important brands in backcountry skiing. By far, Scarpa has been the best telemark and alpine touring boot manufacturer to work with in my career, so why would I sever the relationship? Vendor partners are now our fiercest competitors. This year, it started with a free hoody if you bought boots from them, some free freight promos and then the now-common 鈥渇riends and family pro sale.鈥� In the days leading to Christmas, a group of vendors opened up the pro sales departments and wholesale pricing to all friends and family of legit pros. Scarpa, along with 33 other vendors, including Osprey, Cascade Designs, Rab, La Sportiva, Petzl, MSR, BCA, Mountain Hardwear, and Sierra Designs participated in this sales extravaganza run by Outdoor Prolink.

Outdoor Prolink’s homepage. (Screenshot: Todd Frank)

When I asked Scarpa to give me a reason why they did it, the simple answer was 鈥渕oney.鈥� They primarily sell a product that needs to be custom fit by a professional with the tools to do it. We have done thousands of boot fittings here over the last 18 years, and we are pretty good at it. Why would I want to do business with a brand that actively sells a product that needs my expertise to fit properly when that business aggressively under cuts what I can sell it for? Five years ago, I would have howled and said because they have the best boots. Now, there are seven or eight other vendors that have absolutely amazing product, too. (Editor鈥檚 note: To Scarpa’s credit, since receiving similar feedback from several retailers they have committed to no longer doing friends and family promotions.)

If we all have to pay the price of a problem equally, it will stop vendors from pushing direct-to-consumer sales and taking business away from us. They鈥檙e always going to have a better assortment than we do, and they can鈥檛 really fix that piece of it. But what they can do is work with us to make sure we can sell the product we stock profitably throughout the whole season. So I鈥檓 asking the vendors to come to us with creative ideas.

I just had an experience with a major vendor in the apparel industry who went off price on their web direct-to-consumer business in clear violation of their own policy that said 鈥淲e鈥檒l hold price until this point in time.鈥� For reasons that are all legitimate, they couldn鈥檛 wait. I went to the vendor and I said, 鈥淚 think you owe me some markdown credits. You didn鈥檛 go by the policy you鈥檙e asking me to go by.鈥� They were pretty happy to do it. That needs to happen on more levels.

Until a vendor is affected by the final transaction with the end consumer buying their product, they鈥檙e not going to change the way they do it. So I鈥檓 looking for more partnerships with vendors who are willing to do things like manage excess inventory, share costs, take product back, trade product out, use markdown credits, or simply guarantee a sustained margin. The only way we鈥檙e going to change vendors鈥� behavior is with our checkbooks, so I can鈥檛 keep saying to people, 鈥淵ou have to change the way you鈥檙e doing business,鈥� and continue to buy 10 percent more than I did last year. At some point I just have to get up from the table and say, 鈥淲e鈥檙e done.鈥� They鈥檝e got to feel the pain a little bit, and until they feel the pain, there鈥檚 no motivation for any change in behavior.

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