How Cotopaxi Is Scaling with Purpose Through Marketplaces | Founder Stephan Jacob at Mirakl Summit

Hello everyone, this is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

And we are coming to you live from the Miracle Summit at the beautiful Brookfield Place in New York City.

The place is hopping, Anne.

The energy is hot.

It's crazy in here.

It's hot outside and it's hopping in here.

Yeah.

The keynotes just got over and so we are excited because Joining us is Stefan Jacob, the founder and chief global Officer at Cotopaxi.

Thank you for joining us today.

Oh, it's lovely to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

Well, why don't you start off by you're a founder, it's not often and we get to have founders on the show.

So why don't you start off by introducing yourself and then telling us and our audience.

I don't know how they could not know Cotopaxi, but tell us a little bit about the brand if this is the first time that they're coming in contact.

For sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Cotopaxi is an outdoor gear brand, so we design, manufacture, outdoor apparel, backpacks, et cetera.

We have a deep humanitarian social mission at our core, which is really rooted in my co founder and my experience.

My wife is half Indonesian.

I spent some time in Indonesia working for a non profit organization that was dedicated to the elimination of child labor on the Indonesian archipelago.

And that was a wonderful experience both in terms of the impact that we had on the ground, taking several hundred kids from fishing platforms, from human trafficking, factory type situations back into their communities, into their schools, but also really eye opening.

Right in the sense that it helps.

Having grown up in Germany, where I'm from, held a mirror in front of my face, making me realize how lucky I'd been by the sheer dumb luck of the draw of where I'd been born, that I didn't have to worry about food and shelter and education and professional opportunities.

And all these kids and their families were in a much harder place.

And so that left a mark that really drove us, my co founder and I, who had similar experiences in South America, to build a brand around the notion of leveling the playing field, doing good, which is what you see on a lot of our, our product.

So we, you know, sell product, we then donate to the Cotopaxi Foundation.

This last year we gave over a million dollars impacting over 170,000 people and at the same time try to minimize the negative externalities of making our goods from an environmental and sustainability perspective.

Wow.

So we're at the Miracle Summit when miracle is a Marketplace platform and marketplaces have been a key piece of your growth strategy.

Talk to us about how that came about.

Yeah, yeah.

We're a digitally native brand.

Right.

So we started very young.

Right.

10 years old.

Right.

So we started online.

For many years, Cotopaxi.com was really the only place where you could, you know, buy Cotopaxi product.

We then expanded into physical retail.

So we have 20 physical retail stores all over the U.S.

right.

Then open up to wholesale.

So we have in key accounts like an REI, Diggs, Shields, etc.

As well as over 600 specialty retail accounts.

And so we've always had an omnichannel unified commerce mindset.

Right.

We don't want to be prescriptive of how our customers discover us.

Right.

We're channel agnostic and so marketplaces is a natural extension to that.

Right.

So we just went live on Nordstrom.com, we're working with the Bloomingdales team and we'll continue to expand to meet our customers where they already are.

That's a massive presence going from starting as a D2C brand and now being in all these places.

What are kind of some of the core criteria for you when you're exploring getting on a marketplace?

How do you kind of evaluate that, especially as a mission and value driven brand?

For sure, yeah.

For us, marketplace as a channel needs to be brand accretive.

Right.

It's a full price channel for us.

We're not on a marketplace to discount.

Right.

Or to move product that's not sellable elsewhere.

It's full price, truly brand accretive.

Right.

So that's the first filter.

Okay.

Are we the partner that we're engaging with, can they help tell the brand story in a compelling manner?

Is the audience that we're reaching, Right.

An audience that resonates with the brand values that we espouse and do we have the ability to truly build brands, tell brand stories in that partnership?

So that's filter one.

And then obviously there's operational efficiencies that need to be met.

Right.

We need this channel to be on par from a gross margin contribution margin perspective with the rest of the business.

Right.

And so that means operational efficiencies.

Right.

Ensuring that we work with partners that can create an amazing customer experience on the front end while also delivering the profitability for us.

To that point though, how do you make sure that the brand and the mission comes through on an individual marketplace?

What recommendations you have for other people listening to ensure that that happens?

Yeah, it's a partnership.

Right.

I mean, we know our customers, we know our brand.

Yes, but then a Nordstrom, a Bloomingdales, a Macy's, they know their customer base better than we do.

Right.

So it is a back and forth in terms of figuring out what's the right assortment, figuring out what's the ramp.

Right.

What are the tests, the experiments that we want to run and then down the road in terms of retail media investment.

So it is truly a back and forth, a true partnership where both parties bring their best understanding of the opportunity to bear.

Got it.

And what advice would you have for the other, like, values driven brands, mission driven brands, as they're exploring marketplaces?

Is there any advice you'd impart?

Yeah, I mean, we think of it as sort of like three core tenants or filter.

The first is authenticity.

Right.

Okay.

No matter where we are and no matter how a customer engages and discovers us.

Right.

Whether that's on cotopoxy.com, whether that is in one of our retail stores or in one of our marketplace or wholesale partners, the brand needs to feel the same.

Right.

Same creative, same messaging, imagery, et cetera.

So that for sure, authenticity matters.

I think the second one is a certain level of respect for the partner.

If you look at some of these amazing partners that are in the miracle ecosystem, they have tremendous customer loyalty.

People have been shopping at these respective retailers for decades.

They're parents introduce them.

And it's sort of like almost like a generational thing, right.

To shop at Macy's or to shop at, you know, wherever it may be.

And so I think we as a brand need to respect that and, and, and be a strong partner that truly adds value to, you know, the respective customer base at the same time.

And then the last one, I think is that you need to have the internal buy in and alignment.

Right.

Especially if you're a more established brand.

Right.

That has a history of wholesale, a history of, you know, D2C.

To throw another market or another channel such as marketplaces into the mix can be tricky unless everybody inside is fully aligned, that that's the right decision and.

Knows those mission and values are going to, and all that consistency is going to be there regardless of what.

That's right.

Makes sense.

All right, so we're going to close out all of our interviews today with a similar question.

You know, the theme of this conference is accelerate.

So how do you think about accelerating your marketplace over the next one to two years?

What are your priorities to do that?

Yeah, we're not shotgunning it.

Right.

We're not trying to be on 50, 100 marketplaces in the first six months.

We're taking a very gradual approach, just like that's how we approached wholesale.

That's why we approach our physical retail expansion.

Selective.

Right.

With deep partnership with the respective markets that we engage with, grow gradually and then over time.

Right.

Especially with a lot of the technology that is coming, AI, agentic checkout, etc.

I think there is a path to faster acceleration, but I think it's a partnership first, relationship, first approach and then expanding from there.

Makes sense.

Hard to argue.

Too hard to argue.

Well, thank you so much, Stefan Jacob, the founder of Code Epoxy, for joining us today.

We have so many more interviews coming at you live from the Miracle Conference here in New York.

And until next time, be careful out there.