The Key Role of Continual Innovation
6-minute read
Bending Branches’ mission is to inspire meaningful outdoor experiences by offering premium products worth bragging about. Having an innovation mindset plays a vital role in carrying out that mission.
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Innovation is one of those words thrown around as “business speech” everywhere—like integrity and excellent service. But it means little unless it’s truly part of a company’s DNA.
Developing “premium products worth bragging about” doesn’t happen without this kind of DNA-level innovative thinking and action.
We asked a couple of our team members to comment on the key role innovation has played and continues to play in our ability to carry out our mission. Jason Eccles is our President. Mac Sandberg is our Director of Revenue Growth & Innovation. Together they help us understand this all-important mindset:
BENDING BRANCHES: What’s the most important aspect of innovation?
JASON: The Number 1 thing that’s required to be an innovative company is the desire to be an innovative company. If we weren’t authentically excited about innovation, we wouldn’t spend time on it. Then wanting to do it is one thing—actually executing is the hard part. Our enthusiasm and excitement to be an innovative company pushes us forward with new ideas.
MAC: Saying innovation is very important to us gives us permission to go to work on that. There needs to be periods of time in which you purely allow yourself to think creatively, whether it’s from a product level or an operational level.
We sometimes take something from industries that have no bearing on what we do. Maybe it’s from aerospace or automotive or packaging. How do we take what those people do—it’s not necessarily innovative somewhere else—and apply it to us in a way our customers and dealer base have never seen before?
When we take a step back and allow that creative period, it opens our minds to the possibilities of what we could do.
BRANCHES: How is this a team effort?
JASON: Mac is the individual looking for new technology, being our Director of Revenue Growth and Innovation. He spends time identifying things that might be interesting. Once he finds an idea he brings it in. Our engineering team will look at it, discuss it and try to identify any application within our production process, customer service, shipping or new product development. Marketing, inside sales—they all play a role eventually.
Prior to a technology becoming implemented, there are likely two, three or even four different departments within our company involved with it.
BRANCHES: What are recent examples of innovation in action?
MAC: We could take the Black Pearl as an example on the canoe side of things. Bending Branches has been known forever for our wood paddles. Some canoeists now want ultralight equipment, especially as the demographic is changing. We always work to get a product that meets the needs of the consumer.
The Black Pearl is on the cutting edge of technology as far as materials, structure, weight and performance. We bring all those things together to culminate in one of our best canoe paddles that weighs just 16 ounces.
We take all the things we learn not only from our canoe customers but also from our kayak customers. The innovations we implement in our Aqua Bound lineup service the canoe customer as well.
We’ve also put some sustainability innovations into practice.
One of them is with our Catalyst canoe paddles. When cutting the wood for all our canoe paddles, we only take the highest quality pieces that are free of defects. Sometimes there will be wood that meets that requirement but has to be cut shorter than needed for our standard paddles. With the Catalyst we found a way to reclaim these small pieces and glue them up so it’s structurally strong and looks unique all while using what otherwise would’ve been scrap pieces of wood.
We also make quite a bit of sawdust when we turn out Bending Branches products, amounting to large trailer loads every few weeks. Normally we’d have to pay to get rid of this but we’ve partnered with a local farmer who buys the sawdust from us to use as bedding for his cattle.
BRANCHES: How important are the ambassadors, pro staff and dealers in the innovation process?
MAC: These folks offer our primary learning opportunities. Having them as a resource from the very beginning is completely invaluable. Instead of us saying we’re going to launch this or that, we want to know what the customers actually want. Then we can start to build up some samples. We lean on our ambassadors, pro staff members and field testers to tell us yes, you hit the nail on the head or no, you need to make a change here or there.
As we start to implement the feedback and ideas, these folks tell us what’s working and what’s not working. That’s where their value is through the roof—getting that information from them and making sure we’re on the right track and going after the right things.
JASON: And when the field testers, ambassadors and pro staff see their ideas get implemented into future revisions they go from just being an ambassador to an evangelist. At the end of a project, the folks who had significant influence are truly evangelists for the new product rolling out. So the value is more than just upfront in helping design the product. It also lands in their enthusiasm and excitement to help us make that product popular upon launch.
BRANCHES: What does the future look like?
JASON: There’s a new organization called the Paddlesports Trade Coalition (PTC), formed last April (2023). We’re a board member. That organization is working hard to understand how we can resurrect the paddling industry to make the sport more popular. It will mean a lot of heavy lifting from all of us in the industry to introduce more people to the sport.
If you think about something you’re passionate about, you were most likely introduced to that by somebody else, whatever that is. We need to innovate and really figure out how to introduce more people to paddling. We don’t have the answer alone, but we understand what it’s likely going to take and plan on being part of the solution with the PTC.
MAC: Like Jason said, it’s not going to be just one person or company. It’s going to take every single person in the paddlesports industry to help and have that mindset to really make some strides.
We’ve been trying to ask more questions about what we can do product-wise or operationally-wise that would get more people excited about paddling, and appeal to a larger demographic. Particularly in our new product development program, we’re not just thinking about the one customer we plan to service with the product we’re releasing, but also how to make that product appeal to a larger subset of people.
BRANCHES: How does innovation reinforce our company goal?
JASON: Our core focus as a company is to inspire meaningful outdoor experiences by offering premium products worth bragging about. In order for us to make good on that vision we need to continue to think in an innovative way. That becomes our filter. We ask ourselves, “Is this something we get excited about and is it something worth bragging about?” If the answer’s no and nobody’s excited, we move on and look to the next thing.
And again, it’s not just with product. It’s with service, how we deliver our product, how we interact with our customers. It’s being innovative in ways that make it easier to do business with us in addition to making our products more desirable.
MAC: Anytime we start a new project, whether it’s a product or a service, we should be able to answer the question: “Does this service our mission?” The answer should always be Yes. That way we’re all pulling in the same direction as a company.
What paddling questions can our friendly Customer Service team help you with? Contact us here: 715-755-3405 or [email protected]
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