Dorig Bocquet on Nitro Circus, Monster and starting LEUS

Dorig Bocquet might be a name you’re not super familiar with but if you’re familiar with Monster Energy, Nitro Circus or LEUS Towels then you definitely know his work. Having lived in most parts of the world, he’s settled down in So.Cal lately and started – along with some others – LEUS Towels.

Given the rise of the brand, the towel market itself and what Dorig has been a part of the last decade or so, I thought it’d be an interview/chat worth having. Below we chat about what it was like for Dorig bringing Nitro Circus and Monster Energy to the Latin Markets, starting Leus and a few others things as well.

Take a read 🙂

NITRO CIRCUS & MONSTER ENERGY

EA – How was working for Nitro at what was arguably the peak time of ‘Nitro’?
DB – Well actually Nitro Circus has never been as successful as it is now – we re talking about one the largest entertainment action sports brand in the world :
*Licensing
*Touring
*Las Vegas Residency
*Video production
*Nitro Games

As you can see ( keep myself informed on my old crew – still a complete fan of Nitro 🙂 – It was an incredible experience, one I feel extremely honored to have been a part of!

EA – What was some of the biggest challenges with working at Nitro?
DB – Bringing Nitro Circus culture to LATAM (Latin Market) was definitely an interesting challenge.

The level of expectations from HQ was not always in line with the territory professional and cultural habits. Then you multiply it by all the vertical segmentation between TV rights, promoters, sponsors, local marketing campaigns and then you have a full picture of what Nitro day to day was about. Crazy times, but what an amazing opportunity.

EA – And the most rewarding moments?
DB – I think that every promoter feel that same endorphins rush at the end of each tours ! It s almost addictive.

EA – You also worked as the Action Sports Manager for Monster Energy in the Latin Market. How was that?

DB – Back then I had never worked for an American Company, never had worked in LATAM, and i was not speaking much Spanish. One of my biggest challenge for sure. It was really rewarding to help lay the foundation of the action sport culture in a new territory.

EA – The biggest challenge with the role?
DB – Finding a way to adapt to local business ethos and cultural differences in order to secure company growth, but without renouncing to my moral compass and professional guidelines. Was definitely not easy every day but taught me to be creative and find solutions no matter what.

EA – And the most rewarding moment from it all?
DB – On top of jump-starting an entire action sports athlete generation, my biggest rewarding moment was the program launched with SEDESOL in Mexico: together with professional partners like Spectrum Skatepark, designing plazas for economically challenged areas, while teaching the trade to young local architects and implementing social programs against gang culture.

LEUS - THE BEGINNINGS

EA – After all that, how did you end up at Leus?

DB – While working with Superbrand, I met Scott Huffman, US Sales Manager, and we started talking about brand and product opportunities in the market. The discussion extended to Keith Asher, formerly Spy Sr. Product Designer, Justin Cote, formerly Superbrand Marketing Manager and Conner Coffin, CT professional surfer. Add a 2 years analysis on the category, production process, market gaps, distribution opportunities, … and voila LEUS was launched March 2017.

EA – How did LEUS start? What brought it about, who brought the idea forward?
DB – LEUS was founded on the principle of universality around an afterthought category, a commodity that has been around since ancient civilizations such as old Egyptian dynasties, and older. Yet no brand existed to connect all towel uses, all territories, under one movement.

Being from the surf industry we saw an opportunity to use the beach culture, its synonymy to leisure, holidays as a gateway to other markets like fitness, golf, outdoor, home, …

Not only would we highlight the category but we would disrupt by thinking outside the box when it comes to marketing, merchandising, production process, material technology.

EA – How many names and brand marks did you go thru before deciding on this one?
DB – It took us pretty much 6 months to decide on LEUS – we wanted to find a conceptual 4 letter brand, that would resonate our philosophy, be easily pronounced by all languages, have no hidden linguistic meanings and be worldwide trademark available.

EA – When was the moment that you guys thought, ‘we’ve got something special here’… ?
DB – It all started with Scott playing around with LEUCADIA, since we almost all surf/live there and are obsessed with this little piece of paradise. The final touch happened from misreading Scott’s C for an S … ahahahah and bingo we had the perfect name!

EA – Top three highlights from it all so far?
DB –
1 – Seeing our first display and product in retail: BC Surfshop in Florida!
2 – Seeing our towels being used at the beach by customers.
3 – Receiving our first fan letter

EA – How has the brand evolved over time to where you are right now?
DB – The difference would reside in the business complexity with servicing 18 different countries and 4 different product segmentations.

EA – Where do you see Leus evolving to, ending up at?
DB – LEUS will keep innovating, proposing new stories – the upcoming biggest one would be our proprietary eco technology – that took us 2 years to R&D.

EA – And what’s the end game objective?
DB – Be THE worldwide towel brand benchmark

LEUS Towels - Interview with CEO Dorig Bocquet

LEUS - THE PRODUCT

EA – LEUS made us pay attention to something we rarely gave much thought. What’s the design process behind creating a towel from the initial step to the final product?

DB – Keith establishes wish list with all different countries and markets, then add the current year sell through result and finally pull a trending color and pattern report. When this initial work is done, he presents to all the team a design proposal, segmentation by segmentation.

Ambassadors collabs are designed with each of them – making sure it s on point for all parties. Major collabs are chosen according to the yearly objectives we have – new channel of distribution, new markets, …

When it comes to new markets, we study the current proposal; find specialized partners to help us understand the specific needs and what could be done better.

EA – How long is turn around for a general release collection?
DB – Around 8 months from conception to delivery

EA – And what’s been Leus most successful capsule release to date?
DB –
*Design : The Pineapple, Great White and Conner Coffin pieces
*Product: Our poncho’s
*Segmentation: Beach then fitness is very close behind

EA – What is your design process like?
DB – Our trend research reports are data/report driven to make sure our pattern/color palette and subject matter are related to our consumer base

EA – Where do your designers look for inspiration?
DB – As a surf lifestyle brand we re inspired by our day-to-day experiences from the beach to mountain to the city streets.

EA – Can you give us any insight into upcoming collaborations for the year?
DB – Little early to let everyone know all our collabs but I what I can say is that we ve got some serious Aladdin inspiration to design having patterns.

EA – LEUS started out in Surf, nowadays you’re playing with Golfers and Yogi’s. What brought the idea that entering these new markets would be a smart business move?
DB – LEUS’ main objective is to unite all towels under its umbrella – expect more segmentation to be launched in the coming years. The logic behind it all is as simple as the fact that as surfers we need towels for all day to day adventures, whether you are at the beach, training, playing golf, camping, traveling, biking, climbing, … and finally at home.

When the commodity aspect of our category limits us with the fashion network, it actually gives us an amazing advantage to multi segment and cross-market.As a business it also allows us more growth opportunity and a better risk assessment.

LEUS - THE PRODUCT cont

EA – How does the product differ between markets?
DB –
1 – Usage : depending on the market some towels need to be soft, or rough, slick or have grip.
2 – Fabric : depending on the usage, we will have to adapt the fabric being used, weather it is sustainable cotton, recycled microfiber, nylon.
3 – Technology : we had to develop specific technology for each markets.
4 – Design : even though we try to connect all our segmentations by sharing design, the consumer profile differs, therefore we need to take this into consideration.

EA – Playing around in all these new markets must be fun, are there challenges in terms of maintaining a clear brand message and continuing to be relevant to your audience?
DB – If we would adapt the brand to each market then yes it would be challenging to maintain a clear brand message but being true to ourselves, as a surf brand, and keep our mantra clear to all – FUN FEELS BEETER – we are able to stay LEUS.

I know so many industry professionals are questioning the future of surf as a lifestyle, as a business, but yet our culture as never been as trendy, widely spread and accepted as now.

We acknowledge that it is harder and harder to connect with customers, and therefore can be overwhelming for most brands right now but by branching out in the active markets, aggressively in demand of novelty, or in the golf market, trying to redefine itself, LEUS has an opportunity to spread the surf lifestyle culture, stay true to itself and play in wider markets with less competition.

EA – And how do you manage and overcome those challenges?
DB – The biggest challenge has been to tell a surf story ( at the large sense of the definition ) with our fitness and golf lines on our media platforms. After working with different agencies and marketing professionals over the course of this first half of 2019, we designed a strategy based on our wide range of ambassadors, themselves practicing all different type of activities on the day-to-day using all type of towels.

EA – People use towels in all sorts of situations, does the success in Golf open up entering any plans for entering new markets? Tennis?
DB – We actually do – our next story for 2020 is an outdoor collection, supported by our new revolutionary eco tech and new solution against micro plastic pollution.

EA – What’s the biggest thing you’ve learnt about towels that has left you with a ‘wow, didn’t know that’ feeling?
DB – By becoming towel geeks, travelling every year to Asia reviewing factories, educating ourselves on all production matters, we realized that the towel industry (factories, manufacturers and brands) is a huge polluter hiding behind fake certifications and misleading marketing.

That kept us extremely motivated to invest and disrupt it all – watch out for 2020.

EA – Towels get used and abused in all sorts of situations; three tips to help us all get a little more use out of favorite ones?
DB –
*Pay more, buy less – invest on quality towels.
*Hang dry them
*Don t forget your towel and leave it outside all week end.