Today we’d like to introduce you to Steven Wilcox.
Hi Steven, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’m a graduate of Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics in Orange County, California. Over the years, I’ve worked with major brands, including Oakley, Quiksilver, DC Shoes, and Roxy, where I developed a fundamental understanding of brand building and the strategies required to authentically reach a brand’s audience. Today, I’m the founder of PARKIT, a new outdoor brand that wants you to get outside and #EnjoyTheExploration.
The initial idea for PARKIT started back in 2017 when I was on a camping trip with friends, surfing at San Onofre State Beach in Southern California. A group of buddies and I were sitting around a campfire later that evening, doing what we loved to do with our weekends, when my friend’s chair just completely blew out on itself. He spent the rest of the night sitting in the dirt, thanks to his busted & broken beach chair. It was this event that served as my lightbulb moment.
I recognized how I could build a brand around the community, stories of adventure, and the enjoyment of the outdoors. My background has been in branding (I spent time at Quiksilver & Oakley in the earlier days of my career) and the ingredients were coming together. I could clearly see how the product would exist as the focal point of the brand and, even better, that outdoor chairs hadn’t seen innovations in years. So, I began to focus on building the ultimate outdoor chair. Our chair is called the VOYAGER, and it’s made to be durable, long-lasting, functional, and of course, comfortable. It has all the features that the modern adventure seeker needs and more.
In 2020, we launched PARKIT and the Voyager chair on Kickstarter, where we raised over $500k from 2000+ backers in less than 60 days.
Now in 2021, we’re rolling out as a formal direct-to-consumer brand, and we’re excited to play our role as we get back outside and the world works to return to some of our favorite outdoor activities and adventures.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The first rule of business in my opinion… It could always be smoother. We should always be looking for opportunities for improvement and business owners and leaders. It’s a never-ending challenge. There’s a lot of changes we can make to improve our processes but specifically since we launched…
I’d certainly say launching an outdoor brand during a Global Pandemic had some serious hurdles to navigate. We’ve seen shipping delays, shipping rate hikes, closure of state & national parks, community lockdowns, and more. As an outdoor brand that has a mission to inspire people to get outside and #EnjoyTheExploration, COVID-19 posed a very big challenge to us in our first year of business.
Fortunately, we’ve been able to pivot, roll with the punches and have had a great network of mentors and advisors that have helped open us to ideas and strategies that may seem a bit unorthodox but have been helpful to in getting our product delivered to backers and scaling our Direct to Consumer channel.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
One of the things I’ve always been inspired by is the ability for us to build businesses that inspire action, shift culture and tie themselves to core values within their mission. As a teenager, I was obsessed with surfing the surf brands like Quiksilver, Billabong, Oakley… I loved the lifestyle they portrayed, and I studied, unbeknownst to me at the time, how they built their brand image and shared that mission with their customers.
I was so enthralled by their ethos that I studied abroad in college in Australia and spent the semester surfing around the country to cross waves off my surfing bucket list. I came back with a pseudo degree in brand building and would go on to work on the marketing departments at Oakley & Quiksilver upon graduation. From there, I learned the fundamentals that must exist in order to build a brand that authentically and organically connects with its core audience. The messaging, the values, the voice of a brand or business became my obsession and I focused wholly on how and what I would go on to build when it was time to bring about my own brand to the world.
With PARKIT, we focused on being more than just a chair. It’s about community, time with close friends, and spending quality time outdoors doing what we love. That core message around our brand and our ethos have resonated immensely with our Kickstarter backers & pre-order customers. We were blown away that over 2000 people supported our Kickstarter campaign during the middle of a pandemic and I’d like to give a lot of credit to the mission of our business.
Our product’s certainly incredible, and there are tons of features that we can share more about, but overall, I’m most proud of the mission we’re on and the community that’s come together in validation of it.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Persistence – I’m a firm subscriber to the Calvin Coolidge Quote on persistence which I highly recommend anyone interested in entrepreneurship memorize and make a part of their daily inspiration.
Excellence – I think you need to have some level of obsession with excellence. In order to be excellent, you have to build strong habits and hold yourself to a higher standard day after day. In order to be excellent, you have to be determined to improve yourself & your business every day, and that plays a huge role as you problem-solve for yourself and for the business.
Flexibility – As a small business, we have to be flexible to the ever-changing circumstances of the marketplace. As the saying goes, set goals, and have a road map, but that road map won’t always go to plan. Have the ability to recognize information, pivot, and make adjustments to get to your goal.
Contact Info:
- Email: steven@parkitmovement.com
- Website: www.parkitmovement.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenewilcox/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steven.e.wilcox
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJMvmmafQJYjs3MKIwENHDA
Image Credits
All images taken by and owned by Steven E Wilcox.
