Alpinestars is the premier technical apparel, footwear and equipment motorsports brand - dominating both road and off-road motorcycling. The brand also applies its leadership in protection apparel and equipment to the Auto and Mountain Biking categories.

Alpinestars brand vision is to make road and off-road motorcycling more accessible and more safe for more riders by delivering the very best in rider protection; boots, jackets, pants, gloves protectors, helmets as well as the industry’s leading electronic airbag system. ALPINESTARS PROTECTS is the cornerstone of the brand story and primary competitive advantage in the market.

DEVELOPING THE OPERATING CULTURE FOR AN INTEGRATED GO-TO-MARKET

The Head of Global Go-to-Market includes responsibility for product category marketing for the Sport, Urban, Touring MX/Off-Road and Mountain Biking categories. Go-to-market management includes aligning each category’s merchandising with sales initiatives and ultimately demand gen activity. Patient change management leadership was critical to establishing the cross-functional frameworks and processes with the merchandising, sales and communications teams. Our integrated go-to-market culture has had a significant impact on the company’s success with launching multiple new product initiatives.

GTM actively drives the go-to-market process from merchandising through advertising and in-store execution. Upstream, this involves product category briefing; line architecture, concepts and assortment plans. Downstream, this includes positioning and content marketing concepts that fuel the category and product communications. The urban category is benefitting tremendously from this integrated GTM model, experiencing 65%"+ year-over-year growth for last three years.

LEADING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: FROM ENDEMIC PRINT TO GROWTH MARKETING

Our Digital Transformation started with the shift from endemic print to growth marketing. This shift is directing top-of-funnel investment in digital and social media advertising resulting in broader product-level awareness and demand generation in the marketplace. Organizationally, the transformation includes the development of a growth and performance marketing capability within the company. We also leverage retargeting to fuel the company’s mid-funnel activity.

Impact: -85% reduction in CPMs and +1000% increase in CTR. Growth marketing is currently fueling strong sell-throughs of key product initiatives; MX Helmets, Gear and Protection, Motorcycle Footwear, Tech-Air Airbag, as well as Sport, Touring and Urban apparel products. Mar-Tech SaaS tools include; Google Analytics, Facebook Business Manager, Hubspot, Unbounce, GoogleAds, Youtube.

DELIVERING INTEGRATED CATEGORY-SPECIFIC CAMPAIGNS

GTM includes managing how the brand connects with all of its target consumers; including strategy, planning, content, budgeting, campaigns, calendaring, and execution. This process begins with market-based insights that first drive category product design briefs, and ultimately influence our creative, content marketing, messaging, and advertising. By understanding how each category of riders are unique, our product and marketing has become more specialized around those target segments while still embodying the core DNA of the Alpinestars brand. Delivering a cohesive category-specific point of view is one of the most significant success factors for the growth in the SPORT, TOURING and URBAN categories.

MARKETING THE TECH-AIR ELECTRONIC AIRBAG SYSTEM

Tech-Air is Alpinestars proprietary electronic airbag system technology. Worn as a vest, the system is designed to detect crash situations and inflate ahead of the first impact protecting the rider’s entire upper body. After joining the company in 2017, we made two significant changes in our campaign strategy. First, we shifted the Tech-Air marketing message from features to experience, i.e., trial. Second, extending the ‘experience’ approach, our campaigns feature demonstrations of live deployments of the system at work. These two changes, along with aggressive growth marketing, have contributed greatly to increased product awareness, understanding and sales.

In terms of trial, we made significant investments in creating trial experiences for consumers (in-store and at trade shows) to try on the system and experience the inflation and the protective coverage Tech-Air provides. Trial was a game- changer for both dealers and consumers to understanding the technology. We have followed up the trial experiences with aggressive digital campaigns continuing to showcase the Tech-Air technology in action. To date, our Tech-Air advertising has broken ever record for the most engaged ads the brand has generated.

RE-DEFINING THE IN-STORE BRAND EXPERIENCE

DELIVERING THE OFF-ROAD HELMETS AND PROTECTION MESSAGE

In addition to the marketing responsibilities, I am also one of the company’s main presenters of category, product and technology presentations [Road & Off-Road Motorcycling and Mountain Biking]. We developed the two below videos to showcase the leading technologies we created for both professional and recreational MX and Off-road riders.

Beyond the company’s legacy of creating the FIRST motocross boot back in 1963, Alpinestars has more recently started to lead and dominate the categories of MX Helmets and Protection. Our team has focused the marketing and communications efforts to establish and develop these programs. By offering highly technical and innovative solutions for riders of all levels, the result is significant competitive market share gains.