Tim Boyle, CEO Columbia Sportswear

Keri S.

May 12, 2010 - 4:00 PM

This week for our weekly Alpha Kappa Psi meeting, we had the honor of having guest speaker Tim Boyle, CEO and President of Columbia Sportswear. Columbia Sportswear is an international sportswear company based in Portland, Oregon. Boyle provided us with an overview of their company, and how they came to be where they are now.

Columbia started in the 1930s as a family hat business. Although the business has stayed in the family since that time, it has evolved into much more than just a simple hat company. In 1972, Columbia doubled in size and quickly became a million dollar company within one year. As a recent graduate of the University of Oregon, Boyle quickly became CEO and President at a time when the company was growing but struggling to keep up with the changes.

In addition to talking about the history of past of Columbia, Boyle also talked about the current state of Columbia Sportswear. With tough competition in a very competitive market, they are currently using acquisitions and distribution strategies to guide their company into the desired market position. Columbia focuses their efforts to create innovate products, technologies, and communication. While Boyle described some of the new technologies that Columbia has introduced or plans to introduce soon, it was very hard to understand the technical jargon he used. He said this is the exact problem the marketing department has. A lot of money, time, and resources have been invested into the development of these new technologies, but it is all useless unless the consumer can understand what the technology is and what benefit it is to them. This was such an interesting point, and really got me thinking about how this may be relevant to other companies as well.

Boyle then discussed briefly the marketing campaigns used by his company in the past. Currently, Columbia is using "the Great Outdoors" campaign. In the past, ad campaigns have featured Boyle and his mother, Gert Boyle, Chairman of the Board. These commercials show Boyle and his mother dueling, with Boyle being protected from his mother by various Columbia products. I have included a few of these commercials for you to watch. They are pretty funny, and I can remember seeing some of them on TV recently!

Overall, it was great to hear from an Oregon alum that is now running a billion dollar a year company like Columbia. Having someone like Tim Boyle take the time out of his very busy week to come to Eugene to talk to us was a huge honor, and I am so glad we got to hear him talk. I learned a lot about the company, the industry, and the business world from his talk, and it is one of the many reasons I like being a member of Alpha Kappa Psi so I can have these amazing opportunities.