Urban kayak manufacturer TRAK ups CEO

March 3, 2009
TRAK Kayaks Inc., the producer of the world’s first Urban Kayak, announced the promotion of current Chief Financial Officer Nolin Veillard to the role of chief executive officer, according to the company.

During Veillard’s tenure as CFO over the past several years, he was responsible for leading the capitalization of the Calgary, Alberta-based company through its product development and manufacturing development phases.

In addition to his new leadership position, Veillard will also become a member of TRAK Kayak’s board of directors.

TRAK Kayaks Inc. manufactures a kayak product that is lightweight and portable, fitting nicely into an airplane pack in 10 minutes or less. The company sells these products to encourage both kayak enthusiasts – as well as urban residents seeking outdoor adventures – to go experience their cities from the water that surrounds it.

Veillard told DailyVista that his new position will entail leading TRAK Kayaks into its sales and market growth phase, and to fund an aggressive key urban market strategy both in North America and internationally. He added that the company is currently at this stage.

“I will be working with Robert Schmidt, our vice president of sales and marketing, to establish strong partnerships with national outdoor retailers, social impact organizations and lifestyle property development marketers to drive our revenue growth and market awareness,” he said. “Because this product has ‘almost no awareness’ in our target market, and gets the response it does when people see and experience it - our focus will be targeted exposure to our urban active and lifestyle markets in the big cities.”

Veillard plans to implement some guerilla marketing initiatives in some of its key U.S. target cities during 2009. In the short-term, TRAK’s business development will primarily focus on property developers and marketers of lifestyle properties and condominiums and will rely heavily on a network of agent resellers to leverage the word-of-mouth that that the urban kayak product brings.

TRAK Kayak’s target audience is typically the urban active or urban lifestyle end-consumer, ranging from active baby boomers to urban professionals. Veillard said that the company has one major partnership that has been consummated as part of its “Paddling for Possibility” program (DailyVista article), which sees the company getting involved with social impact organizations that connect TRAK to its target customer, allowing TRAK to pass along financial and other impact material to that organization.

“It takes an expansive view in this economy to prosper,” Veillard said. “This is the best time for TRAK to go through its sales growth phase because it’s unexpected and people are more in need of what we offer: wellness, lifestyle and convenience. If you have a contraction mindset, then contracted results will show up. That being said, we require further capitalization to drive sales growth, which can be more challenging in this environment. We’re pursuing that objective in early 2009 to put the resources behind the marketing engine.”

Our source said that TRAK Kayaks has not secured a relationship with any agencies thus far, and that Schmidt is part of an organization of Blue Ocean Strategy practitioners worldwide - allowing him to work with some of his colleagues to source partners that understand the uncontested market space strategy that TRAK is currently leveraging.

“We’re wide open to hear of some outrageous and out-of-the-box approaches to driving awareness in our target markets,” Veillard said.

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