How one woman realized she was mad as hell and wasn’t going to wear it anymore
by Nicole Clausing
How many times has this happened to you: You’re going out snowmobiling and you realize you don’t have a thing to wear?
Okay, maybe it’s never happened to you. It’s never happened to me, either. But it could: over 1.4 million snowmobiles (“sleds,” to those in the know) are registered in this country, and the numbers are growing. Women are making up an increasing percentage of the total, and so every year, more and more women find themselves ready to hit the trails with almost literally nothing to wear.
The problem is that most of the snowmobiling gear out there is designed primarily for men, who still make up about 65% of all riders. If a company has a women’s line, the clothes tend to be cluelessly scaled-down versions of the men’s wear. Any woman who’s ever tried to wear her boyfriend’s jeans, or shopped men’s-style suits knows what that means: tight in the hips, flappy in the arms, and all-over unflattering—not to mention often adorned with flames and motor-oil company logos.
Ski and snowboarding clothes are an option, as these sports have enough female adherents that women’s gear is not an afterthought. But downhill sports and snowmobiling require fundamentally different clothes. Ski apparel tends to be lighter, because skiing is a lot more aerobic than sitting on a sled. Snowmobilers in ski gear often find themselves cold and sometimes also in tatters, because zipping through the woods brings them in contact with more tree branches and snags than the average skier or snowboarder usually encounters.
Luckily, a lifelong snowmobiler from Wisconsin has stepped into this retail breach. Wendy Gavinski got tired of having to choose between hypothermia and ill-fitting male drag, and did what any mother of two with a full-time job would do: She founded Divas SnowGear, a company dedicated solely to keeping women comfortable in every sense of the word while they’re out on their machines.
That was in 2010. Five years later, the company is on track to make $1.2 million this winter, and is on the cusp of expanding from the US and Canada into Scandinavia and Russia. It has also managed to become a massive social media success story, to the point that Facebook approached them for marketing advice.
How did this happen? I have to hear the story right from the source. So I call Wendy’s Wisconsin number and manage to catch her between trips to Syracuse, New York and Milwaukee, Wisconsin for trade shows.
I ask her how it all began, and in charming northern tones, punctuated by Tina Fey-like “yahs” and “You knooows,” she tells me how the business came to be.
“I just felt like a marshmallow person,” she explains, “Frumpy and unattractive….and I thought, there’s no reason this stuff can’t be more flattering and look more like skiwear. And if no one else is going to do it, then I’m going to do it. And that’s how it went.”
Was it really that simple? Wendy, I’m starting to see, does not readily toot her own horn. And she’s not one to over-dramatize her story, either. I can see I’m going to have to dig a little to get to the bottom of this.
Three-Item Recipe for Success
Over the course of our chat, it eventually becomes clear that there are three major ingredients in the Divas SnowGear recipe for success. The first is an intense need for Wendy’s product. Male riders are spoiled for choice; Wendy estimates that there are between 20 and 25 major retailers making snowmobile clothing available in this country—but not a one specializes in women’s gear, or even makes much of an effort.
This is strange, considering that out of the 1.4 million or so snowmobilers in the US, about 35% are estimated to be women. This means that before 2010, there were approximately 500,000 American women either shivering in ski gear, swimming in their husbands’ cast-off jackets, or putting up with mainstream retail’s idea of women’s snowmobile wear, which is at best a smaller version of the men’s line dyed a garish pink to distract from the poor fit.
Specs? What’s That?
The second ingredient in the Divas success casserole is Wendy’s unique skill set. When I ask her if she had a background in sports gear, she immediately exclaims, “Not at all!” She goes on to downplay her qualifications by mentioning that her college degree was in communications, and that before Divas, she had no experience in either designing or the clothing industry.
What she did have under her belt was a number of sales jobs. She also lets slip that she is “fairly artistic.” These two skills—persuasion and sketching—proved to be key in product development. Wendy explains that she had a clear idea in her head of what she wanted her clothing to look like. She was able to draw good patterns, although at first it was “literally a drawing on the back of a napkin kind of situation.”
Those drawings, and a silver tongue, eventually caught the attention of an overseas factory that was able to produce some samples despite Wendy’s naiveté about the technical specs and measurement charts normally required for production. “I didn’t even know what that meant!” she recalls, chuckling. When the first samples came back, Wendy remembers being pleasantly surprised that, “Oh my gosh, that kind of looks good.”
(Photo: Courtesy of Divas SnowGear)
Retailers quickly began picking up the unique line of clothing, and Wendy quickly began expanding it. From the original jacket and bib, the collection has grown into vests, gloves, sub-layers, and some casual non-sledding clothing like hoodies and yoga pants. You can even dress your sled, as the company offers wrap kits to jazz up your ride—think of it like a cell phone cover for your machine.
The two things that stay constant are that Wendy still designs all the products, and she still strives to hit a fashion sweet spot where her goods look stylish, but not so trendy that they’re dated before the year’s out. New this season, for example, is a lace-trimmed line, because, she says, lace is big now. But you’ll see these jackets on racks next season, too, because she always offers items for at least two years. This policy helps retailers not to get stuck with outdated inventory and discourages the idea that Divas SnowGear has a short shelf life.
I ask Wendy what she considers to be the hallmark of Divas SnowGear. Because she has talked so much about wanting to bring a feminine touch to snowmobile gear, I expect her to say something like “rhinestones,” or “floral prints.”
But the answer is nothing of the kind. And if I’d spent any more time perusing the collection, I would not have been surprised. With their mostly solid, neutral colors, the clothes do not scream “girly.” Even touches like that lace are fairly subtle. The feminine aspects of the clothing, it turns out, mostly have to do with cut and fit, and are much more apparent to the wearer than the observer.
Wendy ponders my question about her defining style for a moment, and finally decides that what sets her clothing apart is the effort that goes into making sure everything fits perfectly. She employs fit models in every size from extra small to 5XL. “I think that’s what makes us so special compared to everybody else who just kind of throws something out there,” she concludes.
Spreading the Word
As most small business owners know, having a good product to sell is only half the battle. You still have to get the word out about your wares, and that’s where the third key ingredient in the Divas recipe comes in: social media.
Marketing Divas SnowGear proved challenging because the way snowmobile clothing retailers usually promote their gear—print advertising—wasn’t a good option. There are lots of snowmobile-centric publications, but their readership is overwhelmingly male—well over 90%, and possibly as much as 99%, by some estimates.
For that reason, social media, especially Facebook, was crucial to telling the Diva SnowGear story. An American Snowmobiler ad buy, for example, would be overlooked by 9 out of 10 eyeballs falling on it. A Facebook ad, though, can be shot out to a very targeted group of people who have already expressed enthusiasm for goods and hobbies that seem like a good match. Divas SnowGear’s Facebook ads started getting clicks and generating sales.
The ads and the page itself (now up to almost 102,034 likes) also started getting the attention of Facebook itself, and at one point Wendy was invited to Menlo Park to meet with COO Sheryl Sandberg, an experience Wendy, with typical understatement, describes as, “really, really neat.” That encounter ended with Divas SnowGear being asked to fill one of only 12 spots on Facebook’s Small to Medium-Sized Business Council, a group that advises Facebook on how it can partner with and help out smaller companies.
It was a heady time for Divas, coinciding with explosive company growth. When I suggest to Wendy that her business might not have ever taken off without social media, she pauses and sighs like it’s too awful to consider such a world. “Yeah, it would be very difficult,” she says. “It would be a lot more events and trade shows than we do now. Fortunately, we’ve been able to reel that back in a little bit; we don’t have to go to every single event out there…it would be very difficult.”
Secret Sauce
Talking to Wendy, it becomes clear that there is actually a fourth secret ingredient that pulls the whole Divas SnowGear stew together: Wendy’s absolute love for the sport. Running a snow sport apparel company is all well and good, but what Wendy really loves is to be out on the trails. She does this as often as possible, sometimes at her family’s cabin in northern Wisconsin, and often in the adjoining Upper Peninsula of Michigan, her absolute favorite riding destination.
She’ll often ride on groomed trails, because that’s what most of her customers do and she wants to stay in touch with their needs. Her real passion, though, is uncharted backcountry riding. This feels like a metaphor waiting to happen, but before I can ask her to expand on her trailblazing nature, she instinctively falls back on self-deprecation. “I honestly have a little bit of a fear of heights, so I don’t want to go into the big mountains,” she says. “I like to have my feet level on the ground.” (So much for the story writing itself.)
Roots of an Obsession
As someone who has lived in temperate California all her adult life, I am especially intrigued by anyone, male or female, who regularly snowmobiles. Having been raised in New England, I am familiar with the concept, but my impressions were formed well over 20 years ago. When I inelegantly blurt out to Wendy that my idea of snowmobiling is that it is something done by boozy men looking to make as much noise as possible, she tactfully allows that “that’s probably pretty accurate,” at least for an older generation of riders, for whom the words “trail ride” often mean roaring from tavern to tavern.
But Wendy paints a far more wholesome picture of her own snowmobiling history. She can’t even remember how old she was when she was introduced to the sport. She thinks her father took her for rides starting when she was three or four, and that she was riding solo as a young teenager. Or as she tells it, “My Dad was into it, and he got my sister and me into it, so that’s really where it all started, was just riding through the fields of my family’s dairy farm.” (In Wisconsin, you must be 13 and officially certified to ride on public land, but anything goes on private property.) Wendy says that most people she knows started out like this, in a safe, fun family environment.
She does admit, however, that while she and her sister loved being girls on sleds, it’s not always easy being an adult female snowmobiler. She notes that it’s still unusual to see groups of entirely female riders. She thinks it’s because women tend not to feel comfortable troubleshooting when something goes wrong. Sleds weigh six or seven hundred pounds, and while fathers often pass their enthusiasm for snowmobiling onto their daughters, they don’t always pass on their mechanical skills.
This is a situation Divas SnowGear would like to change. To that end, Wendy says that this winter a female employee is hosting three women’s riding clinic’s to try to boost women’s confidence and skills out on the snow. Last year was the first women’s riding clinic and it was a success!
You can catch the Ladies Backcountry Clinic: January 22 – 23 in South Range, Michigan, February 5 – 6 in Moran, Wyoming, and February 26-27 in Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada. Divas SnowGear is also hitting the road where you can catch Wendy and her snow mobile crew in New York, Minnasota, New Hampshire, Idaho and other destinations.
Becoming a Diva
I wonder if a passion for snowmobiling is something that can be developed later in life or if, like an accent-free foreign language, it’s something you have to learn early at home. As it turns out, the snowmobile industry is actively courting new enthusiasts. I ask Wendy what her advice would be to a novice adult, and she tells me that the four major sled manufacturers–Yamaha, Polaris, Ski-Doo, and Arctic Cat—all have what she calls demo ride days, where you can sign up to be taken on a short ride to see how you like it. You can usually find information about these events on the company websites.
If you should be bitten by the bug, Wendy cautions that it’s an expensive habit. You can rent a sled at first, but eventually you’re probably going to have to incur the $7,000-$10,000 price tag of a decent new machine and trailer. And then on top of that, there’s the non-negligible cost of gas, maintenance, and oh, yes, snowmobile apparel.
But, thanks to Wendy, at least you’ll never have to look in your closet and fret that you don’t have anything to wear.
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