In the face of all the challenges the outdoor industry has experienced in recent years, longtime LOWA U.S. General Manager Peter Sachs said it’s important to embrace a lighter state of mind.
“Otherwise you’re going to be on your knees crying,” Sachs said in an interview with SESO on the eve of his retirement after a 30-year career with the German boot brand. “This stuff will just drown you. You need a little levity.”
Sachs said he’s been reminding LOWA’s staff of that over the last few seasons, as tariffs and economic uncertainty conspire to wreak more havoc on an industry that’s still recovering from its COVID hangover.
“We sell brown boots with black soles to walk in the woods on Saturday afternoon,” Sachs said he tells his staff. “We are not curing disease. We’re not feeding the hungry. We’re not putting a roof over the homeless. Let’s keep it all in perspective.”
That’s something he’s had to tell dealers, too, when they’re demanding to know where their order is.
“The boat didn’t come,” Sachs said. “But is everybody still breathing? Is there blood on the ground? No? Okay, we’re good.”
Sachs’s dry, funny, and no-nonsense attitude has grounded LOWA since he helped launch the brand in the U.S. in 1996. LOWA has had steady growth since and even reached an all-time revenue high last year, growing by nearly 50% since the end of 2019.
“It takes a lot of courage to bring a German hiking brand to the U.S. market,” said Alex Nicolai, the CEO of LOWA Sportschuhe GmbH. “But Peter was brave, passionate, and had a vision. He has been a true renegade, creating a new successful path for LOWA.”
This year, Sachs said he expects LOWA to maintain its high, or if revenue is down, it will be down by about 1%. This summer, he’s been focused on transitioning leadership over to Lance Taylor, who previously served for 17 years at Salomon.
“When I had the Über bosses in this week,” Sachs said, referring to LOWA’s German leadership, “I said, ‘I’ve built this. And if you guys f–k it up in the next couple of years, and the business goes backwards — unless the world just collapses — I’m going to be really effing pissed. Because there’s a lot of sweat equity in this thing.”
Focusing on the Customer
Sachs’s focus on both his internal team and the customer has been the key to his success, Nicolai said.
“Always striving to deliver the best service has made LOWA the highly respected and loved brand that it is today,” Nicolai said. “All thanks to his contribution. We’ll miss Peter here in Jetzendorf!”
Outdoor Sports Center’s Arlo Tarr agreed. He met Sachs at Outdoor Retailer approximately 18 years ago after taking a job at Diamond Brand Outdoors in Arden, N.C., and becoming a certified pedorthist (C.ped).
“The footwear buyer, who was also a C.ped, took me to my first OR show,” Tarr said. “We visited many different vendors, but meeting Peter really made an impression on me of what ‘specialty outdoor’ meant on the vendor side. Exceptional footwear plus exceptional fitting = Happy and Loyal Customers. When you put those two things together then it’s ‘specialty.’ That’s what keeps customers coming back.”
That focus extends beyond fit into every interaction a LOWA customer or dealer has with the brand. LOWA’s customer support team, for example, is coached to ensure they find solutions because that’s what builds brand loyalty.
“I always say to them, ‘If you’re on the fence on what to do, err in the side of the customer, go that 51% in their direction, instead of 51% in ours,’” Sachs said. “We’ll fix things on the back end of our business.”
In some cases, with long-term customers, Sachs will join the call himself to make sure they’re heard and leave satisfied. On the technology side, LOWA has also improved its dealer portal to ensure they have 24-hour capabilities to investigate inventory or product information so that they can provide their customers what they need in any time zone.
Building Careers at LOWA
While constantly working to improve customer service, logistics, and other areas of the business, Sachs is always committed to making work fun, said his colleagues. That includes the office March Madness cornhole tournament, played in the warehouse, where Sachs buys the office lunch on the day of the finals and winners receive gift cards and trophies.
“He likes to give people nicknames,” said Mandy Kelman, inventory manager at LOWA, who has known Sachs for more than 35 years. “There’s Skippy, Pork Chop, the Gomez Brothers, Pea Pod — Peter always referred to (former Lowa CEO) Werner Riethmann as ‘the Captain.’ For months I thought Werner was retired military.”
Sachs said LOWA’s employee retention rate is high.
“We have a team of people that interact with each other and just get the damn job done,” Sachs said. “And what we’re not doing is spending our time trying to hire, trying to search, trying to train. Training is always an ongoing thing, but we’re doing our job. Sometimes you have some employees that need a little bit of a kick in the butt or something — okay, fine. Or sales reps — just because they have a bad season doesn’t mean you fire them.”
Sachs with former LOWA CEO Werner Riethmann. Photo courtesy of Peter Sachs.
Chris Goddard, LOWA’s longtime PR rep, said Sachs has a gift for brand-building without losing sight of people.
“He has this rare mix of sharp instincts, honesty, and just the right amount of mischief,” Goddard said.
LOWA Export Area Manager Tudor Dragomir said he’s worked with Sachs for 19 years.
“On the U.S. side Peter is our heritage — like a solid mountaineering boot,” he said. “One of the most memorable moments that we’ve spent together was the development of the LOWA Zephyr. In a record time we made this shoe come to life from an idea at a trade show to a finished product. A true statement of Peter’s expertise and determination.”
LOWA’s Product Evolution
Sachs said the other key to the brand’s success has been consistently bringing new, quality products into the market.
LOWA’s classic hiking boot business is healthy and taking market share, but it’s been flat over the last couple of years. In addition to replenishing and reinvigorating LOWA’s No.1 and No. 2 product families, the Renegade and the Zephyr, as well as the brand’s brown backpacking boots for core hiking consumers, the company also recently introduced a trail running category to grow its active consumer base.
“The market activity is absolutely in what we would call light hiking and trail running,” Sachs said. “That’s where the energy is. That’s where the excitement is.”
For now, however, the growing numbers of so-called “casual” consumers are being catered to by mainstream footwear companies, Sachs said — which he encourages.
“We shouldn’t turn our nose up at those customers,” he said. “We should find ways to try to encourage and embrace them because if they have a good experience today, they’re more likely to try whatever that experience is again sometime in the future. And if they engage enough, they’re more likely to become a customer.”
Sachs with Lesley Christoph, LOWA marketing director. Photo courtesy of Peter Sachs.
That said, LOWA is staying true to its hiking roots and its longtime approach to manufacturing.
“The brand is mostly still made in Europe which was a tough thing to pull off when everyone moved to Asia,” said Mike Plante of Travel Country Outdoors in Orlando, Fla. “They never jumped the shark on trends. They wanted to move in a proper direction and not waste seasons on chasing popularity or trends.”
Tariffs and Challenges Ahead
Among all the tough times the outdoor industry has experienced over the years, Sachs said 9/11 was likely the most difficult time for LOWA’s U.S. business, which is based in Connecticut.
“There were people in our communities who were passing away in the towers and on the airplanes and so on,” Sachs said. The recession that followed added insult to injury and led to workforce reductions that were devastating, he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a combination of these factors — unfathomable numbers of deaths and illnesses combined with an economic downturn. But working from home and meeting on video call was simple enough to manage, Sachs said.
“It’s been much rougher since then,” Sachs said. “Honestly, it’s been a cage fight through supply chain and PFAS and tariffs.”
The inability to know in advance how to price has been unsettling, to say the least, Sachs said.
“Because you know that every time you raise prices, you antagonize your customer base, be it retailers or consumers, and you risk the loss of customers,” he said. “It’s the unknown, it’s the uncertainty that’s driving everybody nuts.”
The long list of issues Sachs has overseen have become intellectual challenges, he said, and he tries to maintain perspective through each of them.
“It is sort of what keeps you going,” he said. “If the world were flat and everything was normal, it would probably get boring really fast.”
Kate Robertson can be reached at kate@shop-eat-surf-outdoor.com.
