Donna Carpenter on how Burton advances and retains women

 

At the Outdoor Retailer Show, I listened to Donna Carpenter, President of Burton, speak at the Outdoor Industry Women’s Coalition (OWIC) breakfast.

 

Donna shared her insights on being a woman in the action sports/outdoor industry and how Burton’s business changed when it added more females. She also detailed some fairly remarkable efforts Burton made to retain women, including generous child care benefits for traveling moms.

 

Donna and her husband Jake Burton Carpenter are the sole owners of Burton Snowboards. Since 1982, Donna has held a multitude of roles at Burton, including building snowboards, answering phones and expanding Burton’s market to Europe. She is now the company President.

 

She also heads up Burton’s non-profit Chill Foundation, (bringing snowboarding to underprivledged youth), and is the mother of three sons.

 

Burton’s female staff

Ten years ago, Donna knew women would be critical to the success of Burton.

 

“Men like products, but women talk more about them,” she said.

 

At that time, Jake was at a global meeting and of the 20 to 25 global directors, only three were women.

 

This was 2002, a year where Burton team rider Kelly Clark took the gold medal at the Olympics. It was also a year when the company had record sales.

 

Donna says Jake knew, “We needed diversity to solve problems.”

 

Donna began researching why there were so few women and how to recruit more.

 

When Burton started 30 years ago, there were as many women as men in the office. But Burton grew fast, and they mostly drew talent from hardgoods companies, which are primarily male dominated.

 

In 2002, women made up only 30% of Burton’s applicants. Of the 30%, none applied for director roles. Also at that time, most of the high level management team had stay-at-home wives.

 

“There were no role models at the top, especially when balancing a career and a family,” she said.

 

Maternity was also the biggest retention problem.

 

“Culturally it was incredibly difficult for women,” Donna said. “It was not so much sexism as much as cluelessness. Managers didn’t know what to do when women had kids.”

 

Recruiting females

To support career growth, Donna knew women at the office needed female mentors. She launched the Women’s Leadership Initiative. As a company, Burton proactively sought women candidates and better-trained managers to hire females.

 

They also got more women on the mountain since a lot of decisions are made on the chairlift, and Burton’s Learn To Ride program helped those efforts.

 

Burton instituted internships for women engineers, gave longer benefits for maternity, and instituted a policy for travel.

 

If women had kids under 18 months old, Burton would provide a caretaker while they were out of town for business, or they could take them with them on the road at Burton’s expense.

 

Burton also partnered with local childcare providers, started a volunteer mentor program, and a women’s professional association with speakers.

 

After two years, 62% of the women at Burton were promoted or took a different job role.

 

Donna said the men had a hard time at first. But the whole company came to understand that the changes made to accommodate women strengthened Burton as a company.

 

Some of their best engineers came out of Burton’s internship programs. Burton began to respect employees as parents and also gave paternity leave as well as maternity leave.

 

Donna said today, more men then women take advantage of Burton’s Daycare Benefit Plan. This benefit allows parents who participate in the Dependent Care Reimbursement Plan to receive a 100% match contribution from Burton.

 

For example, if the employee chooses the maximum annual IRS limit of $5,000, the worker will set aside $2,500 tax free and Burton will match that $2,500 tax free.

 

There is also a room for women to pump breast milk, and Donna says she has seen a lot of guys sleep off a hangover there, too.

 

See Page 2 for how Burton targets women with specialized product

 

 

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Equal prize money 

This March marks the 30th Anniversary of the U.S. Open of Snowboarding, and the 29th year that Burton has been running the event. In 1996, Burton began paying equal prize money to women and men. It took the X Games until 2008 to do the same, she said.

 

As a company, Burton has a history and heritage in supporting women. From sponsoring women like Kelly Clark to pioneering women’s snowboard boots and even creating a women’s only snowboard, Burton has built a platform around women since day one, Donna said.

 

Women’s Products

Burton designed its first women’s-specific snowboard for Shannon Dunn in 1996, but in 2000 they decided to make a bigger push to launch a female snowboard that was accessible to everyday riders.

 

Donna Carpenter (center, striped sweater) with some of Burton’s female employees at the Outdoor Industry Women’s Coalition breakfast.

At first, they just took an existing model and made it purple. A female designer spoke up. She said not only was the snowboard ugly and no girls would buy it, but because it was purple, no guys would buy it either. That same designer pushed for a girls’ specific snowboard.

 

Called “The Women’s Feelgood,” it exceeded sales predictions by 240% out of the gate.

 

Donna also helped to create a creative wall between men’s and women’s marketing.

 

“At the time we were just pinking and shrinking products for girls,” she said.

 

Over the years, they made more efforts for women, launching www.burtongirls.com, and encouraging reps to hire more girls.

 

“Employees are your first brand ambassadors,” she said.

 

“I don’t think guys who miss the mark of marketing to women are sexist pigs, they are just oblivious idiots,” she said. “I had a guy who just didn’t know what to do with bindings for women so he just put flowers on them. He just didn’t know what to do!”

 

Also, back then the girls on the global snowboard team were dressing like guys, Donna said. One top ranked female snowboarder told Donna that if you play with the big boys, you have to dress like them. She was even afraid — a world champion snowboarder – to shop in core snowboard shops.

 

Today, Donna said women have a combined income of one trillion dollars and influence 90% of purchases and 80% of all sporting goods purchases.

 

“We have a saying at our house. If momma aint’ happy, nobody is.” Donna said she makes a lot of the decisions on what her family will spend money on.

 

Donna said as an industry, “We need to look more closely at the retail and even the whole resort experience. I still don’t think resorts meet the needs of women’s schedules,” she said. Since women are the ones who decide if the family is going to go to Stowe or to Disneyland for vacation, she suggested resorts have women on their leadership teams.

 

In doing years of research, Donna has seen a direct connection between having female leadership and creating a brand that is women friendly.

 

Efforts make an impact 

As for Burton, she said they have come a long way.

 

“We are a much more female-friendly organization. Our coaching and mentoring programs are so successful they are now co-ed. At entry level, we are now 50/50 women to men. Directors have tripled to over 30% women. Of the senior managers, most have working wives that work at the company, including Jake.”

 

Today, over 35% of the snowboard market are women. Female participation grew 25% last year, and the average female snowboarder is older than the average male and has more disposable income.

 

Burton’s outerwear sales are split 50/50 men to women.

 

“Changing internal structures to meet the needs of women especially in difficult times is not easy to do but in our industry, advancing more women is really a strategic imperative,” Donna said.

 

“Let’s be honest – it can be frat-boyish. But I knew adding more women would change the culture of our company. It has, and we are successful because of it.”