The Buyer's Perspective | Salem Summit Company
One of our newer vendor partners, Grip6 Belts started with the mission to create the perfect belt. This meant having something that was lightweight, with no holes and no belt flap. It also meant being able to control the entire production so all belts are sourced and manafactured in the USA. Salem Summit Company is one of our retail partners that brought them in to their shop this year. We checked in with them to see how they are digging their new belts!
Q. What is your name and role with Salem Summit Company?
A. Conor Foley, Manager and Asst. Buyer
Q .How long has Salem Summit been in business?
A. Six years
Q. Why did you decide to bring Grip6 into your store?
A. We thought it represented a unique offering in the marketplace and we were sold on its simplicity and quality. New, unique items are the number one things we keep an eye out for when looking for additions to the store.
Q. Are small accessories like belts a key component to your business?
A. While small accessories are not the focus of our business they are often the items customers remember and come back looking for, which creates frequent return customers and ultimately drives sales for larger items.
We are always keeping an eye out for new unique items to bring in the shop and when we saw Grip6 we were attracted to the simplicity of the design and the quality of manufacturing.
Q. How do most people tend to shop this item?
A. Our first round of orders was pretty exclusive to the pre-made belt-buckle combos with a few additional buckles. sales were heavily oriented toward the combo packs. Now we have standalone webbing and a wider selection of buckles and the purchasing is shifting toward "make your own" combos.
Q. Was the custom program an easy process to go through?
A. We were excited to learn about the custom program as our logo wear has become a big part of how people hear about us in the community. We are always excited to play around with new design ideas and after workshopping some of those ideas with the guys at Summit Sales we settled on a design that looks really great. We incorporated some smaller text in the design and when the buckles arrived we were really pleased with how crisp everything came out. Overall, it was a very easy process and the turnaround time was great!
Q. Any upcoming or past adventures that you're particularly stoked about?
A. Lots of mountaineering objectives on the docket this season including Mt. Rainier and Al and I are looking forward to our annual Cascade Lakes Relay run in August in central Oregon!