When Faction Skis was founded in 2006, says the brand’s Head of Global Marketing, Henrik Lampert, more than 75 percent of the North American ski market self-identified as “alpine” or “backcountry” skiers” on surveys, with the rest checking the “freeskier” box. Today, that psychographic has nearly flipped. When asked, most resort skiers now see themselves as freeskiers.

That would seem like good news to freeskiing centric Faction, which as late as 2019 was selling 85 percent twin-tip skis—the kind that only classic freeskiers buy. But there was a disconnect in the data. While the idea of freeskiing had clearly resonated with skiers in the intervening years, the definition of freeskiing had changed.

Today, if a skier is skiing fast in the alpine on fat but powerful flat-tail skis, slashing powder turns with style in the sidecountry, or even arcing turns on groomers, they are freeskiing. Psychographically that’s true, even if those skiers never step into a pair of twin tips or take a lap through the terrain park. That’s in keeping with what freeskiing pioneer Shane McConkey intended when he helped popularize the term in the late 1990s. Shane told me at the time that anything that wasn’t racing was freeskiing. But in 2019, the Faction Collective—the community that Faction was and is building—wasn’t particularly inclusive of those new classes of freeskiers.

“Because we were still almost exclusively a twin-tip company,” says Henrik, “in terms of product, we were only talking to 10 percent of skiers. Our goal was never to be a brand for everyone. That’s not a winning recipe. But you can’t ignore 90 percent of the market either; especially when the market is aligned with your beliefs.”

Talking to more skiers does not mean selling out. In volume of units sold, Faction currently claims one percent of the global ski market. They hope to double that in the coming years by engaging with those market segments that are new to the brand.

To do that, the product had to lead. In 2019, Faction brought on Daniel Tanzer (Fischer/Kästle) to oversee hardgoods production. Tanzer shifted Faction’s production to Austria to boost quality. Once that was fixed, they built new ski categories. Today, you can browse All Mountain, Freeride, Park & Pipe, Piste (frontside), and Touring skis on Faction’s site. Visually, and with the accompanying storytelling, every model reflects Faction’s freeskiing heritage.

With skis, as with most quasi-durable goods—pickups, phones, sunglasses—the product is the marketing. But Faction knew it had to do more to reach non twin-tip skiers with the freeskiing mindset. The company is doing that, not by buying television ads, but by storytelling.

That’s not a departure for Faction. Storytelling is a Faction pillar. After inception, says Henrik, three pivotal moments shaped Faction into the company it is today. In 2012 Faction signed the freeskier Candide Thovex—and his acclaim carried over to the skis. In 2014, Faction’s first YouTube series, “We Are The Faction Collective,” launched and was followed by the first feature length film in 2017. And in 2019, Tanzer delivered the product Faction needed for the growing freeskiing market. But more than anything, the films have built the brand: “With that first feature film,” says Henrik, who was the editor-in-chief of Freeskier magazine before joining Faction, “we planted a flag in the world of ski filmmaking. And filmmaking is one of the reasons why we have such a strong customer base today. If you had to boil down Faction’s storytelling strategy, it would go like this: Marry the products to the athletes by telling freeskiing stories.”

The buzzword in distribution today is “omni-channel,” and that’s true of all Faction’s storytelling. The feature length film by Etienne Mérel premiers every other year and is screened around the world in venues that range from auditoriums to college dorm rooms. A similar approach is taken with the three, 10-minute edits they release in non feature years. Written word and still photo stories are pushed in newsletters and blogs. Faction’s YouTube channel hosts the films and also offers education and service shorts. There is no attempt to monetize any of this. Anyone who has an interest can ask for a screening. And naturally Faction doesn’t forget its dealers, who often host the films, pulling in kids and their parents. As with the product lines, the storytelling is evolving to speak to the larger world of freeskiing, from backcountry skiers, to freeriders, to artists. (Artistic expression on and off skis is baked into freeskiing.)

Yes, that story-driven inclusivity is right for Faction’s growth strategy. But it’s also the right thing to do for freeskiing. As Patagonia did for the outdoor world, Faction is helping to define its own category. And it’s working.

“I can’t count the number of people who tell us that they discovered Faction at a film screening at a university with 20 people, or in a local shop,” says Henrik. We give them the movie for free. If they want swag it’s theirs. They can use it to support their non profit. They can sell tickets or give them away. It doesn’t matter to us. We have to help grow freeskiing and the idea of freeskiing if we want to grow as a company. I get a special feeling when I’m in the room for a screening. It’s the perfect moment when the skis and the athletes and the customers come together and celebrate freeskiing. It reminds me that we are called the Faction Collective for a reason.”

As connected as technology has made us by way of social media and video calls, like Shiva, it destroys as much as it creates. In the rubble, argues the photographer, writer, and editor Mattias Fredriksson, lies much of global mountain culture as we once knew it. Instead of cohesive publishing that builds connection across oceans, we get discordant posts.

Here’s Mattias in the mid 1990s, fresh from Sweden, browsing a Geneva newsstand while on a photo assignment to the Alps. He is breaking into international ski photography and hungry to learn what’s happening in freeskiing—country by country. He picks up a copy of Powder magazine from the U.S. and kicks back at night immersing himself in North American ski culture. On the return trip to Sweden he can grab a Swiss, French, or German title and do the same.

Today it’s hard to find publications that speak to broader skiing or even mountain culture. It’s certainly hard to find them internationally. We are losing context as our knowledge of distant places is increasingly determined by algorithms and curated feeds.

Now try engaging that increasingly fragmented global mountain community as a startup apparel company from Sweden with ideas for a worldwide customer base. That was the first challenge that presented itself to Mattias and his long-time collaborator John Crawford-Currie when Currie was launching the direct-to-consumer apparel company Stellar Equipment in 2015.

From inception, the Stellar team had a vision for the product. Each garment would be built around durability and timeless aesthetics—not fashion. It was a sustainability story rooted in the idea that real mountain people would wear each piece out over a decade, boosting perceived value and standing as a counterpoint to consumerism. Unlike the big brands, Stellar wouldn’t be dumping product lines every other year to please a buyer at a box store or feed the outerwear equivalent of fast fashion. As with the hardgood companies, Stellar is built around collections. But in their case, the collections are only updated when there is a chance to actually improve the product as opposed to merely updating style touches and colors.

Still, even with Stellar’s rugged construction, outdoor apparel is a tough business to stand apart in. If you take the logos off five top-end jackets, even an industry insider would be hard-pressed to name the brand. Differentiation was the second big challenge Stellar faced.

The solution that Currie and Mattias settled on? Stellar Equipment would be accompanied by an online mountain culture journal called Interstellar, spearheaded by Mattias, who would also commission films. The Interstellar storytelling would also boost the value of Stellar’s newsletters and social media. It was an easy strategy to execute given that Currie and Mattias have worked together at multiple magazines, from Åka Skidor magazine (Sweden’s 50-year-old national ski magazine) to Peak Performance magazine and Magasin Åre, which Currie still co-owns.

Interstellar is not intended to compete with existing magazines, in fact it routinely celebrates those titles in its storytelling. Interstellar exists to repair the breach in global mountain culture. The stories Mattias writes, assigns, and edits rarely mention the products that Stellar makes. More often they are about people and locations that Mattias, Currie, and Interstellar contributor Leslie Anthony care about. The storytelling is meant to inspire readers and audiences to expand their worldviews and remember again that mountain people share beliefs. There’s a lot of pure fun hogging in the coverage.

The global theme is also very real. Stellar and Currie are headquartered in Åre. Mattias has lived in Shames, British Columbia for eight years. Leslie Anthony, a renowned writer and editor, is Whistler based. But they are all internationalists. A reader in Sweden might learn about Alta photographer Lee Cohen’s body of work. A reader in Vermont might find out about how great the skiing is in Les Marécotes, Switzerland. The films take on a similar feel.

The storytelling in Interstellar lifts up Stellar through association, not advertorial. That’s the same reason why companies used to advertise in magazines. When brands and publishers are aligned it elevates both enterprises. But with Interstellar and Stellar the loop is closed. New customers find Stellar through Interstellar, and, because of that, associate Stellar Equipment with the good vibes of wanderlust and mountain culture. The opposite is also true. That’s the idea behind affinity marketing. Sadly, most outdoor advertisers today don’t even know what affinity marketing means.   

But there’s more to the strategy than affinity marketing. In a similar way that Faction is bringing freeskiing to the people through its storytelling, the storytelling in Interstellar is pulling people with a shared belief system into a community of readers and viewers. In effect, Interstellar is creating or at least coalescing the market that Stellar Equipment needs reach to succeed. That is strategy in all caps. 

And it is working. All outdoor apparel companies struggled in the post Covid downturn, but prior to the pandemic, Stellar was the fastest growing brand in Europe. Now they are primed to expand again.  

As with Faction, Stellar isn’t trying to be all things to all people. But the team believes there are enough sustainability-minded mountain people in the world who think of jackets as equipment and not fashion to succeed. Interstellar is the best way to find those people. It’s the Patagonia model all over again: Lead with your beliefs through storytelling and the market will follow. That’s why, in Currie’s view, Interstellar should always lead the messaging.

Which gets me to why I avoided the words “content” and “content strategy” in this essay. Mattias believes, and I agree with him, that calling everything “content” devalues photography, writing, and filmmaking. But what Faction and Stellar Equipment are doing is also bigger than content strategy. Because they believe in something, they are leading their customers forward and establishing an outdoor culture their brands can thrive in.

To paraphrase Martin Luther King this week, they are headlights not brake lights. And the world needs more headlights.