Search Mandate
With a rich heritage borne of the New York City skate scene of the 1990s, Triple Eight is a global leader in protective gear for action sports including skateboarding, biking, roller skating, and roller derby. Triple Eight leverages strong brand recognition and operational excellence to provide the highest-quality protective gear to a diverse range of consumers — from children to adults and beginners to professional athletes alike.
After decades of success as an owner-managed business, this market-leading protective sporting goods brand set out to hire its first outside CEO, as part of a succession plan for the company’s founder, Bobby Oppenheim. In collaboration with its board, Triple Eight began the search to identify a new leader who could maintain and grow brand affinity, excel in an entrepreneurial lower-middle market environment, and conceive and execute an enhanced strategic vision for global growth.
The new CEO would need to expand international success by investing in digital and other new avenues, while maximizing retail, wholesale and direct-to-consumer channels through an integrated plan. The successful candidate would also need to achieve all this while running a historically lean operation and keeping the team motivated to deliver on the brand’s future promise.
“We did due diligence talking to various firms, and ultimately decided that Noto Group’s experience and network would provide the best candidate profiles for our search.”
--Bobby Oppenheim, Founder and Chairman, Triple Eight
Our Approach
To secure the ideal hire, Noto Group worked in close collaboration with both Triple Eight’s founder and board, first focusing on deeply absorbing the vision that the owners held for the company and the role. They applied those insights to target a select but diverse group of candidates from Noto’s network of action sports industry leaders.
To ensure the surfacing of enough varied candidates to enable the client to be highly selective, Noto Group activated a comprehensive and far-reaching recruiting strategy. Only the closest-matched candidates were delivered to Triple Eight for consideration. Continuous client calibration throughout the recruiting period also helped Noto narrow the search focus along the way, equipped to continually highlight candidates who held the optimal mix of commercial, sporting goods, and sales and marketing experience.
Results
Despite losing a top candidate to a competitive counter-offer four months into the project, Noto Group prevailed with unwavering enthusiasm for the search. The strong client partnership throughout the process ultimately yielded a fantastic fit. Robert Erb brought deep expertise in sporting goods sales and distribution. Plus, he happened to live five minutes away from Triple Eight HQ!
Erb was excited to join “a young company with a thirst for new experiences,” and keen to apply his expansive sporting goods industry experience to meet the mandate of the role. He lauded Noto Group for building trust with him in early outreach — by setting conscientious and accurate expectations — and then facilitating transparent conversations throughout the recruiting process.
“Noto Group clearly has a deep contacts list, because they knew several people I knew in the sporting goods industry. This built my trust early in the process.”
— Robert Erb, CEO, Triple Eight
The new CEO made a quick mark, swiftly turning business goals into realities. Together with the founder, Erb increased bandwidth and expertise within the leadership team to execute on growth initiatives, including product innovations and expanded sales. The company is stoked for what’s to come!
