Our Fearless Leader

Congratulations to Denny Bruce, our very own EVP of Sales, Product and Marketing, nominated for his efforts in 2015 as a top rainmaker in Utah.

From Denny:

Thirty years ago, an idea was born that started a movement in outdoor cooking. A revolution of flavor that challenged the standard of taste set by gas and charcoal.

Today, we lead that movement fueled by our passion for outdoor cooking, our love for 100% natural wood-fired flavor, and creating handcrafted meals that bring people closer together. We are Traeger. Our customers are our marketing and our retailers our evangelists. The best consumer product that you have never heard of, a Net Promoter Score of 82, and a cult like social media following has Traeger fighting with veterans 10X our size.

In 2014 CEO, Jeremy Andrus joined Traeger with the intent of building a world-class leadership team and company culture ready to disrupt a $3.5B industry. The vision was not without hurdles. The existing business model was broken, people were broken, and the existing strategy needed to be overhauled. It required deconstructing the business down to the channel level in order to realize that we had been moving revenue from healthy contribution channels to significantly less profitable ones while alienating our largest opportunities for growth with our dealers. As the business planning process evolved it was clear the existing management team couldn’t align to the new vision. In July 2014 our senior management team along with our existing private equity partners took full control of the business.

The first day our management team had ownership of the business we launched our new 3-year business plan and communicated it live to our retail partners via Brandlive. The commentary was one third contrarian and two thirds outlining the new vision for our business. In our first live business update we launched a new product and consumer segmentation story, outlined our demand creation strategy, and shared our vision for being the best and easiest company for them to do business with.

http://po.st/traeger

Today the team is executing to plan and our 30-year-old brand (that saw 4% growth in 2014) is surpassing all expectations. 2015 will deliver 30%+ revenue growth (almost 9x the industry average.) The team is aligned and building strategic partnerships with the best retailers in the market poised to kick-ass for years to come!