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There's no denying that BGS lifetime members are very talented people. Just earning invitation into the Society places members within a select group. Beyond their commonality as the "Best in Business" though, lifetime members are extremely diverse with a wide array of talents, backgrounds and expertise.
Hello, my wise BGS companions! I am delighted to kick off the Centennial year by introducing the very first BGS "who’s who." I happened to run into BGS member Dustin Goss while I was out skiing this past winter and found his story quite fascinating! Goss earned his BGS membership from the University of Washington and here’s what he said about it: “It was awesome to get invited and honored into Beta Gamma Sigma. I will always value a thing like that: something that is rewarding your achievements.” Dustin was sporting some awesome ski gloves (I was wishing I had hands to begin with); later I found out his own company designs and sells those gloves! I hope that you will enjoy this article and learning more about your fellow BGS member.
BGS Member Profiles
Dustin Goss
CEO & Founder POW Gloves
Dustin Goss’ favorite day at work says it all.
“We have a 22-inch powder rule in every employment contract,” explained the CEO and founder of POW Gloves. “If it snows 22 inches within 24 hours – within three hours of where you’re currently located – you have to go to the mountain or else you’re fired. So I would say I love 22-inch days.”
This unique company rule might secretly stir up some envy, but the rule carries immense purpose and pay-off for Goss and his employees.
“If we don’t play in the sports we love and make products for, then we’re not doing our customers or the people who support our business any justice,” Goss said. “Every time we have one of those days, it’s just an R&D day. We’re really just paying attention to what our products do.”
 POW products actually do quite a bit, thanks to the company’s exclusive attention to an extremely important extremity: the hands.
“Your hands are always being utilized,” Goss explained. “Making a product that wraps around your four fingers and your thumb and gives you functionality and dexterity, while also fighting against the elements of moisture and cold, is very technical, very complex.”
“Break down a snow sport glove; that is one of the hardest apparel components you can make for the human body,” he said.
Despite these complexities, POW has found a way to excel within the sports glove marketplace, developing a variety of specialized gloves for snow sports, biking, and even golf. The company currently produces a broad range of gloves for both men and women in each of its focus areas. Each pair of gloves provides customers with a variety of options to meet their individual sporting needs, proving that when it comes to gloves, one size does not fit all.
“We don’t just stamp out certain designs. We’ve never done that,” asserted Goss. “We’ve built products for their functional intent. This is truly where I believe we differentiate ourselves.”
Differentiating himself is nothing new to Goss, though. It’s been a key to his success from the very beginning.
Pointing back to his roots, Goss said growing up on a farm developed his strong work ethic and budget-conscious attitude. He ran his own neighborhood lawn business and worked 50 hours a week while attending high school, setting his sights constantly on the next step.
“I always had a personal goal for myself that I would get a college degree,” Goss said. “That was something I could never let go of. I knew the one thing that nobody could ever take away from anybody was an education, what you feed your mind, and the power of how you could utilize that knowledge.”
When Goss was accepted into the business school at the University of Washington, he began to put aside work to prioritize his education in operations management.
“I really put a lot into understanding the psychology of business and the psychology of management,” Goss said. “I’ve always been operational-focused, so I was always very keen on understanding how manufacturing systems work.”
Goss’ hunger for knowledge led him outside the classroom, as well. He kept an internship during his senior entire year with Voicestream--now T-Mobile.
As with any good internship, the experience came with takeaways of all kinds.
“Being in a big company like that taught me a lot about the kind of culture and environment I don’t want to be in,” he admitted. “It gave me a much better sense of the kind of entrepreneur and business that I did want to build.”
Turns out he wanted to build POW Gloves.
Goss attributes some of the credit for his company’s founding to his surroundings in the Pacific Northwest – a region he considers to be among the most amazing in the world. It was his love for this region that ultimately inspired a 20-year-old Goss to make a very significant purchase – his first snowboard.
Acquired for a mere $35, it wasn’t the most impressive piece of sporting equipment. Goss’s own claims reinstate that it actually came from a dumpster. Regardless, the experience that followed was a life-changing one for Goss.
“I just went up to the mountains, threw myself down the hill, and fell absolutely in love with it,” Goss recalled. “I wanted to do whatever I could to try to work in that world of snow and sports, something that has a lot of passion and value.”
A car ride up to the mountains a few years later inspired the brand that would carry such passion and value. But POW, short for Prisoner of Winter, would sit idle for a few more years.
“As I finished up business school, I started to resurrect the POW brand,” Goss said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do or what kind of product I was going to make. I just knew this brand was catchy.”
What began as a basement hobby in 2003 snowballed into a full-fledged business when Goss hired a full-time designer in 2005 and zeroed in on the winter sport glove niche. He quickly set his sights on Europe and discovered real opportunity for his hand-wear products amongst a heavily segmented market. Goss started selling his product to German, Spanish, and Italian retail customers.
He had his share of skeptics, however.
“I’ve had so many people say along the way say ‘Oh, you can’t make money selling gloves, you can’t do that, you’ll never make it,’” Goss said. “It took a long time to gain traction. It took a lot of persistence.”
As he continued to resource these businesses and expand even further into Europe, Asia, and Canada, he gained the capitol needed to finally penetrate the U.S. market.
Some might say the rest is history.
“We’re in over 40 countries in the world and we’re moving into a potential market leader position,” Goss reported. “There are big companies that own massive portions of the industry that POW competes in and we’re on everybody’s map. No one can slow us down because we’re tenacious and we’re persistent and we’re passionate about what we build, about what we produce, and about who we sell it to.”
The company has excelled because of this passion and persistence. POW secured a long-pursued partnership with GoreTex a few years ago, gaining tremendous brand momentum as a result. In the 2010/11 fiscal year, the company sold over 100,000 pairs of gloves, according to their annual report.
“We’ve worked really hard to build one product line that will resonate across the globe,” Goss said. “We’re speaking to the customers who we truly believe are POW-type customers and it’s the same person in Japan, it’s the same person in Korea, it’s the same person in New Zealand, it’s the same person in Canada, Italy, and Germany.”
These distinct, POW-type customers – typically ages 13-35 – help create the compelling marketing message around which Goss builds the company’s brand.
“I wanted to create a brand that would be an intrinsic identifier of anybody who wore it. If someone is wearing the POW brand, it is an intrinsic identifier of their internal aggression for the mountain. It’s that person who is sitting in their office looking out the window going ‘Oh, it’s raining, that’s terrible. But it’s snowing in the mountains; I can’t wait to go to the mountains this weekend.’”
The branding efforts don’t stop with POW-type customers. According to Goss, even the retailers they work with contribute to the image of the company.
“We are almost 100% in the small ma and pop specialty retailers,” Goss explained. Upon initial establishment with the retailer, Goss will identify the type of customer that comes through their door and then recommend 6-10 of his models. The retailer easily takes it from there.
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