Did you want to change the marketing approach straight away? And why was it such a big focus for you?

To me [changing the women’s marketing] was one of the easy, no brainers. As a general rule, women are around 30 to 40 per cent of the market now and growing faster than the male segment. And at the very top end, they actually spend more per person per year than their male counterparts.

Even leaving aside the statistical attributes, this was a no brainer for me. I’ve got a wife who rides 2.5 – 3.5 hours every single day, never misses a day, I have 3 daughters who are runners and cyclists – so they spend a fair bit of time on the bike. Before they went off to university they went to an all girls school and I served for a good number of years on the board, and for four years as chairman. Living in a household of all women has definitely opened my eyes and my brain to the issues, broadly speaking, in society that women have to deal with differently to men.

So when I got to ASSOS, I said ‘look, women are just as important to us as male cyclists are, and we want to depict them in the same way we depict men – as athletes. And we want to develop products for them in just as thoughtful way as we develop products for men.’ I didn’t have any resistance to that at all. We’ve got a pretty good number of strong female riders working for Assos.

What were your first steps?

One of the things I did was take a sub set of the female riders at ASSOS, and asked the five of them to come up with a strategy and suggestions. They came from all over the business- marketing, production, finance – what they had in common was not only where they female riders, they were strong female riders.

I asked them to figure out what segments we need to make contact with, and how best to connect with them – how to send messages that are consistent with their culture and ours. I told them to imagine we were creating a brand new start up company, but using all the resource ASSOS has. Not surprisingly the five of them embraced that challenge with open arms. We’re still in the relatively early stages of putting that thought process into implementation.

What typically happens in athletic apparel companies when people say ‘the women’s side is growing’ – on the product side the product gets sized down and coloured in pink… and then in terms of messaging, it generally comes out with a softer, less competitive look and feel. So I said to my group ‘forget about what typically happens, you guys are all riders – how do you want the company to connect to you?’

We can see the marketing has made a huge about turn – can we expect to see the product range grow?

If you look at our women’s products, the shortcoming is that compared to the men’s side, it’s a lot smaller. It doesn’t cover as many different fits and as many different price points. It certainly covers the four climate levels. But in terms of technical development it’s fully equal to the men’s side. We are working on growing the range to really fill in so we have the same breadth and range.

What’s in the future for ASSOS?

We’re not ever going to be a mass market brand. We’re going to stay a premium brand, from a quality and pricing standpoint. We’re an authentic brand – a group of hardcore cyclists making really innovative apparel, for other passionate avid cyclists. That to me is the definition of an authentic brand. Staying a premium brand, that’s technically driven, we think that there’s opportunity for us to grow as much as 5 times whilst staying the same sandbox.

Below are just a few of the new ASSOS images now gracing screens, catalogues and magazine adverts – and you can see more on their Facebook page. 

Of course, we’ve no doubt many of you still have questions – in which case ASSOS are inviting you to ask them at their event at LookMumNoHands! on July 20 . To register your interest for the LMNH event, please email [email protected].