Recco FW20/21 Snow Safety Preview

Retail Buyers Guide: Snow Safety FW20/21

Brand: Recco
Interviewee: Manuel Dürmoser, Global Brand & Marketing

What are the major trends in the snow safety market next Fall/Winter?
All the emergency gear gets improved constantly and more user friendly, whether it is Transceivers, shovels, and probe or airbags, they become easier to use, more durable and lighter, and we see more and more products equipped with RECCO reflectors as well. Like Nixon adding a Backpack with reflectors and also Burton adding reflectors to more of their products

More education and making snow safety education accessible to the people, for example the Safety Shred Days organized by Victor Daviet or the SAAC camps in Austria, all these events enable skiers and snowboarders to get educated about snow safety and train with their rescue gear.

What do customers expect from their snow safety equipment?
That it works, lasts and is intuitive to use, they trust it to work.

How are you segmenting your snow safety products and what are the main price points in each segment?
Since RECCO is a Rescue Equipment System we equip and train organized rescuers worldwide with our search units (RECCO Detector), for the consumer we offer rescue reflectors (RECCO Reflector) that are integrated in snow gear like jackets, pants, boots and helmets, so one becomes searchable and can be located by the rescuers using the RECCO Detectors.

To support and accelerate the roll out of our RECCO SAR helicopter detector, which will be used to look for a missing person from a helicopter year-round, we have launched RECCO rescue reflector products for consumers. The reflectors are available as a sticker for helmets, can be looped to your backpack or are integrated in our own belts. The price point starts at 25 Euros with the helmet reflector and the belt is at 50 Euros, it includes also two reflectors. These price points also reflect the value of an integrated RECCO rescue reflector in other equipment.

AVALANCHE BACKPACKS
What are the most important technologies/features in your avalanche backpacks?
Some avalanche backpacks come with integrated RECCO reflectors for additional safety to be always searchable to organized rescue. E.g. Ferrino and Millet Backpacks.

Which features set you apart from other brands? Do you offer anything new and outstanding next season?
Still exciting news is the ongoing roll out of the RECCO SAR Helicopter Detector, which evolves the RECCO rescue system from avalanche rescue to year-round search and rescue for missing people in the outdoors. Which means this new Detector will be used by helicopter to search wide areas fast, 1km² can be search within 6 Minutes. We had presented the vision of this new search unit the first time in 2015. Since then the roll-out is ongoing and further technical developments have happened.

Now we have 15 units out and operative in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and Austria. Austria was the first country covered to 100%, meaning the police is equipped with 4 units and now at any case a person is missing in the outdoors, they will research whether the person has a RECCO rescue reflector and if yes apply the RECCO SAR detector for the rescue mission.

During 2019 first RECCO SAR detectors were place in USA (Utah and Montana) and CAN (British Columbia)

The roll out is constantly moving and more units will be placed in the Alps, USA, CAN and Scandinavia soon, with the goal to provide coverage where it is needed.

AVALANCHE EQUIPMENT (TRANSCEIVER, PROBE, SHOVEL)
What are the most important technologies/features in your avalanche equipment (shovel, probe, transceiver)? Do you offer anything new and outstanding next season?
All avalanche transceivers from Ortovox are equipped with RECCO reflectors. Ortovox started in 2013 integrating rescue reflectors into transceivers following the philosophy that all means should be used in case things go wrong, giving organized rescue an additional option to locate a buried person electronically. So, if for any reason the transceiver signal cannot be picked up, organized rescue has a second chance and can apply the RECCO search before probe-lining the whole avalanche debris.

How are you helping retailers sell the avalanche equipment and educate customers (POS displays, etc.)?
We offer a RECCO sign (20×20 cm) showing an illustration of our system, it is the same we use in ski-resorts to inform that the resort is equipped with RECCO Detectors, it is just smaller. We also offer on snow education and clinics together with our partner brands to retailers, where we bring mountain rescue experts to explain the system and how they use RECCO detectors.

We also offer a simple tool for sales education called, RECCO in 3 points:

The interactive pdf can be downloaded here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/amacvtytub40pg9/RECCO%20in%203%20points_onepager%2BFAQ_ENG_2020.pdf?dl=0

Do you offer any other products in the category snow safety (like detector/ reflector) besides the traditional avalanche safety products?
RECCO Reflectors usually come integrated in all kind of snow gear. Due to the development that comes with the RECCO SAR Helicopter Detector, our goal is to equip more people faster and give more people the option to become searchable. Therefore, we decided to also introduce RECCO reflectors for consumers, that can be attached to any helmet or backpack. We will also offer an outdoor belt with integrated reflectors. We will continue to focus on our B2B business, because we are convinced that it is the best way to be “naturally” searchable through the gear you use, however by adding the offer of attachable reflectors we want to enable more outdoor enthusiast to become searchable and it gives us the opportunity to show the monetary value of a RECCO rescue reflector.

Please name and describe 3 highlight items from your FW 20/21 collection.

RECCO SAR Helicopter Detector network growing in USA and CAN and the Alps
RECCO Rescue Reflectors for consumers: Helmet, Backpack, Belt