Heber Rasmussen: Manager, Customer Experience, Innovation, and New Product Development

- Establish standards for customer experience by conducting research on customer behavior, expectations, needs, and brand + product interaction. - Lead innovation efforts by aligning near and long term projects to corporate strategy initiatives. - Lead front end discovery processes, establish innovation portfolio based customer insights and needs. - Manage external partnerships in design, research, and field testing. - Engage with end users to drive product development programs and timelines to deliver products that delight the user and drive revenue growth. - Seek, evaluate, recommend and develop opportunities for improved interaction between customers and products.

- Lead product strategy, roadmap, and marketing initiatives for professional product line worth over $100m. - Provide VOC to 3 cross-functional teams on innovation projects, establish innovation product portfolio, and determine NPD launch timing. - Conduct regular consumer insights research using quantitative and qualitative means, conduct surveys, personal interviews, and panel discussions. - Coordinate industrial design efforts, champion corporate design standards, manage external design resources and trend analysis agencies. - Update executive teams on project status updates, resolve concerns of various stakeholders. - Create go to market plans, engage with accounts, customers, and external marketing partners.

• Designed Klim's Adventure Motorcycle, Endurocross, Klim Tactical Systems, Footwear, Gloves, Layering and other product categories spanning the Klim product line. • Lead designers assigned across brands (Polaris, Klim) by training, mentoring and assigning tasks while maintaining aesthetic separation between brands. • Provided vision and direction for up to 9 designers including interns, designers, tech designers, and an outside contract designer. Manage workload, review deliverables, and provide input for employee reviews. • Collaborated closely with development and tech design to ensure product meets design intent. Review samples from all stages of development for design integrity and quality of manufacturing techniques. Visit factories on a regular basis to ensure that design/production standards are met. • Planned with Brand, Sales, Marketing and Production teams to identify new product opportunities. • Strategized with industry partners to identify emerging technologies to enhance product design and function. • Created seasonal color pallets and conduct color composition studies by style and category, evaluate lab dip samples and coordinate with color professionals from WL Gore to ensure colorfastness standards based on fabric characteristics. • Communicated with textile manufacturers to identify and develop materials to meet durability specifications. • Engaged personally with end users, racers, riders, field guides, test groups and retailers to improve products. • Researched to verify design strategy meets current trends and pushes the boundaries of design and innovation.