From Expedition Gear to the Street and the Runway: How Canada Goose Used Hollywood to Become a Hit

Once counterfeits and too many identical jackets on the street have burned off the novelty and the cool, how does Canada Goose keep the brand alive? UGG, Timberland and Havaianas flip-flops, which rose the same way, all face the same question.

"I'm so f***ing cold, I need a Canada Goose," the American rapper Lil Uzi Vert sings in "Canadian Goose." Saint Laurent boots, a Maison Martin Margiela vest, Pokémon Go, a Cadillac, diamonds (grillz) — that is the kind of trendsetter the song's "I" is.

In New York, Toronto and Beijing, the trendsetters in that song are wearing Canada Goose down jackets that average more than $800. They are following a long line of celebrities and public figures: Emma Stone, Rihanna, David Beckham and Lee Min-ho, and also Russian President Vladimir Putin and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Just as Canada Goose was turning from cold-weather workwear for a few professions into a hit with the mainstream market, it formally filed for an IPO on February 15, preparing to list in both the United States and Canada.

In fiscal 2016 its sales reached $290 million. In 2008 it was still a small brand selling less than $20 million a year.

How does a niche brand that spent more than fifty years in obscurity get from there to here in about a decade?

Under "strengths," its prospectus says: "For more than a decade, we have helped explorers, scientists, athletes and filmmakers work in extreme cold... These 'Goose People' are our brand ambassadors." That point comes first — ahead of "rigorous quality," "made in Canada," "a flexible supply chain," "multi-channel sales" and "a passionate, dedicated management team."

Worth underlining: "filmmakers."

Without the interplay between Hollywood's star power and pop culture, Canada Goose probably would not have grown this fast. Its 2012 revenue was 40 times what it had been 11 years earlier, and over the past two years it has still been growing at a compound annual rate of 38%.

As early as the 1990s, Canada Goose began making friends with the film industry, sending jackets to crews shooting in Canada or other frigid places. The American actress Gabrielle Union said: "Since I started working in film in 1996, Canada Goose has been around me most winters. To this day I have never been on a shoot where there wasn't a Canada Goose jacket somewhere on set."

Around 2003, Canada Goose became the "designated workwear" for big-budget productions shooting in extreme cold. X2: X-Men United, filmed in Canada at the time, was one. Because her costume was too thin, Canada Goose even custom-made an ankle-length down coat for Rebecca Romijn, who played Mystique — a style that went on to become one of its best sellers.

While shooting Kill Your Darlings in New York, the director Rose Ganguzza worried that the cast and crew would get sick from the cold and, by one account, cold-called Canada Goose; in the end everyone on the production was outfitted in the brand's jackets. The coat never appeared on screen, but the effect was still large, as the behind-the-scenes photos show. Paparazzi tailing the film's lead, Daniel Radcliffe, that winter often caught him in a Canada Goose. This was not a one-off: Emma Stone started wearing the jacket while filming The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and has been photographed in Canada Goose on the street ever since.

The jacket was not only off-screen workwear. It finally made it onto the screen itself: in two 2004 blockbusters, The Day After Tomorrow and National Treasure, it appeared as costume and showed its logo. Jessica Alba wore it in Good Luck Chuck, Kate Beckinsale in Whiteout. It became part of the scenery: when a lead put on that heavy coat with the Antarctic logo patch, the audience understood that the scene was set somewhere brutally cold.

2013 was the turning point. Not only because Bain Capital bought a majority stake in the company, but also because of a run of marketing moves — the two may well have fed each other.

Early that year the supermodel Kate Upton wrapped herself in a short white down jacket for the cover of Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue. Past covers had always been "swimsuit plus beach"; this one was "swimsuit plus outerwear plus glacier," and it drew extra attention to Canada Goose. The cover-story video for the issue on Sports Illustrated's YouTube channel has more than 4 million views.

Canada Goose CEO Dani Reiss called that appearance a "milestone" for the brand.

In 2013's Man of Steel, Amy Adams in a Canada Goose somehow came to stand for a look.

"I wanted Lois [the character Amy Adams plays] to look like a very intelligent, very capable modern woman," said Michael Wilkinson, the film's costume designer. "We specifically researched what real investigative reporters wear in the field and in the office, then changed it a little to build Lois's wardrobe, pairing a Canada Goose parka with tough boots."

On exactly how Canada Goose gets onto a set, the company is vague. "It depends on the relationship [between the production and the brand]," chief marketing officer Jackie Poriadjian-Asch told Fashionista. Sometimes, she said, a production's logistics people or stylists ask; films with bigger budgets order jackets for the whole crew.

"We don't find a group of celebrities, send them coats and say, 'Please wear this,'" Poriadjian-Asch said. Canada Goose's staff might not phrase it that way, but the jackets have in fact gone to Hollywood's hottest stars and its most important directors and crew. The comedian Amy Schumer has admitted she started wearing hers because she was given it, not because she bought it.

That same year, after sponsoring the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada Goose became an official sponsor of Sundance. It made 300 down jackets for the festival's jurors and competing filmmakers. "The unofficial coat of film crews working in extreme cold" was the slogan at the time.

The director Matthew Bate did not really want to wear one; it felt like chasing a trend. "I feel a bit stupid [in it]... but it's warmer than my other coats." The Berlin Film Festival, held every February, is just as cold, and Canada Goose sponsored it from 2014 to 2016. If any of those filmmakers becomes famous one day, work photos or personal snapshots of them in a Canada Goose may well surface. It is a shrewd investment.

South Koreans are said to have become Canada Goose customers fairly early. They liked buying the jackets to take home, which may be why the brand picked the Busan International Film Festival in Asia. It is also why you see so many Korean stars shot on the street in Canada Goose, and why it turned up in hit dramas like The Heirs.

It is worth pointing out that the first company to turn the down jacket into a commercial luxury was not Canada Goose but Moncler, which started out as professional ski wear. Bringing outsourced production back to European factories, pulling out of sporting-goods stores and moving into high-end department stores, improving the design and the fabrics — after a makeover led by the Italian businessman Remo Ruffini, Moncler came back to life.

Then came capsule collaborations with Junya Watanabe and with Nicolas Ghesquière, then creative director of Louis Vuitton, plus a former Valentino creative director on board. Moncler became "the new Burberry" and, that year, "the sexiest coat around." In 2013 it went public in Italy at a valuation of 3.7 billion euros.

As you can see, Moncler also had to attach itself to fashion, and the quickest way to do that is to win over the people who decide what fashion talks about. On that point, the story of how Canada Goose made its name is no different in kind (though its collaborations with the trendy labels Vetements and Opening Ceremony came only after it was already a hit). The difference is simply that Canada Goose got closer to Hollywood.

Hollywood has always decided what fashion talks about. Without Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe modeling them on screen, Levi's might have stayed working-class dress in the American West, unlikely to be tied to "cool" or "sexy," unlikely to sell so well for so long.

Then there is Ray-Ban, a sunglasses brand born for the cockpit. You could say its first "model" was Douglas MacArthur, but there is no denying that without the $50,000 a year it spent on film placements, it might not have survived the competition — the outsized disco frames of the 1970s, the designer sunglasses of the 1980s. After placements in Top Gun, Rain Man and The Breakfast Club, its sales climbed year after year to 1.5 million pairs.

Timberland was made hot in the early 1990s by the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan. The rappers wore the boots — designed for blue-collar workers who worked outdoors — not only in winter but in summer. They put Timberland in their lyrics and wore the boots on album covers. Before that the boots had sold decently, but only because they were practical. Now the big yellow boot is part of street culture.

More recent examples of this path to popularity — a functional product for a specific, small group, tied to certain situations, "remade" by the entertainment industry and celebrities into something the mass market buys as a token of "fashion" and "trend" — are UGG and Havaianas flip-flops.

This time, though, exposure in Hollywood films was no longer what set them off. Opinion leaders and street-style photography became the new way to decide what fashion talks about.

UGG boots started out as a functional product too. In Australia people pushed their feet into UGGs after surfing, to dry off and stay warm. In 1994 USA Today ran a photo of the actress Pamela Anderson wearing UGG boots between takes on Baywatch, then a huge hit — the contrast between "beautiful woman" and "ugly boot" brought the brand its first peak of attention. In 2003 UGG's parent, Deckers, started sending product to Oprah Winfrey. The "Queen of Talk" loved the "ugly shoes": besides buying pairs for her own staff, she put UGG on "Oprah's Favorite Things" and recommended the boots to her audience on the show. Add UGG's "limited edition" scarcity marketing, and it took off beyond stopping.

Plenty of people think they are ugly, but that has not kept the boots from eventually winning over the fashion world — in fact the split verdict and the arguing helped push them along. The flip-flop carries the same "casual, comfortable, who cares" attitude as the UGG.

Havaianas, the Brazilian brand and the first in the world to mass-produce rubber flip-flops, started out cheap and practical. By the 1990s it was close to a national brand in Brazil, though not nearly as well known abroad. It improved the design, slimmed the silhouette, added colors and patterns, and tried to make the flip-flop something people could wear well beyond the house.

Around 2000, Havaianas repositioned itself and raised its prices fourfold. Because both the price and the image had moved up, wearing a pair no longer felt like a comedown for a celebrity. The brand went after the most influential people in fashion and in Hollywood. In 1999 it appeared on Jean Paul Gaultier's runway. In 2003 a pair turned up in the "gift bag" handed to nominees in the main Oscar categories.

You can guess the rest: more runways, and paparazzi shots of Jennifer Aniston out in Havaianas. The company rode the momentum into expensive flip-flops set with Swarovski crystals or made with luxury names like Charlotte Olympia, aimed at high earners with large followings. The "ugly duck boot" (L.L. Bean) that is popular right now has taken a somewhat similar route.

But there is a difference between recent hits like Canada Goose, the duck boot, UGG and Havaianas and earlier ones like Levi's and Ray-Ban: Hollywood used to shape fashion mainly through the screen; now it mostly happens off it.

That is one big reason Canada Goose showed up early in box-office hits like National Treasure and The Day After Tomorrow without becoming an overnight name. Before the 2013 "explosion," its success, its reputation and its sales were built up bit by bit. Besides film placements and off-screen exposure — celebrities at work, celebrities in private — Canada Goose later also put more money into SEO and SEM advertising (search engine optimization and search engine marketing).

"Our brand was built on street visibility and word of mouth," CMO Poriadjian-Asch said. If you know that street-style photography has become a trade that moves the fashion industry, that will not surprise you. Street style has also produced a crop of ordinary people who dress up and pose for the cameras as fashion bloggers. Still, most people care more about what celebrities eat, wear and use: Vogue picks "the best-dressed celebrities in street style" every year, and Vanity Fair keeps an annual best-dressed list covering both street shots and event photos.

The public's curiosity about — and appetite for peeking at — celebrities offstage and off screen did not appear overnight. In the 1960s Ron Galella, the "father of the Hollywood paparazzi," chased Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and socialites such as Jacqueline Kennedy, and invented celebrity street photography. It was not only scandal and gossip; what they ate, wore and used became something the public loved to chew over.

In recent years, as social media and smartphones have spread, it has become far easier to follow a celebrity's every move. Sometimes no paparazzi are needed: the stars "generously" post their own lives — catching a flight in sunglasses, running on the street, playing with the pets at home.

That has given brands an opening, and they want to be part of those lives. Compared with the carefully staged studio shots brands put out, these offhand, lived-in photos feel more believable to fans — and a phone can obviously satisfy the impulse to buy right away.

So: Oscar gift bags, Grammy gift bags, Tony gift bags. Countless small, unknown brands fight over these sponsorships as a ticket in. Fancy toilet paper, condoms, spa treatments — if a big star happens to use one, the brand seems to ascend to heaven overnight. In Hollywood some PR firms have built a business out of brokering exactly this: lining up sponsors for the gift baskets at major events, or using their contacts to send gifts straight to celebrities (celebrity gifting).

But a celebrity's endorsement is no cure-all. Canada Goose, UGG, Havaianas and Timberland were all 20- to 50-year-old companies before they got hot. Surviving that long is evidence in itself that their quality had been recognized within a small group or a small market. That was the base their numbers rested on, and when they pushed into the mass market or the fashion world, a history like "serving outdoor adventurers for more than a decade" became the strength they used to play the quality card and hold a premium.

Each of these brands also happened to catch a trend of its moment — Levi's jeans and the counterculture of the 1960s; Timberland and the rise of 1990s hip-hop; Canada Goose and "athleisure," clothes made for the outdoors and for skiing now worn to the office and around cities that are nowhere near that cold, the same way people wear lululemon yoga pants to run errands and see friends.

According to Morgan Stanley data, annual sales of sportswear and athleisure have reached $270 billion and will keep growing at 30% through 2020. And judging by UGG and Havaianas flip-flops in recent years, people increasingly want comfort and function itself from what they wear and carry.

Because they were built around "meeting a need" in the first place, these products look simple and do not date easily — though they rarely dazzle anyone at first sight either. That is why they need pop culture, and stars above all, to lend them some extra charm.

The halo of a celebrity can certainly become an important part of a brand's story, but there is other support behind it — a tight cultural tie to the country of origin, for one. Like Canada Goose, Havaianas rests much of its identity on where it was born. Havaianas says it uses Brazilian rubber; after the overhaul, its wide range of colors also matched what consumers picture when they picture Brazil.

Canada Goose's supply chain and production are entirely in Canada, which is where its confidence to hold a high premium, and even to raise prices, comes from. "I know a lot of brands have lost some of their 'soul' by outsourcing production to Asia... What's the point of differentiation then? What's special about the brand?" CEO Dani Reiss said in an interview. "Made in Canada" is the position it has given itself.

UGG Australia takes its raw material from Australia, and though the boots are made in China, the name easily leaves consumers with the impression of "made in Australia." Never mind Levi's, Timberland or Ray-Ban: ever since they entered the language of pop culture they have stood for the American spirit.

Bloomberg Businessweek called the way Levi's, Ray-Ban and Timberland lean on pop culture in their marketing "mass authenticity." "The best example is Land Rover — it survived a transformation, became a badge of status, and still kept what it was."

These brands hold a consistent set of values and a consistent image, have plain founding stories, and are glad to talk about how they make things, what they make them from, and where. Many still insist on manufacturing where they always did, which is a form of authenticity in itself. And it is better still if the story also mentions how they have helped protect the environment or given work to low-income people nearby.

"It's like a person who thinks things through and makes their own decisions. Everything they do follows from their own morals and beliefs." Glenn Carroll, a professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, used that comparison for "authenticity" in business. "No one can tell the story you can. That's the ultimate strategy a company can have." Euromonitor International also named it one of the top 10 consumer trends of 2017: consumers like hearing a brand's true story.

Looking back, brands like Canada Goose look as if they became trends by accident, but many threads run behind that. What is beyond doubt is the part Hollywood played in setting off the market.

Still, once counterfeits and too many identical jackets on the street have burned off the novelty and the cool, some companies suffer: UGG's parent, Deckers, has watched its results slide, while others, like Ray-Ban, get swallowed by a bigger company, or, like Jaguar Land Rover, give up the "made in Britain" DNA.

How to keep that life in the brand is a real question for Canada Goose as it heads into the capital markets.

Cover image from Douban Movie, the Canada Goose website, the Moncler website, the Havaianas Blog and others.