Icebreaker is the little company that put New Zealand’s merino wool on the map. Nothing about the budding enterprise was conventional. When Icebreaker was ten years old, in 2005, a local reporter described its headquarters in Wellington, on New Zealand’s South Island, as having “the look and feel of a gigantic student party,” while founder Jeremy Moon was “wide-eyed and tousle-haired.” Yet behind this youth-oriented casualness, he was doing some serious rethinking about how a company should be in the world, and what modern enterprise should stand for.
Jeremy grew his company by making every step part of his own journey, in which a vision unfolded first in consciousness and then took shape in the real world of business. His is the story of a young man who had a single experience that changed his life. Today Icebreaker is a massive team effort, focused on building the most sustainable clothing business in the world. It uses beautiful, renewable, biodegradable merino wool sourced from the Southern Alps of New Zealand. As Jeremy sees it, this effort is wholly true to that first experience that ignited his enthusiasm.
WHEN I STARTED Icebreaker, I was twenty-four, broke, and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But I was driven by a passion for what I saw was possible, and a belief that I could make it happen. That passion was ignited by a meeting with a merino sheep farmer. Across the dining table, he threw me a T-shirt made from a merino wool fabric he’d designed himself. It felt soft and sensuous and nothing like regular wool. The shirt could be washed in the washing machine rather than by hand; it was silky and soft rather than itchy, and it felt light instead of heavy.
I thought, “Wow! This is an amazingly beautiful, practical, natural material. This is a product I could sell around the world.” You see, from the first moment, I imagined myself flying around the globe and having a great time. I had no idea how a business based on merino wool could work, but I had a strong feeling that I could make it happen. My training is in cultural anthropology and marketing, so I was interested in the meaning of objects, and I knew how to develop plans for bringing ideas alive.
I buried myself for two months in my bedroom, setting out how I could build an international brand from New Zealand. This took vision. New Zealand isn’t a great place to build a company from—no one knows where we are, and we don’t have any neighbors. But it’s a great place to live and connect with the world. My business plan set out the basic steps that would have to happen to turn this dream into a reality. Who would be on the team? How would we raise money? How could we set up manufacturing and sell our products?
I screwed up the courage to quit my job and borrow seed money. The going was slow. It took five years to get a sense of what I was doing. Those years were pure desire and perseverance. I put in huge amounts of hard work and faced equally huge amounts of frustration and angst. I worked seventy to one hundred hours a week. I had to commit myself totally to the business because if it failed, I would have been bankrupt. Never once did I lose my ability to see the big picture. I never doubted that it was possible to succeed. My mantra was “This will work if I don’t screw it up.” I took full responsibility for my future.
I’ve learned a few things about leadership over the past fifteen years, and I’d like to share them with you. For me, leadership has been an evolving journey. Someone once told me that when you’re running your own business, you have more breakthroughs and breakdowns in a month than most people have in a year. It certainly felt like that to me. Every few years I’ve had to critically review my own performance and that of the business to find better ways to lead the people I work with, and to provide better products for our customers.
I didn’t start off wanting to be a leader. Rather, I connected with merino wool fiber on a deep level because of my identity as a New Zealander, my love of adventure, and my belief in nature. Leadership began when I had to enroll others in the Icebreaker concept. Money wasn’t everything. I wanted people who cared and could help me. I had the ideas and the belief, but I didn’t have the experience or the wisdom. Friends introduced me to their fathers who had been successful in business. One of them, a banker, asked me where my financials were. “What are financials?” I said. He offered to show me, and after three weeks of coaching, we had our first financial projections.
An early investor taught me how important employees were in business. I discovered it was critical to make everyone feel a part of Icebreaker, and I learned to run it as an extended family business. This appealed to me because I come from a strong family, and I wanted something that people could share in.
I put more than half of my initial capital into design. People thought I was mad, but more than anything else I wanted to create a deep, guiding brand story that was true and real. It was the story of a fiber grown on an animal that lived in the mountains of New Zealand, a fiber that could be developed into a clothing system that enabled people to go back into the mountains and reconnect with nature. We mined this deep and powerful cycle to create a compelling visual story that inspired the creation of the product. I loved it. I felt alive. My creativity was awakening.
For a country known for three things–adventure, natural beauty, and sheep—it’s ironic that the entire outdoor clothing market in New Zealand was dominated by synthetics based on polyester and polypropylene. Why couldn’t we wear something natural? Merino was a high-performance technical fiber that no one knew about. This was a great possibility, but the barriers to entry were huge. When I stepped into the marketplace, synthetics were king and wool was dead. It was up to me to convince people otherwise.
My first employee was Michelle Mitchell, a good friend who had such confidence in what I was doing that she gave up her law career to join me. Together we began to develop the core values of the business. Michelle told me, “A person with integrity is the same person at work as they are at play.” I found this idea inspiring and immediately committed myself to putting it at the heart of Icebreaker. We opened ourselves to information from all sides. Our retailers taught us about the garment industry and gave me feedback on what worked and what didn’t. Our suppliers taught us how to make clothes, how to use a warehouse, and how to deliver our goods. I was also learning from the other people who were joining the business. Some nights I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. I felt my mind and soul expanding.
We chewed through most of our capital the first year and had forty retail customers by the second year, when the first revenue started coming in. In our third year three more employees were added, all young and inexperienced. Nothing seemed to work out the way we wanted it to, and everything was difficult. There were frustrations and tears, and lots and lots of late nights. But we were determined that Icebreaker would succeed. Slowly we learned how to work together as a team. We started experimenting with styling. We’d put garments on the table and arrange chopped-up bits of fabric on top to see what they looked like. Not surprisingly, our initial styling was very simple, but there was a certain beauty in that: it was honest, it was functional, and the fabric looked and felt beautiful.
We knew we were onto something special because our customers kept coming back for more. They told us their Icebreaker garments felt fantastic, worked brilliantly, lasted for ages, and were the best things they’d ever worn. A major change came when we started adding color to our products. I know, it’s unbelievable that a clothing company didn’t realize that color was important. Our first garments were blue and white, and then we added green, red, and black. (“Who’s going to buy black?” I said. Now it’s our best-selling color.)
As we grew, we discovered that when lightweight merino garments are worn together, air is trapped in between each layer, increasing the level of insulation—the layers lock together like a single garment, only warmer. It was a breakthrough, and it inspired us to evolve Icebreaker from an underwear range to a full layering system. Fifteen years on we now have offices in eight countries, we buy one quarter of the fine merino wool produced in New Zealand, we export our clothing to thirty countries, and we have millions of customers around the world. I’ve pledged that over the next fifteen years we will achieve extraordinary things and help reshape the face of business in the process.
For me, leadership started off as passion for an idea. Now it’s about inspiring others to unlock their potential. I’m proud to say that the key people who built Icebreaker with me in those early days are still critical parts of the business. Another 250 employees have joined them. It’s this team, along with our suppliers, customers, and our core values, that will determine what Icebreaker will become in the future.
After recounting his journey with Icebreaker, Jeremy analyzed his experience of being a leader using the acronym L-E-A-D-E-R-S. His response was detailed and inspiring at the same time.
Look and listen: At the outset I asked myself two essential questions: whom should we listen to, and why? The product didn’t exist yet, so I had to listen to what was happening around me. Icebreaker’s customers wanted a product that was real and authentic. They told us they wanted clothing that was high performance and built to last, that would help them reconnect to nature.
I discovered our customers liked sharing their knowledge with a young person who was hungry to learn. My first customer told me that I was a good listener. Being a good listener was a win/win situation, and a great way to build a relationship.
I also listened to Icebreaker’s board of directors, which meets for half a day once a month. They asked the big questions: What will Icebreaker look like in three years’ time? Are we investing enough in the future? What is the internal health of the organization? What strategic issues need to be addressed? When I was deep in the trenches of the day-to-day detail of running a business, those questions made me focus on the bigger picture. For me, leadership has always been about asking the right questions to trigger the next evolution.
The volume of questions slowed down as the picture became clearer and I developed my ability to lead others, but it’s still crucial to ask sharper, deeper questions. What is really important? How can a business contribute to society? How can an organization be a vehicle of consciousness? The evolving journey never ends; therefore you can never stop looking and listening.
Emotional Bonding: The world has gotten faster, and there are many more technologies, but business hasn’t really changed that much. It’s all about relationships. Icebreaker’s relationships are with suppliers, retailers, and customers. We don’t advertise, and yet we’ve managed to build a good-sized business based just on positive word of mouth.
We depend upon building an emotional bond. One way was by setting up Baacode, a program that lets customers trace the fiber in their garment all the way back to the sheep station where it was grown. Because it’s transparent, Baacode allows us to set standards through the supply chain on quality, environmental stewardship, and the treatment of animals and people.
Our internal relationships are also very important to me. Icebreaker’s first employees were friends, people I got on well with already. We were all a bit crazy and shared a sense of adventure. I became very conscious of the impact each new person had on the team. New people had to be able to get on with the existing group. We didn’t want everyone to be the same, but we wanted a real synergy between people.
We have an incredibly vibrant and fun culture at Icebreaker. It’s very creative; there’s a strong sense of spirit and purpose. My job is to ensure that we treasure this culture and never take it for granted. It’s going to get harder as we grow over time to become a billion-dollar company, but I know it can be done. When I reflect on the role of leadership in emotional bonding, it comes back to one central idea: how can others be allowed to contribute? People give their full commitment to a business only when they feel they’re genuinely a part of it.
Awareness: Leadership requires you to be conscious of your impact on other people. In a great book he coauthored called The Leader’s Way, the Dalai Lama talks about first finding the right view and then finding the right way. An awareness of the right view is critical in business: it’s easy to look from one angle, but you need almost a 360-degree view. And then the right way indicates the right thing to do, based on your values, your ethics, and the purpose of the business. At Icebreaker, we have a process that helps us integrate our perspective. When we’re creating new products or new systems, we seek out the views of everyone who is affected. The best decisions we make have a complete view of what’s going on, and that reveals the right way.
My biggest shift in awareness came when I started seeing Icebreaker as a business model. We call our model Ecosystem, because it balances ecology, economy, and resources. Our objective is profitable sustainability. When you are truly aware, you see that the future has to be based on sustainable enterprises, which is what Icebreaker has been from the beginning.
Doing: Dream and do: that’s the right order when it comes to action. It’s hard to have a meaningful life if we’re just doing. As for dreaming without doing, I don’t know anyone who has become successful without purposeful hard work. It’s the combination that inspires people and connects them with their dharma, their purpose. I dream of Icebreaker being the global leader in sustainability and the cleanest clothing company in the world. We can demonstrate that it’s possible to build a successful business while feeling proud of who you are, what you can contribute, and what the business does.
For me, a dream starts as a possibility. Slowly, the possibility grows and turns into a wave of energy—a feeling of being aligned with the purpose of my life. This takes practice and trust. My intuition hasn’t let me down yet. The successful people I know rely on their gut. They analyze the facts, but then they go deep into themselves and wait for the answers to emerge—maybe in the middle of the night, maybe in the shower, maybe when they’re playing tennis or drinking wine with friends. That’s why it’s so important to trust yourself to recognize the feeling deep inside before you leap into action. Doing is based on consciousness.
Empowerment: When you lead a business, empowerment is about allowing the people you work with to find their own power. That’s spiritual power, creative power, judgment, mental power, and influence over others. Empowerment motivates others to contribute. They feel valued and realize that they can make a difference. I want others to sense a rising power within themselves. If this power is positive, they will stay loyal to you and the organization. If the power is negative, or is motivated only by money, you will be traded in for a better offer.
Early on, we got the culture right at Icebreaker, so everything has evolved positively. It’s a network of authentic relationships. Openness, directness, and honesty create true empowerment within an organization, and then the business will go on to achieve great things. You also have to know when to give up power. To achieve Icebreaker’s long-term potential, I’ve had to shift the power base away from me to my management team. Seven years ago, when I was making this change, I asked a management consultant how he thought I was doing as CEO. He said, “You’re not a CEO. You tell people what to do, and you’ve got all these one-to-one relationships. How can you create a network of relationships within the business so that other people can work out what to do for themselves?”
That was a challenging thing for me to hear, but it was also a turning point. When I first started Icebreaker, I had to do everything myself. It was hard to let go, and the business grew slowly as a result. It took us four years to get to five million dollars in revenues, and I was the constraining force. Two years later Icebreaker was taking in twenty million dollars. What happened in between? I learned how to delegate. I came to see my role as finding the right people and giving them the power to take over the functions I used to think only I could handle. Five years later the business hit over one hundred million dollars, and it’s been growing strongly ever since.
Empowering others is a way of saying you trust their judgment and their ability to perform. You are giving them the space to express themselves. Icebreaker is all about our people. As its leader I can’t let that slip away. Products come and go, but our company culture must remain strong, healthy, open, honest and energetic if we are going to succeed in the long term.
Responsibility: I used to think that responsibility was a burden. Now I know it’s the freedom to choose. When you’re running a business, you’re making decisions about how to grow that business ethically. That means entering into the unknown, which always carries a degree of risk. There are two types of risk: responsible risk and reckless risk. I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve always had a sense of adventure. People think I’m a risk taker, but I’m not. The risks I take with Icebreaker have been calculated ones. I’ve made an assessment, taken the right view, and then acted, knowing that the risks were responsible. For a leader, not taking any risks is abdicating responsibility. But so is failing to let go and assigning others the power to take their own risks.
For me, this has been a maturing process. I take responsibility for our products and our brand, and for making sure we’re heading in the right direction. But the business isn’t everything. People look and listen to the CEO, so I need to be conscious of my behavior and how it affects others. With that in mind, I take responsibility for my well-being. I have to find the right balance between work, love, and play. If all of us can keep these three areas evolving continually, we’ll be leading a rich, harmonious life.
Synchronicity: Entrepreneurs often talk about synchronicity. We share a sense of being in the right place at the right time, but it’s more than that. Along the way we’ve found ourselves looking for something, frustrated by a problem we can’t solve, and then a solution suddenly dawns. A chance meeting introduced me to merino wool. That meeting enabled me to connect internationally and to live the kind of life I want to live. A chance meeting, the intention to do something, or the desire to solve a problem—the mysterious way that synchronicity weaves our lives into a pattern is a common theme for people who find a way to be in control of their own destiny.
I feel most “in the zone” when synchronicity is linked with inner purpose: my ability to create intensifies, and so does my ability to inspire others. I’m not always there, but when I am, it feels great. The secret is not to hold on too hard or get too attached to the outcome. Being open to new possibilities makes us feel alive. When we are in touch with our creativity, it’s important to listen to how that feels. I believe that synchronicity is generated from that place. Be open to it. Don’t be afraid to declare what your soul desires. Attach your intention to it, and be willing to see where it leads. Unless you are connected to a sense of meaning that is totally personal to you, synchronicity can’t be really effective. Our ability to engage with our deepest meaning is at the heart of our ability to inspire and lead others. And it’s the very core of leadership.
When I was studying marketing at the university, I heard about a philosophy that changed my life: “To get what you want in business, you need to give others what they want.” It’s a variation on the Golden Rule, an ethical code that can be found in many world cultures: “Treat others as you would have them treat you.” To follow this way of thinking, you have to ask yourself a question: what do I want? For me if it was only about the money, forget it. Greed would take over, and I’d be destined to fail. Instead, I wanted the challenge of creating something bigger than myself, something others could contribute to.
How can business be a force for good? We need to challenge the old-school methodology of exploiting resources, the environment, and workers purely for profit. Imagine a society where business leaders are known for their ability to inspire others and create great companies rather than solely for their ability to make money. This is the type of society I want to live in, and this is the new breed of leaders I can see emerging around the world.