With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1508543
OCTOBER 2023 BCBUSINESS.CA 53 delivered a defective batch of foam, and hundreds of liners failed. The foam was packing out—the one thing it was never supposed to do. The company had to replace over 800 pairs that year for Italian OEM partner Dalbello, while the foam company denied any problem on its end. "Everything that could go wrong did go wrong," Watt explains. "So I took my last $200,000 American and bought this big, giant press in China." He struck a deal with a factory that made shoe midsoles to host the press, and scooped the former production manager from New Zealand to help reproduce the magic foam directly for Intuition. But they spent months getting it wrong. "One night, when I was quite drunk," Watt remembers, "I stood up in a restaurant in China, and there were like 200 or 300 people, none of them with us. I said, I'm going to make this foam here if it kills me!" By the skin of his teeth, he did, and Intuition finally had what Watt describes as a "very dependable, controlled supply of foam, with quality-control monitoring." All just up the road from where the liners were made. But there was one more hitch in the business's long-term success, and that was Watt himself. Over the years, despite the popular product he'd made and the deals he'd struck, he'd also peppered in lots of risky behav- iour. Like the time he fell in love with a woman half his age and bought her a $36,000 BMW within days of meeting her. "I believed that if she would only care about me the way I cared about her there would be this invisible wave spread around the world, and all the people in the middle of wars would just lay their weapons down and get to know the guy they'd been shooting," he says. Watt was diagnosed with bipolar disorder soon after, and went on medication. That was right before two heart attacks (a third would follow later). "Once I started to realize that it was all an illusion... yeah, it was frightening," Watt admits. But through that fog, he'd already made a plan. Years earlier he'd shared a split home with a mother and daughter, the latter of whom was in love with snowboarding. Crystal Maguire was 11 at the time, and her mom's best friend—who taught her how to snowboard—introduced Watt to the folks behind ThirtyTwo Snowboard Boots, which penned a deal with Intuition. After that, Maguire became like another daughter to Watt (by then he had two of his own). By her 17th birthday, Maguire was working three jobs to make ends meet. So, Watt offered her an alternative. "None of my kids were interested in the company," he explains, "and I needed a succession plan." Maguire started learning the business inside and out, trav- elling with him everywhere and eventually co-signing emails, moderating decisions and taking over the company. "By the time I got to the point physically where I couldn't get on a plane and fly to China anymore, Crystal was ready," Watt says, beaming. "Crystal has full executive authority. She doesn't have to deal with a board of directors. She's it." While it's been a slow passing of the baton, Maguire has matured the company in all of the ways Watt dreamed about. Today there's in-house sales, distribution, R&D and fully fleshed- out marketing. More, aftermarket sales are equal to the OEM side of the business now—fulfilling Watt's original vision. "It's so wonderful for Rob to still be here to see the success," Maguire says with affection in her voice for the now 80-year-old entrepreneur who took her under his wing. With close to 30 different models in its lineup, Intuition is now relaunching a more refined collection for winter 2023-24, and simplifying its offerings. In some ways, it's grown too much. While Intuition does a bit of advertising these days, Maguire says grassroots R&D and marketing are still central to its ethos; that's why it continues to use an in-house fitter, like Watt did back in the day. Being based so close to Whistler and having con- nections to the rest of B.C.'s bustling ski scene has been crucial to the brand's development. While sales are strongest in North America, Intuition is now sold in 16 countries, has over a dozen OEM partners and has become a multimillion-dollar company through the post-pandemic outdoor sports boom—doubling in size since the beginning of COVID. And though its name is synonymous with perfect-fitting boots, the real story is one of humility, determination and redemption. "I said many years ago, Intuition will be my legacy," Watt insists. "There will be nothing left behind of my good old dope- dealing days except fingerprints. And Intuition just came out of nowhere to save my ass, because I didn't want to go to jail and lose my four-year-old daughter." n " I said many years ago, Intuition will be my legacy. There will be nothing left behind of my good old dope-dealing days except fingerprints. And Intuition just came out of nowhere to save my ass, because I didn't want to go to jail and lose my four-year-old daughter." L E A D E R S H I P