A Victim of its own self-absorption - Anonymous employee Icebreaker Employee Review

Way too much emphasis on Individual sales' statistics and not enough of the heart and passion that founded and built the company. They also don't listen to what I believed were very valid employee concerns from others and myself and has this unwarranted 'God-Complex' about its product. Icebreaker treat staff not as humans but as sales assets. I understand that the goal of a business is to make money, but the amount of abuse and disrespect certain staff were receiving in my store was just unnecessary and cruel. Likewise, they blame their lack of profits on lack of staff competency, which really degrades individual and team morale. However, where I worked everybody was competent, but management would still always blame staff for any low-profit day. Instead, the major reason for relatively low-profits is that Icebreaker doesn't realise that it needs to advertise and appeal to the general public much more than it currently does. As I said, it has this 'God-Complex' about it, in which it believes it's super unique, special and niche. This is to the point where it doesn't advertise via traditional means. This is a way of asserting how 'different' and 'unique' it is. Likewise, its desire to be niche makes the products way too expensive for the majority of people. It has this false belief that all customers can be turned into buyers, but ignores the reality of most people not having enough money to buy its products. Thus, its only real target audience are those who know about the brand and those who can afford it. In other words, a significantly small number of people when compared to the volume of customers the adjacent Kathmandu and Mountain Designs were receiving.