Big SkyFractional
Start with an Audit
Fractional Head of Product · Bozeman, Montana

Strategy to shelf.

I help founder-led outdoor and consumer brands build a product engine: the roadmap, the factory program, and the AI systems that run them. So the founder can stop being the product department.

Start with a Flywheel Audit Run the 2-minute diagnostic
Product StrategyRepeatable ProcessFactory OpsBuilt on AI
REI / Oboz / THULE / TETON Sports / Hilti / The Cold Life
15 years on factory floors in China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Cambodia
The problem

Most founders treat product like a black box.

Money goes in. You hope magic comes out.

If I asked your CFO what product development returned last year, could they answer? For sales they could. For marketing they could. Product is the black box.

EOS organizes your sales, your finance, your ops. Nobody organizes product. So the founder does it from memory, between everything else. And the box gets more expensive every season.

Opening the box is not complicated. It is a system: evidence before ideas, focus before development, gates before tooling, a launch date that inventory, channel, and story all hit together, and a feedback loop so next season starts smarter.

What the black box costs

  • 01 Tooling deposits on products that should have died at the sketch.
  • 02 Inventory bought against a forecast nobody believes.
  • 03 Launches that arrive after the product does.
  • 04 Factories that wait on the founder for every answer.
  • 05 The same mistakes, season after season, because nobody closed the loop.
Product does not break in one big way. It breaks in five specific ways, and they feed each other.
The Five Failures · a 2-minute self-check

Where is your product system leaking?

One question per stage of the wheel. Answer honestly and the gauge tells you where the leak is and what to fix first. Nothing is saved unless you choose to send it.

  1. 01
    Could your team pass a pop quiz on why your top product wins?Truth · building on evidence instead of opinion
  2. 02
    Did you kill anything last quarter before it cost real money?Focus · kill discipline beats idea volume
  3. 03
    When were you last surprised at tooling or at receiving?Build · stage gates, specs, a factory program that holds
  4. 04
    Did your last launch have inventory, channel, and story land on the same date?Launch · if one of the three misses, you did not launch
  5. 05
    Can anyone name what you learned from last season, with numbers?Learn · sell-through truth feeds next season
The Product Flywheel

Product is not a black box. It is a wheel. And a wheel is a machine you can fix.

The Product Flywheel is the operating system I install: the strategy work to set the roadmap, and the repeatable process that keeps it turning. Five causal stages, one axle, one gauge.

TEAM THE AXLE 1 Truth 2 Focus 3 Build 4 Launch 5 Learn Customer, brand, and margin evidence The few products that deserve the year Stage gates, specs, factory program Inventory, channel, story on the same date Sell-through truth feeds stage one THE GAUGE Forecast accuracy = flywheel RPM
  1. 1

    Truth What do the customer, the numbers, and the market actually say?

    Evidence before ideas. The Truth Sheet replaces "the founder thinks" with "the market shows."

  2. 2

    Focus Which few products deserve the year?

    Could is a list. Should is a strategy. Weak ideas go to the Parking Lot, where they can't hurt you.

  3. 3

    Build Gates before tooling.

    Stage gates, clean specs, and a factory program that holds up when you are not in the room.

  4. 4

    Launch Same date, or it wasn't a launch.

    Inventory, channel, and story land together. The launch plan starts at the same gate as the tooling deposit.

  5. 5

    Learn Close the loop.

    Sell-through truth, written down, reviewed without blame, fed straight back into stage one.

The axle: TeamThe wheel only turns if someone owns it. Fractional at first, your full-time hire later.
The gauge: ForecastIf nobody trusts your forecast, your wheel is not turning, no matter how busy everyone is.

Works alongside EOS. EOS runs the company. The Flywheel runs product. If you are on EOS, this snaps in next to it.

Truth SheetOne page of customer, margin, and market evidence per bet.
Seasonal RoadmapA 5-year view the whole company can see, mostly made of no.
Product 60One 60-minute weekly meeting. Every program. No status theater.
Flywheel ScorecardForecast accuracy and the handful of numbers that prove the wheel is turning.
Launch PlannerCash, margin, and deposit timing on every unlaunched SKU.
Annual
Kickoff + Roadmapping

Foundational truths, 5-year roadmap, top 3 bets, research plan.

Quarterly
Seasonal Kickoff

Line plan, briefs, timeline, scorecard review. Weak ideas to the Parking Lot, not the roadmap.

Weekly
Product 60

The standard the rhythm holds: 80% completion of a focused plan beats 40% of an ambitious one.

Built on AI

The planning infrastructure of a company 10x your size.

A three-person product team should not be able to do this. Every morning before the team logs on, the systems I build update themselves. Nobody touches them. A year ago this was a spreadsheet pile and a standing status meeting.

The interesting part of AI for consumer brands is not writing product descriptions. It is that a founder-led brand can now run the planning infrastructure of a company ten times its size without hiring for it.

Small teams with big-company systems. That is the unlock.
How we work together

Systems first. Then people. Most brands do it backwards.

The usual advice is "hire a VP of Product." Sometimes right, often premature. A great VP at a $10M brand is a $250K+ bet, and a bad hire at that level costs two years. The middle path: install the system, run it fractionally, then hire your full-time person into a working machine instead of a blank page.

Step 1 · start here

Flywheel Audit

Two weeks · fixed fee

A paid diagnostic of your whole product system. Where it leaks, what it costs you, and what to fix first.

  • Truth: what the market, customer, and margin data actually say
  • Focus: a sharp how-to-win for your brand
  • A sequenced first-pass roadmap
  • Readout with the founder and leadership team
Book an Audit
Step 2

Install

90 days

Stand up the roadmap, the rhythm, and the tooling. The wheel starts turning with me as the axle.

  • Seasonal roadmap and line plan
  • Stage gates and the weekly Product 60
  • Factory program and specs that hold
  • Forecast, scorecard, and the AI systems behind them
Step 3

Spin

Ongoing fractional

I run product as your fractional head until your full-time hire takes the wheel. Then I help you hire them.

  • Weekly Product 60 and quarterly kickoffs
  • Factory visits and supplier relationships
  • Launch ownership
  • Hiring and hand-off of your VP of Product

A good fit

  • Founder-led outdoor or consumer hard-goods brand
  • The founder is still the product person, and is becoming the bottleneck
  • You make physical product with real factories, real tooling, real inventory
  • You run on EOS, or something like it, and product is the part that still lives in someone's head

Not a fit

  • Software or digital-only products
  • You want a deck, not a system that runs weekly
  • You need a full-time VP today and already have the budget and the machine for one
Track record

Boring systems, executed weekly, beat brilliant ideas executed occasionally.

33%

Annual revenue growth, three years running, at Oboz Footwear

#1

Hiking footwear brand at REI, and REI Vendor of the Year, through acquisition by KMD Brands

15%

COGS reduction moving TETON Sports production out of China

4

Countries of factory floors: China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia

Oboz Footwear
Director of Product · 2017 to 2019

Built the product team from scratch and the quality team in Vietnam. A 5-year roadmap we mostly said no to. Grew ~33% a year into REI's #1 hiking brand and through the KMD Brands acquisition.

TETON Sports
Fractional Head of Product, Ops, CX · 2020 to 2024

Strategy and go-to-market from scratch, a 10-person warehouse team, and a production shift out of China that cut COGS about 15%.

The Cold Life
Fractional Head of Product · 2025 to present

5-year roadmap, a product creation process, a filtered showerhead line, the Asia factory program, and the AI planning systems described above.

THULE
Product Manager · 2013 to 2015

Apple-compatible bag line concept to shelf in six months, placed in Apple Stores. Flagship became the top seller.

REI Private Brands
Product Line Manager · 2015 to 2017

Rebooted Socks, Travel Gear, and Hats & Gloves. Built the 5-year roadmap and delivered 10% growth.

Hilti
Product Manager · 2009 to 2013

Turned around a failing launch and eliminated over $1M of inventory risk. Where the stage-gate discipline started.

Case study · independent analysis

How a Nordic fly-fishing brand wins the US market

I spent 20+ hours writing a US market strategy for Loop Tackle, a brand I admire that never asked for it. Market truth, how to win, and a three-year roadmap. It is exactly what the first three stages of a Flywheel Audit produce, pointed at a real company.

Read the teardown PDF, 2 pages
~50%of the global fly-fishing market is the US
~75%of US fly fishing is trout water, owned by Orvis and Sage
3 yearssequenced roadmap: relaunch, expand, grow
"The brands that grow fastest are not the ones with the best ideas. They are the ones with the best kill discipline."
From the Notes: Could vs. Should
"The deck is who they want to be. The floor is who they are."
Dawson rowing a raft on a Montana river Dawson Westenskow
About

Dawson Westenskow

I live and work in Bozeman, Montana. On Friday afternoons I can be found in the mountains, on the river, or on the trail.

Fifteen years inside outdoor and consumer brands: REI, Oboz, THULE, TETON Sports, Hilti, and now The Cold Life. I have built product teams from scratch, stood quality teams up in Vietnam, moved production across borders, and sat through more factory decks than anyone should. I always ask to skip the deck and walk the floor.

I ran Outdoor PM School, the course and podcast for outdoor industry product managers, and spent two years as an EOS Implementer. That is where the Product Flywheel comes from: the product operating system EOS-run companies are missing.

I work with a small number of founder-led brands at a time, remote from Bozeman and on the ground wherever your factories are.

BasedBozeman, Montana
FirmBig Sky Fractional
Factory countriesChina, Vietnam, Philippines, Cambodia
FormerlyEOS Implementer · Outdoor PM School founder
Notes

What I have learned on factory floors and in founders' conference rooms.

Short operator essays. No fluff, no hot takes. The same thinking I bring to an Audit, given away because showing beats telling.

Series opener

Product does not break in one big way. It breaks in five.

The Five Failures, why fixing one does not help, and how they spin a wheel backward.

Read → Focus

Your brand could make almost anything. That is the problem.

Every product on the roadmap is paying rent. Kill discipline is the real growth lever.

Read → Factory ops

Skip the deck. Walk the floor.

What a factory visit tells you that the conference room never will.

Read →
Outdoor PM School Podcast
Outdoor PM School Podcast

Conversations with product leaders at The North Face, Salomon, Smith, Mountain Hardwear, Edelrid, and more. Plus the course sessions, now free as episodes.

Apple Podcasts Spotify
The Outdoor Biz PodcastEpisode 199

Product management across footwear, bags, and device cases for top outdoor brands, and why Bozeman.

Listen →
KORE Outdoors Podcast2025

An introduction to EOS for outdoor businesses, and what an operating system does for a founder-led brand.

Listen →
Read all the Notes
The Product Flywheel overview
Free download

The Product Flywheel, on two pages.

The five stages, the Five Failures, the operating rhythm, and how an engagement runs. The same 2-pager I send founders after a first conversation.

Thanks. Open the 2-pager here, and I will send a copy to your inbox.
Start a conversation

Start with a Flywheel Audit.

Tell me what is breaking. I will reply within two business days with an honest read on whether an Audit is the right first step, and if not, what is.

No pitch deck, no discovery-call theater. Usually 30 minutes on the phone is enough to know. Grab a slot, or send a note below.

Book 30 minutes with me
dawson@dawsonw.com linkedin.com/in/dawson-westenskow 406.570.8810
I take on a small number of brands at a time. If I am full, I will tell you when I open up and point you to someone good in the meantime.
Your note goes straight to Dawson. No list, no drip sequence.