45 North was founded by industry veteran Dave Schmidt in 2004 to help small and mid-sized outdoor products companies through the challenges of growth. After a successful career as VP of Global Sales for Burton Snowboards, and a member of the senior management team that took the company from an unknown Vermont based company to a global winter sports leader. Schmidt loves the challenge of digging into a company to find the choke-points and alleviating them.
Over the last twenty years he’s been involved with several startups and established brands, occasionally taking full-time roles after doing contract work. During this time, he’s been witness to both good and bad management and taken valuable insights away each time.
45 North’s core expertise is with all sales functions including building an entire sales team or reviewing existing sales organizations to unleash growth and extract margin. He’s worked with hundreds of reps and distributors around the country and world. He’s a firm believer that sales operations need constant review and tweaking to maintain maximum performance.
He’s also developed and maintained a network of resources that can be tapped into when the need arises, including financial managers, product designers and other creatives. No matter what challenge a company has, 45 North can find and deploy the right resources quickly.
Dave’s alter ego is a professional photographer. Since his school days, he’s been able to make money from photography working as a photojournalist and editorial photographer or doing commercial and portrait work.
A brief history of Dave:
VP Wholesale for Life is Good
VP Sales and Marketing for LPA Design in the photo industry
President/CEO of Mophie during foundational year, helped secure Series A funding
VP Global Sales for Burton Snowboards
Retail Shop kid for the Ski Market
Photographer for Hamptons Magazine, UPI, Burlington Free Press, Stowe Mtn. Resort, ORDA, Lake Placid & others
amongst other things…
