Talking about: Identifying and Targeting Big Markets
Why we wanted him to speak: Young, accomplished, energetic, ambitious, made and learned from plenty of mistakes, approachable, taken licensing route to build global youth brand, funny.
Biography
Al Gosling first discovered a passion for extreme sports at an early age, however never predicted it would become the basis of a global business. Initially, he sold board shorts to his mates whilst studying for exams at school but quickly moved into the fast paced world of TV, selling extreme sports programmes to broadcasters around the world. With this the idea for the Extreme Sports channel and Extreme brand began to take shape. The Extreme Sports Channel launched across Europe in 1999 and today broadcasts into millions of homes around the world.
From 2007 Al focused on becoming one of the world’s most innovative licensing companies growing the company by targeting areas with similar brand philosophy and values, bringing in deeply experienced industry specialist MDs, and developing products and services that offer consumers something new and different. Today, the Extreme Sports Company is an entrepreneur-led collection of licenses and companies with a unique brand driven by the Extreme Sports channel and Extreme.com which is currently in over 40 million homes in 58 countries and 14 languages.
When not in the office or in meetings you will find him either windsurfing, kite surfing, flying, off-piste skiing, ice climbing or sailing somewhere in the world.
http://www.extremeinternational.com
For more information on the BLN Growth Forum, 15th July 2010, visit http://growthforum2010.thebln.com/session/