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Shultz, 60, even resembles Lombardi in dress. Unlike today’s NFL coaches, Lombardi paced the sidelines in a suit and tie. Shultz dresses similarly for work,

whether directing boardrooms or working trade shows. But his attire is not about Lombardi. No, it’s a tribute to his predecessor, company founder Bill Robinson, who launched Robinson Laboratories in 1978. Robinson al-ways wore a suit and tie when representing his company, and Shultz respects that heritage.

Some might say Shultz is the ultimate competitor, but he doesn’t talk about winning or losing. He talks about leading from a position of truth and ethics. His relent-less chase for innovation and perfection demands the best of himself and his team. As long as they’re united in their efforts, beating the competition will take care of itself.

Leadership also means appreciating good fortune, and respecting, helping, and seeking inspiration from a much larger team: your customers. Shultz puts it this way:

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“We’re working in an industry that’s built on our favorite hobbies and passions. At the same time, our customers are working some-where and dreaming about being in their tree stands early Saturday morning. Our job is to make products that make their hunts a little safer, enjoyable, and successful. That’s a fun thought. We want to help our customers en-joy their passion and have a more satisfying experience. How many jobs let you do that?”

Team HarmonyShultz’s management team—Keith Edberg, operations manager; Todd Leidall, vice president of sales; and Michael Swan, mar-keting director—buy into that approach. Unprompted in separate interviews, they echoed Shultz’s business philosophies. In so many words they said: “Don’t worry what your competitors make, claim, advertise, or say about your products. Pour your thoughts,

efforts and integrity into what we make, advertise, and say about our products.”

In other words: Take the lead, stay in front, and don’t waste time and energy looking back at who’s chasing you. Focus on satisfying today’s customers while attracting tomorrow’s customers. Consider these insights from...

Edberg: “We all started small, but now we’re managing iconic brands with great engineering. We still need to be pushed, but we don’t use our compe-tition as a benchmark or incentive. We’re motivated by Scott, our customers and ourselves. We work for the bowhunter, especially the elite, most serious bowhunters. They push us to improve our products, and we listen to what they say.”

Swan: “We’re very much aware of what our com-petitors do and say, but the way we market our in-novations, technologies, and garment features keeps us plenty busy. When you’re leading, you expect ar-rows in your back. It doesn’t matter who shot them. Our job is to keep innovating and creating things that make us the best. Year after year, our innova-tions set us apart.”

Leidall: “The key to our success is leadership. I joined Robinson in 2011 because of Scott Shultz. He’s what appealed to me most. His heart, his be-liefs, his strong faith, and the extreme passion he has for what he does; it never ends for him. But he isn’t an ego-driven leader. He’s humble. He realizes we can’t achieve greatness through the power of one. He’s a visionary and big-picture guy, and he won’t take any glory for himself. He shares it with the entire room.”

Shultz, meanwhile, remains confident in the company’s approach because it’s consistent and in-telligent. “We know who we are and why we come

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to work, and we know what we’re expect-ed to do,” he said. “Other people’s per-ceptions about us might change, but we’re tenacious and determined about our posi-tion in the industry; and our culture and our business philosophy do not change.”

Core ValuesIn other words, Robinson Outdoor Prod-ucts has a foundation built on core values like honesty, ethical business practices, and a shared faith-based focus. Shultz said the company considers their work-place their “mission field.” In addition, they consider the John 3:16 Biblical in-scription on their products to be part of their outreach efforts. The company’s website also includes a weekly “But God” message from Thomas Paige, a pastor and spiritual counselor.

“We care about our employees, our fel-low man, and everyone’s quality of life,” Shultz said. “Those values are based on our belief in God. They impact how we run our business and treat our employ-ees. Our company culture resembles a family’s more than a business’s. We’re in-volved with our employees. I’ve been to weddings, counseling sessions and police stations. We try to go beyond team spir-it, and work hard together like a family. When we go home at night, we’re still joking and talking and feeling like we contributed to the company’s success. We

still have some kick in our step.”The Robinson company has been based in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, since moving from St. Paul in 1998 when the origi-nal building no longer met its needs. Three years after Shultz joined the company in April

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1995, it introduced ScentBlocker clothing after building itself through scent-killing and animal-scent products, and then Shultz bought out Bill Robinson in February 2002. He changed the compa-ny’s name from Robinson Laboratories to Robinson Outdoor Prod-ucts in 2003, the same year he acquired the Whitewater Outdoors clothing company in Hingham, Wisconsin.

The company’s current building, which Shultz now owns, covers 86,000 square feet. The company employs 43 people between Cannon Falls and Hingham, and Shultz considers everyone vital to the team.

“Great teams have great players, and my people are my greatest as-sets,” Shultz said. “I’ve been here almost 20 years, and many members

of my team have been here a long time, as well. My job is to lead them from an ethical, truthful, trustworthy position. They must believe in me. I’m not into leadership that’s all enthusiasm and pep rallies, and shouting ‘Let’s get the job done.’ That leadership style can run its course and end up sounding hollow. Yes, we have terrific brands, awe-some products, and a logo—that yellow shield—with good market recognition. But all those things are secondary to my people.”

People PowerNew hires don’t become valuable employees by accident, of course. “We believe in leading, innovating and introducing new, never-before-

seen products,” Shultz said. “You don’t get there with inbred thinking, and by smelling your own exhaust and believing your own press clippings. That dooms you. To get out-of-the-box thinking, we try to capture our new hires’ initial reac-tions, their first responses.

“We invite them to see things and notice things,” Shultz continued. “We want to hear what catches their inter-est, raises their eyebrows, or makes them think, ‘I haven’t seen anything like that before.’ When we talk about a prod-uct, our marketing ideas, or how we do business, I want to know what they’re thinking and how it impacts them. I go to lengths to get that from them right away, because in a month they’ll adapt to us and see everything here as normal.”

Shultz also believes in the “power of participation,” which means bowhunt-ing passions run rampant at Robin-son. He said about 40 percent of his employees are male, and all of them bowhunt. Of his female employees, he estimates one-third are bowhunters.

“We encourage archery and bowhunt-ing, and we have an indoor range so we can shoot during winter,” he said. “We celebrate whenever someone shoots a deer. When we have someone who’s just learning to bowhunt, I’ll take them out to my land and help where I can. They get to try out our gar-ments and learn how they work.”

Familiarity with bowhunting helps with product development, but Shultz believes skilled clothing

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designers can contribute without being bow-hunters. Even so, he regularly dresses them up in Robinson apparel, sends them up a ladder stand in cold weather, and puts them through bowhunting simulations so they grasp the purpose of various designs.

Advantage of IntelligenceBy infusing and meshing such talent, Shultz maximizes the potential of the company’s three major brands: ScentBlocker, Tree Spi-der, and Whitewater Outdoors. It also helps that he brings 50 years of hunting experience to his lead role in new-product development, as well as his previous 21-year career in wa-ter treatment, where he learned the secrets of odor adsorption.

ADIn fact, the company’s new positioning statement, “The Advantage of Intelligence,” expresses Shultz’s confidence that his com-pany, its products and its future have never been stronger. “This is the most creative time in the company’s history,” Shultz said. “Our new technologies are driving a revolution in hunting gear.”

Again, though, he credits his staff of de-sign engineers who work year-round on the “concepting” and innovating of exploratory R&D (research and development). “I don’t want to sound arrogant, but we can direct incredible intelligence into our products be-cause of our experience, our expertise, and the insights we get from the best hunters in the

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world,” Shultz said. “Continuous improvement drives us. We’re never satisfied. Not everyone is built to work here, because some people are sat-isfied to reach a place and stay there. They lose their desire. They quit wanting to drive forward. When they lose that drive, they can’t work here.”

Perhaps no Robinson product embodies that drive as much as ScentBlocker’s Apex jacket and pants. This soft, quiet, wind- and weather-proof system is versatile enough to hunt anywhere from Alabama to Alaska while still featuring the superior scent control of ScentBlocker’s Trinity Technology.

Shultz said scent control remains vital to hunting, and Trinity deliv-ers unprecedented versatil-ity because it can be applied to everything from T-shirts to stretch-pants and athletic wear. Even so, Robinson also prides itself on making versatile garments that keep hunters afield in all types of weather, and stays quiet enough to draw a bow unde-tected at close range.

Going Beyond Carbon“When we introduced Trin-ity in 2013, it was 10 years

ADin coming because we realized a long time ago that carbon technology could only take scent control so far,” Shultz said. “Carbon must be sandwiched and glued between inner and outer fabrics, so it gets heavy and stiff. That drove us to develop Trinity, a technology that yields a sin-gle layer that’s extremely lightweight and many more times effective pound-for-pound for scent adsorption than carbon.

“With Trinity, we recognize the future in hunting clothes isn’t just scent control,” Shultz continued. “Serious hunters, elite hunters, don’t want to wear something that’s hot, stiff and heavy just for its scent-control technology. They want it all. They’re demanding lightweight cloth-

ing that wicks moisture and keeps them dry, keeps them cool, keeps them warm, and controls scent. So that’s where we are. We keep our customers in the woods and on the mountain. It’s an evolution in the right direction.”

Meanwhile, Robinson employs high-tech engi-neering to deliver unpar-alleled convenience in its newest brand, the Tree Spi-der lineup of lightweight

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safety gear, which launched in 2011. The SpiderWeb full-body harness is built into three varieties of ScentBlocker hunting pants, while the Speed, Micro and Venom are safe, comfortable, light-weight full-body fall restraints.

“We find ways to build value into all of our products,” Shultz said. “Most of our competitors use a heavy steel cara-biner to secure the harness’s tether to the tree. It’s rated at 3,600 pounds of tensile strength. We use a technical carabiner that weighs a fraction of steel. Its finish looks very techy, and it’s rated at 5,400 pounds of tensile strength.”

Robinson also offers the Live Wire, the industry’s only hands-free automat-ic-descent device. If a hunter suffers a heart attack or gets knocked uncon-scious when falling, he won’t be left hanging far up the tree to risk suspen-sion trauma. “That’s fatal,” Shultz said. “If you fall while attached to the Live Wire, it engages by itself and slowly lowers you to the ground.”

It’s All About TechnologyWhitewater Outdoors also receives regular injections of Robinson’s high-tech expertise. The venerable Whitewa-ter brand has been around 60 years. It’s known for basic high-quality hunting gear, rainwear, and blaze-orange cloth-ing, but most of all, for gloves and ac-cessories.

“We’re taking a lot of the best White-water products and folding in some of the best ScentBlocker technologies,” Shultz said. “We’re seeing a resurgence in Whitewater products as we take the basic lines and spike them with technol-ogy, whether it’s scent-control or anti-microbial. We also sell a lot of White-water gear, like our shooting gloves, to the U.S. military, so that’s an important part of our business, too.”

Robinson’s emphasis on leading tech-nology doesn’t stop with its products.

Its sales and marketing experts have long been leaders in inspiring and educating consumers through rapidly evolving technologies in print, Internet, televi-sion, and other electronic mediums.

Reaching consumers, however, has never been easier; nor so challenging. “Staying relevant to consumers is a more dynamic process than ever,” Swan said. “We have so many new ways to market products, and we’re diversifying our two-way dialogue with consumers. Effective marketing requires not only a website, but print, TV, sponsorships, you name it. This is a time of transition. We’re be-coming more of a content creator. We’re all about strong digital programs with YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, success photos, and photos in the fields. All those things keep the brands in mind.”

Shultz agrees. “We no longer have just those giant print or TV mediums anymore,” he said. “It’s become so fractured and scat-tered. There’s 480 shows out there now just in outdoor TV. Everyone is scrambling to find the best ways to reach consumers.”

One constant remains, however: Smart, honest mar-keting is more vital than ever.

“Truth always sells, no mat-ter which way you reach your

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consumers,” Swan said. “Hunting is a passion sport. Hunters like to learn how to use unique products, and we can show how their proper use improves success. They buy our branded products because they want the best gear they can buy. That yellow shield on our apparel is recognized around the world. It represents the best in class, and builds our credibility.”

In a recent video prepared for Robinson’s sales staff, Shultz put it this way: “We need … honesty in our advertising and honesty in our claims. When we tell customers that something works, it needs to work. When he goes out for his cherished time in the tree, up the mountain or down in the bottom-lands, our products must work. When they work, we have a customer forever. But when we fail them, they’re gone and they won’t come back. That’s the value of our brands and that’s what we stand for.”

Restructuring, Rejuvenating SalesShultz and his team also recommitted themselves

recently to restructuring and rejuvenating their sales strategies. Leidall said they’re now work-ing with six sales-rep groups and 43 individual

salesmen within those groups to reach consum-ers more effectively. They’re also re-engaging with the independent dealers that helped Bill Robinson build his company 30 years ago.

“While our new sales reps allow us to focus on new markets, emerging markets, and market segments that our products have never been in before, we also need to go back and rebuild the core grassroots part of our business,” Leidall said. “It’s been forsaken in recent years. Our new rep groups can help us restore the philosophies that built this company.”

Shultz agrees. “We’ve completely changed our entire sales staff, internally and externally and while focused on market expansion,” he said. “No one was more important to Bill Robinson than our grassroots dealers. It broke my heart to watch

that business slowly erode away the past few years.”Part of that plan includes a new “MAP”

(minimum advertised pricing) policy to ensure brick-and-mortar retailers, independent deal-ers, and e-retailers all sell at the same, consistent price. “I want them to know we appreciate them, that we’re building specific programs for them, and that we will meet their needs for signage and

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merchandising,” Shultz said. “Our dealers will be protected in our pricing. Our MAP programs are working as planned.”

What’s Next?Meanwhile, Robinson’s emphasis on innovation and technology in the hunting market is leading to opportunities elsewhere.

“Our Trinity technology has incredible potential,” Shultz said. “Imagine if people could wear jerseys, golf shirts, tennis shorts, stretch pants, running wear, hockey equipment and workout clothes, and not worry about smelling as they perspire,” he said. “Trinity can do that. Because we can apply Trinity to so many kinds of fabrics, its possibilities are endless.”

Shultz also sees more potential for the Tree Spider safety harnesses. Whether it’s roofers, window-washers, construction workers or “tree surgeons,” most such workers dislike the heavy, cumbersome full-body harnesses now available.

“Imagine the dotted line that goes from Tree Spider to industrial and commercial uses,” Shultz said. “Anyone who’s been up in a bucket truck, or on a roof or scaffolding, knows the limitations of bulky, heavy safety harnesses.”

That doesn’t mean, however, that the Robinson team will take hunters for granted. Far from it. Shultz said they’re close to unleash-ing a new technology that will rival its scent-control technology for improving concealment. He declined to offer specifics, but he expects it to be ready in time for the 2016 sales season.

“We have many big opportunities ahead in our existing markets and new markets,” he said. “That’s why I’ve never been more confident in Robinson’s future than I am today. There’s so much in front of us. Our future is very exciting.”

And to ensure they achieve it, Shultz reminds his team of the lead-ership credo of an American industrial giant, Henry Ford: “Com-ing together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

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