Bethany Evans joined sportswear brand Rhone as chief marketing officer last fall, drawn to the brand for its mental fitness mission.
“There’s been more awareness of mental health and wellness initiatives and things like that recently. But for Rhone, they really started with it early,” says Evans. “They’ve had these Mind and Muscle events for a long time across different cities, blending expert-led fitness sessions with workshops on mental resilience and wellbeing. It’s a great community moment that has impactful conversations and workouts.”
Founded by brothers Nate and Ben Checketts in 2014 and named after the river in Switzerland and France, the brand began as a men’s sportswear brand sold through a direct-to-consumer ecommerce store. They have since expanded to include partnerships with Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, Equinox and Dillard’s. They have recently opened their own stores in select cities and are now offering women’s apparel.
The brand’s purpose has always been front and center to this growth. “There’s always a portion of the proceeds that support different mental fitness charities like the Kevin Love Fund,” explains Evans. “He’s one of our athlete ambassadors. It feels really good to work for a brand that cares.”
Prior to joining Rhone, Evans held senior marketing roles at The North Face, Southwest Airlines and JCPenney. Brand Innovators caught up with Evans from her office in Westport, Connecticut to talk about growing the brand, expanding the lines and how the retail experience matters to Gen Z. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk about the brand’s mission and how you are bringing that into the brand’s storytelling?
We have these hidden messages on all of our clothing. This one has a little affirmation on it that says, “I am everything.” It started with Ben –one of our co-founders along with Nate. They both have a love of literature and poetry. When Rhone was just a men’s line, Ben started including lines from poetry as little hidden messages in every men’s product.
When we launched women’s last year, Kelly, our head of products, said we need something special for women too. She worked with her team and my team to get these lists of affirmations – just a little something to make you feel good when you put it on in the morning. It’s one of those hidden things that when people see it, they’re like, “Oh, I love this,” but you might not even notice it.
I have an opportunity to talk more about that and bring our community into it like, “Hey, what feels most meaningful? What would you want on your clothing to remind you to be kind to yourself?”
How are you working with brand ambassadors?
We’re doing a one-on-one series right now, featuring personal stories of mental and physical fitness on Instagram. It’s with different athletes or industry leaders or Rhone ambassadors, highlighting their different journeys and their advice. It’s just all about authenticity and having that two-way conversation with our community. I was looking through the different word clouds of what pops up and the No. 1 word that popped up over and over in focus groups was “community.” Rhone is a brand that likes to build community, work with communities.
What are you doing to work with this community and engage these customers?
Definitely those Mind and Muscle events. We have a lot of folks that post about us, but we haven’t necessarily reposted a ton of the user-generated content on our channels. Even internally, we have a Slack channel called #WhenInRhone, where we have a little selfie mirror at the office and people love to post their fits.
Women at the office were so excited when we launched women’s because for so long, all the men at work could wear Rhone, and the women might wear a few men’s pieces but mostly didn’t. Now that we all have the opportunity, people are mixing and matching, trying things in different ways. I definitely think we could feature more user-generated content of how our customers are styling their fits.
We get a lot of comments about Rhone’s quality. The quality is truly fantastic. Our head of product was at Athleta and she is a fabric savant. There’s something about touching and feeling our products and getting into a store if you can. But how do you translate that virtually? One way is to do more behind-the-scenes, little interviews with Kelly and the rest of our products team, just having customers hear: “Here’s what I need. Here’s why I chose this fabric or did this detail.”
We do a ton of focus groups. I recently got to join a virtual women’s golf focus group (LPGA is one of our partners). They told us that when they’re wearing a polo or a sleeveless top for golf, they want it to have enough room at the armholes so they can get a sun shirt underneath because they’re outside all day. There’s so much awareness of skin cancer that they want to wear UPF-protective clothing. It’s hearing those little details and then tweaking the product and then making sure to communicate it in the marketing or the onsite messaging. This pulls the whole ecosystem together.
Can you talk about how you are marketing the new women’s line?
It launched last year and it’s taking off more than we expected, which is a good problem. We wanted to make sure we were supporting women’s sports so we have two brand ambassadors on the LPGA side – Lilia Vu and Lauren Hartledge. There’s a lot that the LPGA does with supporting girls to learn golf. We launched a Course to Court collection. This idea of pieces that are versatile that you could wear for tennis, golf, or different performance activities. It sold out pretty quickly. We thought it would take a while to build but it’s just been taking off.
What’s different about our product is it’s just a little bit more elevated with some of the details and styling because we’re an East Coast brand. You want to feel like, “Oh, I could wear this to the office, but I could also wear it out for dinner with my girlfriends.”
A lot of the growth has been organic through word of mouth or maybe men who’ve purchased us for years and loved us that have told their partners, daughters or sisters, “Hey, this brand I’ve really liked for a long time has stuff for you now too.” We’ve seen some couples shopping together. I’m very excited about the possibilities.
Can you talk about the campaigns your are running?
In the fall, we launched a Head in the Game campaign with two different versions – one with our NBA partners and one with our LPGA partners. The idea is that you have to get your head in the game. Basketball player Kevin Love has been really open about how sometimes it’s really hard as a professional athlete to get it together and get out on the court and make magic. That feels very applicable to everyone. We all have our tough days. How do I get my head in the game and focus and get it done?
That fall campaign really centered around our mission of mental fitness and fed really well into our spring campaign. It’s called “Progress Starts Here.” It is a celebration of fresh starts and the courage it takes for that fresh start. Our own twist on it is the idea that progress is as much about the journey as the destination. We’re amplifying the message that mental and physical fitness are connected. If you’re making the commitment here, that’s what carries through and gets you through those tough days when you just want to quit and give up. It’s an empowering mindset that I am a big fan of.
Can you talk about retail and how your consumer experience and how you’re approaching retail?
We’ve been growing our retail footprint quite a bit. Rhone started 10 years ago as men’s only, e-commerce only. Then really over the last few years, we’ve been slowly expanding our retail footprint. Malls and shopping are coming back. My teenager and his friends still go hang out at the mall, just like we did when we were 15 or 16. They’re very into thrifting too, which I love.
Online is wonderful, but if you have a Rhone store near you, being able to go in and actually talk to the experts is a great experience. We were very careful about hiring people that really represent the brand. They are happy to give hints or suggestions.
There’s that piece of touching and trying on fabrics. We definitely use the stores as hubs to host events. We are looking into potential resale programs. There’s so much more awareness of the impact fashion, especially fast fashion, can have on the environment. The best thing you can do is keep clothing in circulation and out of landfills. That starts with quality—if you make great stuff that lasts, it stays in circulation longer. But when someone is cleaning out their closet and ready for something new, you don’t want that item thrown away. Many people donate, but how does the brand incentivize making that even easier and rewarding it?
At The North Face, we had a great program called North Face Renewed. How do you enable that in a store? Stores are becoming more like local community hubs, not just places to buy things.
Are you incorporating AI into anything that you’re doing?
A little bit. I don’t think we have it fully figured out. If anyone does, I would love to talk to them. Our creative team is starting to use it a little bit. Like most creative teams, there are simple ways AI can quickly expand a background for you.
On the customer experience side, AI chatbots can answer commonly asked questions. We’ve done that, but we also want to keep the human element—if you want to call or email us, you still need that option. Chatbots aren’t quite there yet—at least in my experience.
