Cold email turns co-op student into brand-building machine
This Northeastern marketing student is called one of the apparel company’s “best decisions” for his efforts to help the startup grow.
It started with an email.
Last year, Crew Dog, a new college apparel company, reached out to Nicholas Walding, a junior marketing student at Northeastern University, about becoming a brand ambassador. In this role, he’d work with Northeastern students to find opportunities in which the company could design and sell unique campus apparel. Looking for experience, Walding jumped at the position.
The chance role he took working as a liaison between campus groups and sales paid off. It became his first co-op.
“I really love doing this,” Walding, 20, said. “I put myself out there because I really wanted an opportunity to go further with this company. It gives me the liberty to explore my interests in the intersection between creative design and business.”
Walding now works with groups in universities beyond Northeastern, which is a licensed partner of Crew Dog. He travels and has been doing digital outreach to schools along the East Coast and collaborating with other campuses’ ambassadors to further find opportunities to craft and sell Crew Dog products.
Part of the appeal is Crew Dog’s unique designs, which often feature fun takes on campus mascots. Walding started out at Northeastern selling to the crew team, for which he is coxswain. He created and sold them products with an image of a Northeastern husky holding an oar with a Northeastern logo on it.
“Part of my job is to grow the brand through on-the-ground connections with students and learning how (they want to) identify through their clothing that they buy from us,” Walding said. “A lot of the rowers went crazy for it because they identify with that oar and then when we race.”
The company works with licensing at universities to get its merchandise approved, including Northeastern University’s licensing team. Through them, Crew Dog arranged to carry products at Northeastern with images like a husky playing hockey and sitting on the lawn chairs by the koi pond. Some of the merchandise is now available at the Northeastern bookstore.
Rik Fitton, licensing manager at Northeastern, said Crew Dog approached them with a notice to the licensing agency.
“I always look for unique opportunities that come along,” Fitton said. “They didn’t appear to just be your regular T-shirt and sweatshirt vendor. You could just tell it was something different and a good different.”
When Walding joined, Crew Dog had three licenses. It now has 90. The brand has also done collaborations with Northeastern’s social media team.
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The company’s small size was part of the appeal for Walding as it allowed him to build partnerships from the ground up.
“I feel like I’ve been able to contribute to a lot of the growth,” he said. “(I’ve enjoyed) the opportunity to get hands-on experience in creative business and entrepreneurship.”
When Walding was looking for a co-op, he decided to see if Crew Dog would let him work in that capacity. The company was happy to let him stay on.
Crew Dog founder Constantine Polychronopoulos said reaching out to Walding was one of the company’s “best decisions yet” and he applauded his ability to undertake traditional grassroots marketing.
“We have a limited budget, but we don’t have limited creativity, and Nick is really good at that,” he said.
Walding also manages a lot of the rowing side of the brand, thanks to his connection to the sport. He recently worked on a sponsorship with some Olympic-level athletes during the annual Head of the Charles Regatta, crafting some promotional material with them and making vinyl sticker cutouts of Crew Dog designs that were then put on the rowers’ bow deck.
“This is the part of the boat that people see from the bridges on the river at this regatta,” Walding said. “This is the largest regatta in the world, so over 200,000 people came to Boston to watch this race and everyone was talking about this design we used on his boat. … It was extremely fun because I was able to intersect rowing, a sport that I really like, and my work.”
Polychronopoulos said Walding’s skills really shone when he managed to pull this promotion together at the last minute, after previous plans for a pop-up fell through, and his work has made him indispensable to the team.
“Nick took something that was ready to just fizzle out and turned it into something pretty spectacular,” he said. “I didn’t expect that from a student. He singlehandedly took charge and redirected a crisis into one of our biggest successes of the year.”
