48:13Austin 2026
San Diego 2025
Product and Marketing Alignment at Portland Leather Goods
Curtis Matsko and MacCoy Merkley share the Portland Leather Goods story, including CEO–CMO collaboration, product choices, and the lessons behind an expansion they chose to stop.
Watch it. Put it to work.
ABOUT THIS SESSION
Make what your customers want.
Curtis Matsko and MacCoy Merkley share the Portland Leather Goods story, including CEO–CMO collaboration, product choices, and the lessons behind an expansion they chose to stop.
For founders and marketing leaders connecting product development with demand and repeat purchasing.
- Speakers
- Curtis Matsko
CEO, Portland Leather Goods - MacCoy Merkley
CMO, Portland Leather Goods - Recorded at
- San Diego 2025 ↗
September 2025
Speaker roles and platform examples reflect the session’s original context. This is an archived conversation.
TAKE IT BACK TO YOUR DESK
Ideas to put to work.
- 01
Start with demand, then build
Bring marketing into product planning before the assortment and price are fixed.
Read this part · 05:53 ↓ - 02
Build a working CEO–CMO relationship
Review product, price, and customer demand together instead of relying on a downstream handoff.
Read this part · 10:49 ↓ - 03
Look past the revenue of an expansion
Evaluate a new category through repeat behavior, returns, and cash needs as well as sales.
Read this part · 18:51 ↓ - 04
Connect a launch to an existing customer need
Test the product’s relevance to existing customers before committing to the full launch.
Read this part · 22:53 ↓ - 05
Learn from the product customers rejected
When a launch falls flat, question the product proposition before adding more campaign complexity.
Read this part · 27:16 ↓
READ THE SESSION
The edited transcript.
A condensed, edited reading version based on the YouTube captions and session chapters. Repetition and unclear audience audio have been removed; the discussion is paraphrased for clarity, rather than presented as a verbatim transcript. Timestamps refer to the original video.
Original recording on YouTube ↗Start with demand, then build
The founding story leads into a central operating principle: shape the company around what customers want. Curtis and MacCoy contrast that with making something in isolation and handing it to marketing with instructions to find a buyer.
Their collaboration brings product and commercial judgment together earlier. The conversation is about what can sell, at what price, and why the customer would choose it. Marketing is therefore part of the product decision rather than a service called in after the decision is complete.
Build a working CEO–CMO relationship
The speakers describe a relationship built around candid discussion of the product and business. Alignment means being able to challenge a direction before it absorbs more time and capital, while still moving quickly when there is a shared conviction.
The practical lesson is a process, not a personality match to copy. Create space for customer demand, production realities, and marketing economics in the same conversation. That gives each side more context than a handoff between separate departments.
Look past the revenue of an expansion
The footwear example shows why a new category can look successful in sales and still be wrong for the business. The speakers discuss repeat purchasing, returns, and the money needed to support the category. Those factors changed how they assessed the opportunity.
They ultimately stopped the line despite substantial revenue. The decision illustrates the difference between proving that people will buy a product and proving that it is the best use of the company’s resources. Compare categories on the customer behavior and costs they actually create.
Connect a launch to an existing customer need
A product launch benefits from a clear understanding of what the audience already values about the brand. The discussion links successful merchandising to that familiarity, rather than assuming every new idea earns the same demand.
The customer’s experience provides a useful test: does the product offer the function, feel, or use they expect? A launch plan becomes stronger when that question is answered before building a large campaign around the team’s enthusiasm.
Learn from the product customers rejected
The speakers also describe a launch with extensive creative preparation that did not connect. They had become invested in explaining the material and the concept while missing what customers wanted from the product itself.
The lesson is that more education does not always solve a demand problem. Customers may simply prefer a different feel, design, or function. Treat a weak response as information about the offer, not automatically as proof that the marketing needs to speak louder.
KEEP THE IDEAS COMING
Stay in the conversation.
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