Jon
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It takes a team of knowledgeable and dedicated people to get Wilderness Wear product into the hands of its customers, and it takes a personable and visionary individual to get such a team into action. Enter Jon Pote, Chief Operations Officer.
An early career start with the Victorian Police coincided with Jon joining a pretty hard core Adventure Race team which featured cycle, kayak and run legs in the wilds of the Australian landscape. He also participated in numerous marathons, duathlons and triathlons, along with two Melbourne Oxfam 100km trailwalks – a certified sucker for punishment in any form it was offered! And from there Jon developed his career almost exclusively within the clothing and outdoor industries while maintaining his passion for personal fitness, snowboarding, competition sports – including time as a football (soccer) ‘tragic’ – and outdoor life in general.
Jon lives and breathes Wilderness Wear. He is often first at the office in the mornings, and last to leave in the evenings – keeping tabs on a variety of projects, processes and people in between. Then in his ‘down’ time he’s still researching the industry, keeping up communications with suppliers, partners and customers outside of the office, and also evaluating product prototypes. But in his ‘down down’ time Jon does find opportunity to train for long distance runs (still including marathons!), which also doubles as time to further evaluate new products, and generally enjoy the great Australian outdoors with his family and friends.
A true hands-on man, Jon successfully divides his time across many parts of the Wilderness Wear business and its people – from the boardroom to the delivery dock; the machine rooms to the storage bays; and the showroom to the marketing desks – all with the aim to bring together the company tenets of ‘materials’, ‘design’ and ‘technology’ into a range of high-end products that embraces the true notion of quality.