Brand + Growth Partners - Portland, Oregon

We turn
Davids into
Goliaths.

Not an agency. Not a consultancy. Two senior partners embedded in your business: a fractional CMO and a design director who've spent 25 years building brands at the intersection of sport, culture, and technology.

See if we're a fit

Wahoo Indoor Training 2026

The S+D Model

You need
senior leadership.
Not more headcount.

Founders and executives hit a point where the brand needs to grow faster than the team can. Hiring a CMO costs $300K. Hiring an agency means junior teams and lots of meetings. There's a better way.

The gap between where most brands are and where they need to be is rarely a creativity problem. It's a resources problem. The right senior thinking costs too much to hire full time. The right agency is too bloated to move fast. Brands get stuck, outspent by bigger competitors and underserved by vendors who treat them like a line item.

S+D was built for that gap. Two senior partners who've spent 25 years inside the brands your customers already respect. Nike. adidas. Apple. But what you're really getting is the network those 25 years built. Strategists, creatives, producers, retail specialists, channel experts. People we've worked alongside long enough to trust completely. Finding and vetting that bench on your own would take years. We bring it on day one.

That network, paired with how we've integrated AI into everything we do, means two partners can move with the range and speed of a team ten times our size. Our insights drive the strategy. Our relationships get it made. AI removes the ceiling on how fast and how far we can take it. Without the overhead. Without the layers. Without the junior work that ends up on your desk anyway.

25+

Years building
the network

100+

Specialists in
our orbit

Partners. Decades
of trust behind them.

20+

Brands that moved
the market

Case Studies

Three relationships. Three stages. One model.

The Story

We came in for a packaging job.

An Apple Retail rep needed a firm who could elevate a scrappy hardware startup's brand before they'd consider putting it on their shelves. The product connected to the iPhone in ways almost nothing else did at the time. Apple liked that. They just needed the brand to match the ambition.

We walked into a small basement office in Buckhead, Atlanta. Engineers everywhere. Soldering irons on every surface. The kind of energy you get when the people building the thing genuinely believe in it.

We came in to name and design a bike computer. We named it RFLKT. In doing that work, we laid the foundation for a brand that's still being built today.

From a basement in Buckhead to a global brand.

The question that changed everything.

In that first meeting, Chip showed us what he was really excited about: a prototype for what would become the KICKR Power Trainer. The thing that would eventually be credited with creating the indoor cycling revolution.

Chip is an engineer first. Marketing skeptic by nature. We asked him: do you want to be a product in the back of a Sharper Image catalog, or a brand that stands for something the way Nike stands for winning?

He didn't fully get the question at first. So we clarified. Nike doesn't sell shoes. They sell the idea that you can win. The shoes are just how they prove it. Do you want that for Wahoo?

He said yes. That answer became the north star for everything that followed: every product name, every campaign, every community touchpoint, for over a decade.

"Do you want to be a product, or a brand?"

Half a million people use a word we invented.

The most important thing we built at Wahoo wasn't a campaign. It was the Wahooligan.

Taking a page from thinkers like BJ Bueno and Seth Godin, we believed that the most powerful thing a brand can do is name its tribe and hand it over to them. The Wahooligan is a data junkie. Someone who derives real joy from tracking, measuring, and sharing the activities that make them say "Wahoo!"

We defined it. We named it. We put it everywhere. Today the Wahooligan community is nearly half a million strong. The word appears in Wahoo's investor decks, their hiring process, their product roadmap and all forms of communication.

Most people at Wahoo today don't know we made the word. That's how embedded it is. And honestly, that's the point.

We created the cultural infrastructure the entire brand is built on.

Several CEOs. A thousand competitors. Still here.

We grew up in Portland, in the shadow of Wieden+Kennedy and their relationship with Nike. We watched how a small agency and a brand built each other over decades. Through leadership changes, market shifts, cultural moments. We always thought that was the model to aspire to.

Wahoo has had several CEOs since 2012. Economic cycles. A global pandemic that actually accelerated them. New investors. New competition. Agencies that pitched them over and over again. Some landed short engagements. None lasted.

We're still here. Busier with them now than we've been in years, with new leadership and new global ambitions. We're not sure anyone has been part of the Wahoo story longer than us.

The fact that we're still here is the case study.

What this means if you're building something.

We're not telling the Wahoo story to impress you. We're telling it because it's the most honest answer to the question every founder eventually asks their agency: will you still care about this in five years?

We're still Wahooligans. We still get excited when they ship something new. We still push back when we think they're wrong. That's not a client relationship. That's a partnership.

If you're a founder who's figured out the product and now needs someone to help you figure out the brand, someone who thinks like an owner, works fast, and doesn't disappear after the kickoff call, that's the conversation we're interested in having.

We're currently building Kroop's and Wahoo Marine from the ground up. For the right founder at the right stage, we'll talk about more than just a retainer.

We're always looking for the next long game.

How We Engage

Three ways
in.

We work in a few different ways depending on where you are and what you need. No bloated retainers, no scope creep. Honest engagements built around real outcomes.

Embedded Partner

This is how we work with Wahoo. We function as your de facto marketing department, attending planning sessions, owning the brand, directing creative across every touchpoint. You get two senior partners who know your business as well as you do.

Best for brands that are generating revenue and ready to scale but can't justify, or don't want, full-time executive hires.

Retainer

Brand Ownership

Full GTM

Long-term

Project Partner

A defined scope with a defined outcome. Brand identity, product launch, campaign development, go-to-market plan. We come in sharp, do the work, and leave you with something that lasts.

Best for brands with an existing team that needs outside senior thinking or a specific execution capability.

Project-based

Brand Sprints

Launch Support

Equity Partner

For the right founders at the right stage, we'll put skin in the game. We've structured engagements where our services are exchanged in part for equity or options, which means we're not just working for you, we're building alongside you.

We're selective. This isn't available to everyone who asks. But if you're building something we genuinely believe in, it's a conversation worth having.

Equity / Options

Reduced Rate

Selective

Long-term

Partner - Brand & Growth Strategy

Steve Flood

Twenty-five years working in the boardrooms of global brands and the garages of startups. Built marketing platforms at adidas, Nike, and Apple Retail. Created go-to-market processes that compressed years of conventional planning into months. At Wahoo since 2012. Survived several CEOs, a pandemic, and a thousand competing agencies. Still there.

Thinks like a business owner, works like a creative. Interested in brands that are building something real.

Wahoo Fitness

adidas

Dr. Martens

Apple Retail

NFL

Merrell

Partner - Design Direction

Matt Davis

Fifteen-plus years building brand identities and experience systems for companies that needed their visual language to work as hard as their products. His work has appeared in Apple stores, on marathon finish lines, in global fitness apps, and on shelves in 40 countries.

Fast without cutting corners. Elevated without being precious about it. The person you want running creative when speed and quality both matter.

Wahoo Fitness

adidas

NFL

Wahoo Marine

Kroop's

Work with us

Let's find out
if we're
a fit.

We're selective about the work we take on. Not because we're precious about it. The best engagements happen when there's genuine alignment on where a brand is going.

Tell us a little about your situation. Takes two minutes.

A few quick questions

What best describes your situation?

We turnDavids intoGoliaths.

You needsenior leadership.Not more headcount.