What's a "Hugger"?

Jan 26, 2007  ·  01:34 PM  ·  permalink

That was a question I needed to be able to answer this week as I visited SIA for Snow Hugger. SIA is one of the snow sports industries’ big annual trade shows and it required me to tell many PR agents what it is to be a “hugger.”

In our world, a hugger is someone who is serious about their recreation. They don’t just ski sometimes or ride once in while, they live skiing or they live cycling. This is not to say that their lives must be only or even primarily about a sport, but there’s no question that a hugger’s sport impacts their life broadly.

Terms like “passionate” immediately come to mind, but these have been cheapened by over use. We wanted to capture the idea of an authentic devotion to an area of endeavor going beyond fashion and fancy. We don’t just do a sport, we embrace it and it becomes encompassing. This ain’t Jazzercize.

Tree huggers we know are possessed of an unreasonable devotion, albeit a pretty loony one. But, whatever you think of such a devotion, there’s something admirable in choosing your belief and then giving yourself over to it body and soul. Grown people playing in the snow or donning spandex knickers in public certainly falls into the “loony” category, and we wanted to speak to that light-hearted aspect of huggers’ lives. But huggers don’t just sit home and dream or watch the world on television. Like tree huggers, they are engaged in a physical activity, putting themselves “in harm’s way,” if you like.

So, we think a hugger devotes themselves emotionally and physically to an outdoor sport to the extent that it becomes a lifestyle. And at Hugger Industries, we make blogs for those people to read and to write.