Executive Interview Series: Q&A with Dave Hatley, CEO of Whisper Outdoor

First Page Sage: Whisper Outdoor emphasizes experience as much as performance. Why has customer experience become such an important competitive advantage today?

Dave Hatley: Customers have gotten a lot savvier about what they’re actually buying. When someone invests in a spa or a golf cart or a pontoon boat, they’re not just buying a product. They’re buying an outcome. They’re buying a version of their life where they have more time outside, more moments with family, more ways to enjoy what they’ve worked hard for.

The performance bar is high across the industry. Most products work. What separates brands now is how you feel at every step of the process, from the first time you walk into a showroom to what happens six months after you’ve had the product in your backyard. That’s where loyalty gets built or lost.

We believe movement changes everything. Not just how you travel, but how you experience the outdoors once you arrive. So our job isn’t just to sell a product. It’s to make sure that the whole experience of becoming a Whisper customer adds to people’s lives, not complicates them.

First Page Sage: How does Whisper’s direct-sales model help you deliver a different customer experience than traditional dealer-based competitors?

Hatley: The dealer model has its advantages, but it can also create a lot of distance between a brand and its customers. When a third party is the face of your product, you lose a lot of control over how the story gets told and how problems get resolved. We do business with the top 3 dealers in the country, but only because they do well with our brand and story; the majority of our volume comes from our factory-direct stores.

We design and sell our products direct, which means we control craftsmanship, service, and the experience from start to finish. That’s not just a positioning statement. It’s how we’re actually structured. Our retail teams are trained by us, compensated by us, and held to our standards. When a customer has a question, they’re talking to someone who represents Whisper, not a dealer who might carry five other brands alongside ours.

That continuity matters a lot. Customers trust brands that show up consistently. And it makes us better internally, too. When you own the whole relationship, you cannot hide behind someone else when things don’t go perfectly. That accountability sharpens everything.

First Page Sage: Your brand guidelines talk about controlling craftsmanship, service, and experience from start to finish. What benefits does that approach create for customers?.

Hatley: It creates accountability, and accountability translates into trust. When you control the full experience, you can set a standard and actually enforce it. We’re not dependent on a third-party retailer to decide how much effort to put into the setup, the demo, or the follow-up. That’s all on us. And because it’s all on us, customers know what to expect whether they’re buying in Phoenix or Charlotte.

The best products don’t force customers to choose between design and functionality. We hold ourselves to that standard on both the manufacturing and the service side. Innovation drives us forward, but longevity defines our standard. So when we build a product, we’re thinking about that customer’s experience five years from now, not just the day it gets delivered.

What we hear from customers most often is that they didn’t expect it to be this easy. That tells me we’re doing something right. It also tells me the industry hasn’t raised the bar nearly enough.

First Page Sage: What role do your retail locations play in helping customers understand the broader Whisper Outdoor vision?

Hatley: Our stores are where the brand comes to life. You can describe a swim spa or a pontoon boat online all day, but there’s a moment when someone sits in the product, feels how it’s built, and something clicks. Our retail locations are designed to create that moment.

Most competitors operate in a single category. Whisper spans multiple categories under one vision, which means our stores need to tell a bigger story. We’re not a golf cart store with a few spas in the back. We’re an outdoor lifestyle company, and every product on the floor is there because it fits that vision.

When a customer walks in and sees a pontoon boat next to a swim spa next to a UTV, it opens a different conversation. It’s not “which product do you want today.” It’s “what does your outdoor life look like, and what do you need to do to make it better.” Our teams are trained to have that conversation, and our locations are designed to support it.

First Page Sage: How do you measure success beyond product sales when building a premium lifestyle brand?

Freed: A few things come to mind.

The first is repeat engagement. When someone who bought a spa from us a year ago comes back to look at a golf cart, that tells me the experience held up. They trusted us enough to return. That’s a meaningful signal.

The second is referrals. Our best customers are the ones who bring in their neighbors, their kids, their friends. More than 10,000 five-star Google reviews didn’t happen by accident. They happened because real people had a good enough experience that they wanted to tell someone about it.

And honestly, the third is whether we’re living up to the vision we set out to build. Every Whisper product serves one purpose: to move you. Toward connection. Toward restoration. Toward adventure. If customers are telling us that’s what’s happening in their lives, then we’re building something worth building.

Revenue matters. But if the experience is right, the revenue follows.