William S. Nicolai

William S. "Bill" Nicolai is an American businessman. He was the founder of Early Winters, an outdoor equipment manufacturer and catalog retailer.

Education

He attended the University of Washington, but did not graduate. He was selected to participate in an intensive course at the Harvard School of Business.

Early Winters

Early Winters, begun in 1974, was the result of Nicolai's invention of an integrated, double-wall mountaineering tent called "The Omnipotent." The Omnipotent's design came to Nicolai after a conventional A-frame tent with separate rain fly was destroyed by a storm in the North Cascades of Washington State. Nicolai almost died in the incident.

In 1976, Early Winters developed the world's first product made from Gore-Tex fabrics. This was a tent named by Ron Zimmerman, vice-president of marketing, the "Light Dimension." Sales of this innovative product allowed the company to grow rapidly. It soon developed other uses for Gore-Tex such as rain jackets and sleeping bag covers. The company's ground-breaking marketing via catalogs led it to be named Catalog of the Year by the Direct Marketing Association. Early Winters was sold to the Orvis company of Manchester, Vermont. It is now part of the Norm Thompson group in Portland, Oregon.

Other companies

After Early Winters, Nicolai operated Nicolai and Associates, a direct marketing consulting group whose clients included J. Peterman, Smith and Hawken and other well known catalog firms, for whom his innovative approach was instrumental in their rapid growth and success.

In 1992 he co-founded the Good Catalog Company and grew it to over $25 million in annual sales before selling the firm to Reader's Digest in 1999.

Lenser and Associates

In 1998, Bill joined the partnership of Lenser and Associates, which was started by his colleague John Lenser, who founded San Francisco Music Box company. In the early years of Lenser and Associates, Mr. Nicolai became an innovative force behind the development of Co-Op Databases in terms of their effectiveness and usability within the direct marketing and catalog industry.

Today Nicolai is senior managing partner of the same firm, now called LENSER, based in San Rafael CA. He continues to reside in the state of Washington. Bill often directs LENSER's larger scale consulting projects and assists in developing the firm's service and product offerings, including their trigger-based email and website products.

Personal life

For many years Bill Nicolai was a competitive sailplane pilot. He made the 12th successful ascent of Mount Sir Sandford in the Canadian North Selkirk Mountains with Ron Zimmerman and Brian Berry, brother of Jan Berry of the United States musical group, Jan and Dean. Nicolai's athletic feats also included the first-ever attempt to ski the Ptarmigan Traverse in the North Cascades in 1977 with Steve Barnett. His attentions later turned to Ironman Triathlon competitions and long distance running and cycling.

Nicolai is author of numerous articles published in Catalog Age, now Multichannel Merchant, and other marketing journals. He is a frequent speaker at the Annual Direct Marketing Association and ACCM conferences, as well as giving Webinar courses in conjunction with Multichannel Merchant's MCM LIVE! series.