Icebreaker - Pure Merino

Ole!  What better way to celebrate a successful planning meeting than to make delicious Spanish food with friends, accompanied by a Gypsy Kings soundtrack and plenty of Sangria?  Last month, members of the Icebreaker US Market team got to experience just that when we ventured over to Portland’s Hipcooks to learn how to make tapas.

With locations in Portland, Seattle, and L.A., Hipcooks hosts group cooking classes for the beginning cook to the Top Chef wannabe.  Our teacher Nick got us started with the most important part of the meal – the Sangria course!  Over the next hour, he had each of us make some component of every meal.   We each got a chance to stir, season, chop, flip, and mix and he showed us techniques to make our cooking more efficient and fun.  The dishes we made ranged from a simple, spicy caramelized nut mix, to a complex flan.  And they all looked delicious!

After the cooking was finished, we all set down at Hipcooks massive dining table for a group dinner.  Eating a meal prepared as a group was so much better than just going out to a restaurant!  As we passed around the food and drank the last of the Sangria, we talked about the techniques we had learned and laughed about the crazy cooking skills that some of us had displayed, especially Mike, with his amazing bottle flip while making Sangria (we think he was the inspiration for Tom Cruise in Cocktail).

If you’re looking for a great group activity, team cooking classes are the way to go!  Our night at Hipcooks is one we won’t soon forget!

- Matt Hazel, Icebreaker US Customer Service Rep

Messages of support are still flooding in from the extended Icebreaker family for Team Icebreaker as they Race Across America.  This latest video is hot off the press from our Portland office, what a great bunch of cheerleaders we have amongst us!

And the Germans have sent us proof of their hard core support from Europe – they’re really with the team 24 hours that’s for sure!

Rob, Hamish, Mike, Jase and the support crew have just checked into time station 46 (out of 55) and they’ve got less than 250 miles to go!  Go team!

Follow Team Icebreaker on their Race Across America, send messages of support and WIN IcebreakerGT gear:  http://raam.icebreaker.com/

Some people find traveling for work a bit of a chore.  Airports, customs and delays are all part and parcel of a long day at work.  But I feel a little bit different in that respect.  It’s exciting, motivating, challenging and full of so many memorable times.

Here at Icebreaker, a few of the team get to travel for their jobs, and I’ve been lucky enough to head to Portland in the US for 2 weeks.  Sure we work hard when we get here, why wouldn’t you make the most of the opportunity when you’ve got access to your global team members face-to-face?  But our culture is pretty special and the payoff is so uniquely unreal.

There always seems to be another Icebreaker-ite on the road at the same time and it’s like a family reunion when we all get together.  Sometimes we meet up on flights or at tradeshows, other times in various Icebreaker offices around the world.  Meals are often spent crowed around a table sharing food and stories and having a good old laugh about past Icebreaker events.  Catching up on the latest news and what we’ve all been up to since we last met is essential, and sometimes that means a late night out, accompanied by the obligatory bottle of tequila.

Just in the last week I was able to fly to Portland with my old boss Michelle.  It was like traveling with one of your buddies, but even more inspiring as you get valuable mentorship along the way.  When I arrived in the US I found not only the US team on arrival, but many of the Europe, Canadian and Australian team members too!  It was pretty cool, and as I said, you get that family reunion type of excitement in the pit of your stomach, it almost feels like Christmas.

We partied at one of my favorite ex-NZ team member’s Lisa’s house on Tuesday.  ‘Lis’ has just become our US Market Manager so an Icebreaker party to welcome her and her family to this side of the globe was a must.  My old NZ buddy Becky happened to be part of the Europe troupe (she works for our Swiss office now), and on Thursday her, Ibi (our Swiss account Manager) and I grabbed tickets to an NBA playoff and had a magic night watching the Basketball at the Rose Garden (lets’ go Blazers, let’s go!).  Friday my boss Steve and I had a brainstorm at one of our creative agencies, who then decided to take us out for a Portland night on the town.  We had a blast, I made many new friends and even took off on Saturday on a road trip to Seattle with four of them to watch the Mariners play baseball!  Can’t wait to repay the favour when they come to visit in New Zealand.

This morning leads into my last few days of this trip and the excitement doesn’t stop. I met up with Viv (our TQE Manager) for breakfast as she’d just flown in overnight, and we arrived at the office to squeals of laughter and excitement as Kerryn and Kurt from our product team had just gotten engaged over the weekend!  They met at Icebreaker, so an Icebreaker marriage is now on the cards!  Wonder if they’ll be wearing merino as their wedding outfits….?  Kent from Canada has just arrived, and we’re all awaiting Nick from NZ.  He’s the latest employee to be given a wonderful job opportunity through Icebreaker – he’s moving with his wife to New York to look after our accounts over there.  Lucky thing.

It’ll be sad to go on Thursday, but hopefully I’ll be back again soon and I can’t wait to see my New Zealand Icebreaker family when I get home.

Brooke Riley, Global Web Project Manager