Author’s Bio: Gloria Hwang founded Thousand in 2015 after losing a friend in a tragic biking accident. Previously working at Toms, she applied her experience in social impact to create stylish helmets people actually want to wear. She launched with the mission to save 1,000 lives through better design and continued to innovate after surpassing her initial goals.
People tell you that imitation is the biggest form of flattery, but nobody tells you what you’re actually supposed to do when it happens to your business. One day I learned a much larger brand in the helmet industry had created an internal project called Thousand Killers. They were actively trying to steer customers away from my company. It was unnerving, sure, but it also created a kind of clarity. It taught me the most important lesson about competition: The instinct to fight back by becoming more like them is exactly wrong. Thousand sells more than just cool helmets, it empowers riders to get excited about actually wearing them.
When bigger players copy you, your survival depends on leaning more into differentiation, not less. I started Thousand after a friend and mentor died in a bike accident. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and neither was I at the time, honestly. I knew I should wear one, but nothing on the market felt right for me. Everything looked sci-fi or too intense—nothing matched the joy of casual riding.
That disconnect is what Thousand was built to solve. We looked back to the ’50s and ’60s for inspiration—Steve McQueen, vintage motorcycle helmets, leather straps, and retro colorways that made helmets feel like something you’d actually want to wear. One of our bestselling designs of the past 10 years is a striped red, white, and blue colorway pulled straight from a Steve McQueen photo.
Today, we know our approach worked: 25% of our customers say it’s their first helmet ever. With success brings competition, and the second Thousand Killers launched, I had to decide how to respond.
How to stay ahead of the competition (at all times)
Ahead, I break down the steps that keep me from getting caught up by the competition, while innovating ahead of what they create.
1. Don’t try to be everything to everyone
The more types of customers you try to serve, the less distinctive your brand becomes. Legacy competitors in the helmet industry serve five or more customer segments: mountain biking, gravel riding, road cycling, recreation, and more. Thousand deliberately serves only two: urban travelers and families. When you’re pressured to expand and capture more market share, the instinct is to cast a wider net, but that only dilutes what made you special in the first place.
Many business owners think about market share, but we try to think about closet share. We’d rather go deeper with the customers we understand than spread ourselves thin trying to be everything to everyone. For example, let’s take the development of a mountain biking helmet. To confidently design a differentiated helmet that solves issues common to mountain bikers, we’d need to be a mountain biker, understand the mountain biking community and have real-world experience with mountain biking helmets. We’re none of those things, which is why Thousand hasn’t entered that category.
2. Avoid moving toward the middle
A mentor once taught me to think of competition as an x- and y-axis. When pressure mounts to compete on price or features, most companies drift toward the middle. However, the goal should always be to move further up and to the right—more differentiated, higher value. Zig when others are zagging.
This framework saved us when Thousand Killers launched. Instead of trying to match competitors on price or adding Bluetooth features our customers never asked for, we doubled down on what we do well. We’re what’s called a “blue ocean” company. When the sea gets red from competition, and everyone’s knocking off each other’s products, we remain committed to our product vision: making products stylish, convenient, and safe. That’s why we’ve survived a decade despite bigger brands actively trying to eliminate us. When there’s competition and pressure to move toward the middle, you’ve got to resist.
3. Stay within your circle of competence
It’s tempting to chase adjacent profitable categories, but entering spaces you don’t genuinely understand undermines your competitive advantage. Customer insight comes from real understanding, not just market research. As a recreational cyclist myself, we know what recreational cyclists value. That authentic connection is what lets me solve problems competitors miss. Now that I’m a parent, we’ve entered the kids market with the same approach, because I have genuine insight into what families need—I live it every day.
We won’t enter categories where we lack that customer insight. Legacy players have real expertise in enthusiast markets that we’ll never match, and that’s OK. They’re trying to serve five customer groups while we focus on two, and that focus is our advantage.
For us, getting more differentiated means understanding customer needs and delivering products that meet them better than anyone else. We do both quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews constantly. We’ll get on the phone with kids and their parents, ask them to draw pictures of what they want, and listen to them describe their adventures. We’ve learned that our customers care about color, fit, and finish—not the latest and greatest tech or shaving grams off weight like enthusiast riders do.
It’s not just hearing what customers ask for, it’s inferring the larger pain point you need to resolve when you’re designing a product. Kids tell us they want bike baskets to hold rocks and treasures, but what they’re really saying is they need durable storage for long adventures. The deeper you go with your core customers, the more you learn that nobody else sees. Competitors who spread themselves too thin can’t access those kinds of insights.
4. Recognize when you’ve drifted, and get back on track
About two years ago, I realized we’d lost our way. As Thousand grew, I’d built a leadership team and learned to delegate, even created a product road map. For a couple of years, we weren’t putting out things I was super proud of. We were making iterations, not innovations, and in the process, were moving toward the middle without realizing it.
I realized that our competition wasn’t getting better, we had just been getting more common. Founders get in trouble when they don’t follow their gut, so I took back ownership of the product road map, rebooted our team around our original DNA, and never looked back. The team was initially hesitant and thought the approach was too simple, but the products we’ve launched since have been huge hits. Sometimes the answer isn’t radical reinvention, it’s returning to what made you successful in the first place and doing more of it, better.
Ten years in, across more than 20 countries, Thousand has survived not by becoming more like our competitors but by becoming more like ourselves. The fact that you can’t serve everyone or compete on every dimension is actually your biggest strength. Your competitors can’t focus like you can—remember that. They aren’t asking you to be better at what they do, they’re asking whether you’re brave enough to be extreme at what you do.
Tune in to my full Shopify Masters interview to discover how we navigated that difficult transitional period and discover the tools and strategies we can’t live without.
