Why EasyEquities keeps showing up for the Otter Trail

By Carel Nolte

This article started as an Otter Trail interview. It’s really about why EasyEquities sponsors things.

EasyEquities has been a CN&CO client since the beginning — one of our founding ones. So when people ask why I still get this involved in a trail race every September, the honest answer is: it stopped being a sponsorship a while ago.

Blake from our team has run it. Rikus and I have walked it — we do the medals stage most years. Kurt’s walked it too. Friends and clients from the insurance world — the Barker brothers, Simon Dougall — line up like it’s a reunion. Sheldon Valjalo, Brandon the skateboarder‘s brother.

None of that happens because a logo sits on a finish-line banner. It happens because Clark and the Otter team run one of the best events in the country — professional, sharp, unfussy about the hard parts. That’s the actual skill.

Here’s what I’ve learned about sponsorship doing this for a few years now: it isn’t a media buy. It’s a relationship. You show up. You walk the trail, you don’t just fund it. The people who actually make race day happen — marshals, volunteers, the Faces team — they’re the heroes. We’re just glad to be standing near them.

This year adds a few more threads to that. Neil Washington — EasyEquities team member and client — ran Comrades this year, and I was at the finish to welcome him across. Now he’s taking on the Otter too. Alan Gray and his daughters are joining us — Alan’s our oldest participant and, honestly, an inspiration; we sit on the Comrades board together. And adidas, the Otter’s title partner, isn’t just kitting out the trail — it’s a share you can actually buy on EasyEquities if watching their gear out there makes you curious about the company behind it.

What follows is the full conversation, first published on otter.run. Read it for what it actually is — an answer to why some sponsorships are worth more than the NAV they generate.

Read the full interview on the Otter website here.