[01]
We want folks to be grounded in presence: real tactile experiences, real community… slow content, slow food.
michael andersen · 29 april 2026
takibi tales
A storytelling platform for Snow Peak USA. Four formats for telling stories that earn their place in the wild.
I started a camping brand because I enjoyed camping with my friends, but along the way, I realized we were healing humanity.
tohru yamai · field mag
three acts · eight chapters
contents.
- 02 the opportunity the platform, the four formats, and a worked example. 10–13
- 03 Ways of Being the lowest-friction proof: host Sef’s film at your venues this autumn. 14–17
- 04 A Takibi Tale the first authored Snow Peak story if the proof feels right. 18–21
- 05 Kindlings a field weekend designed to yield a season of editorial stories and assets. 22–25
- 06 Short Doc the festival horizon: Snow Peak as named cultural patron. 26–29
chapter one
landscape & positioning
what we heard on april 29
You already have the language for what you’re building.
[02]
Not pushing specific products and call-to-action marketing but inviting to our experience and the lifestyle we recommend.
yuichi uchida · 29 april 2026
[03]
I want to see video as a tool to inspire people: how happy you can be with nature, what your reaction is when you go outdoors.
yuichi uchida · 29 april 2026
the storytelling advantage
The brand already has the raw material for stories people want to enter.
deep origins.
Snow Peak was founded in 1958 in Sanjo City, Niigata, the metalworking heartland of Japan. Yukio Yamai began with climbing hardware. His son Tohru turned the company toward designed family camping in the 1980s. Lisa Yamai has led as President since 2020. The 70th anniversary lands in 2028.
doctrine.
The 70-year north star is kacho fugetsu, the way of life with nature. The 2026 USA expression is Noasobi, the art of being outside. Find Your Nature is the campaign concept emerging alongside it. They use the doctrine.
platform.
A 25-acre Campfield on the Washington coast with Kengo Kuma’s Jyubako micro-cabins and a Japanese-cypress Ofuro. A Portland restaurant where the wood-burning hearth is visible from every seat. A SoHo flagship. Snow Peak Way runs four times a year in the U.S., fifteen times a year in Japan. The platform is more than gear; it’s the places, the rituals, and the recurring gatherings around them.
lineage.
Tsubame-Sanjo is a 400-year metalworking region. The Yamai family is of this region. Adjacent at-risk crafts (Wajima lacquerware, Awa indigo, hinoki cypress, washi paper) sit in the same cultural neighborhood.
our read
The values are right. Some pieces are already reaching toward authored work.
six examples from the catalog
Behind the Design: Snow Peak Campfield
place/process: authored and close to the standard.
Vibrance
seasonal hero: aspirational, but not yet traveling.
Journey of a Gift
product story: one object, one emotional shape.
Chicken Nabe
utility: useful, short, and easy to enter.
SS26 Lookbook
editorial: style language reaching for authorship.
Snow Peak Fly Fishing 2025
story-led film: the recent cohesive standout.
what travels
The pieces that travel are the ones with a clear human or useful shape.
178
total videos
1.9M
lifetime channel views
5,870
subscribers
56%
of all views from the top four videos
2,500
median views per video
the all-time top four
Short, narrative-led, useful at the core. Three of the four are over two years old. Nothing recent has joined them.
the recent aspirational work
Recent. Beautiful. Running at half the channel median or less.
the gap
Translation is the
missing layer.
Snow Peak has the doctrine, rituals, places, products, and community. The job is turning lived moments into stories audiences outside Snow Peak can understand.
We help tell the stories in a form that can travel beyond the people who were there.
what has to happen
Start with the real moment.
Fire, food, field, craft, product in use, and people gathering with intent.
Add the missing context.
Why it matters, what is at stake, and why someone who was not there should care.
Turn it into authored work.
Films, screenings, stills, editorial, and distribution built from the real thing.
chapter two
the opportunity
The story is already there. Snow Peak already has the fire, field, food, craft, places, products, and community. Storytelling is the layer on top: a storyteller who can shape what’s happening into something universal, and a system that lets the story travel.
our proposal
takibi tales.
Takibi Tales is the storytelling platform for Snow Peak USA. It acts as the publisher, with four formats underneath: a screening series, a single authored film, a productized field weekend, and a co-sponsored documentary. Each format earns its place in the wild differently. None of them sell.
four formats · one platform
Start simple. Expand naturally.
job
opportunity
what it does
investment posture
open the circle
Ways of Being Sponsorship
Host Sef’s film at your venues. Tests the screening language with almost no friction.
No fee · venue, gear, lists, hosting
tell the first tale
A Takibi Tale
One person, one ritual, one place: a Snow Peak-native story that makes Find Your Nature legible as feeling.
Small production · essential or extended
build the story engine
Kindlings
A Snow Peak camp weekend designed and curated for story: meals, rituals, product use, real-user voices, and editorial capture. One weekend yields a season of assets.
Campaign production · plus in-kind support
carry it into culture
Short Doc
A Snow Peak-adjacent documentary, co-sponsored, with a festival circuit, critic, awards-entry, and screening route.
Co-sponsored cultural asset
These are four possible scopes. We’d start with the screening series because it uses the least new budget, time, and production. The larger projects can wait until there’s alignment.
door 01 · lowest-friction proof
Ways of Being Sponsorship. Host Sef’s film.
Sef’s documentary Ways of Being is in post and screens in Japan in late July or early August 2026. You can host the film at your venues: Takibi PDX patio, Long Beach Campfield, SoHo flagship, possibly a Japan campground. No sponsorship fee. Snow Peak contributes venue, gear, audience lists, and an evening of hosting. The evening becomes a small first instance of what Takibi Tales feels like in practice.
four nights, four venues
the venues already exist.
Japan premiere
late Jul / early Aug 2026
Already on Sef’s calendar. Snow Peak Japan venue, if possible: campground or Niigata location. Snow Peak attends.
Portland: Takibi PDX
autumn 2026
Covered patio. Twenty to thirty floor-seated. Director Q&A with Sef. Press invited.
Long Beach Campfield
autumn 2026
Outdoor screening on a Pack & Carry-lit field. Camping-night format. Could close a weekend if scheduled adjacent to SPW.
New York: SoHo flagship
autumn 2026
After-hours. Floor-seated on cushions. Sake reception. The film and design worlds overlap.
what each night looks like
the same shape, in different venues.
Every screening runs the same shape. The venue changes; the tone stays.
doors / arrivalsake or tea welcome, ambient music, lanterns
↓
welcome (Snow Peak)≤ 60 seconds · host welcome, no brand pitch
↓
program note (Sef)~1 minute · director’s framing
↓
filmfinal runtime · silence, attention
↓
director Q&A20–30 minutes · moderated
↓
receptionIGT-table style · sake + small bites · conversation
how we’ll know it worked
measured in attention, not impressions.
A screening series doesn’t live or die on view counts. It lives on who’s in the audience, what they take with them, and what travels after. Six measures across the four nights and the 90 days that follow.
measure
window
working threshold
Full houses across the series
per screening
≥90% capacity at all four venues
Press & editorial attendance
per screening
≥2 Tier-1 outlets per U.S. venue (Field Mag, Atmos, Colossal, Cereal, NYT Styles)
Attendee UGC
30 days post-event
≥40 tagged posts across the series
Q&A clips that travel
60 days
≥3 Sef-led clips placed on Snow Peak owned + earned channels
Branded-search lift, venue cities
30 days post-event
+10% vs. pre-event in PDX, LBC, NYC
Asset reuse rate
12 months
≥50% of series stills used in non-event Snow Peak placements
door 02 · first authored story
A Takibi Tale. One forge, one fire, seventy years between.
A three-minute Snow Peak origin anthem traced from the Sanjo forge of 1958 to the global Takibi today, with one forged object, the grill, recurring across every era. Score built from the brand’s own sounds: hammer, crampon, stake, canvas, fire, flint. No voiceover. Find Your Nature arrives as the consequence of seventy years of work, not a line on screen.
Sneha Khanwalkar tuned recorded steel into rhythm. Bharat Sikka shot faces and hands across the country. Kondurkar Studio shaped the press kit as part of the campaign. We treat it as a shape, not a look: the material as the protagonist, the score forged from the subject itself.
the reference that sets the register
Calibrating A Takibi Tale
against The Steel of India.
what we model on it.
material as protagonist · score built from the subject · high-contrast portraiture across geographies · editorial press kit treated as part of the film
what we leave alone.
voiceover or anthem narration · macro-nationalist register · industrial-only sonic palette
one story, several surfaces
the cutdowns are the architecture.
YouTube long-form gets the 3:00 origin-anthem hero. The cutdowns are built from the same shoot and the same score, same emotional spine, three different lengths. Stills carry the film into press, retail, and email through the rest of the year.
Premiere. A small premiere at Takibi PDX. Twenty seats around a fire on the patio, a printed press kit at every place, the film projected once and then again. Open to press but not pitched at them. The night also builds muscle memory for Kindlings and the screening series.
3:00 hero→YouTube long-form · stories.snowpeak.com · 70th-anniversary archive
:60 cutdown→Meta paid · YouTube TrueView Discovery
:30 cutdown→Pre-roll · Stories · retail screens · the Find Your Nature ad unit
:15 bumper→YouTube pre-roll skip-frame · hammer → Takibi crack → flint
3 Shorts→YouTube Shorts · IG Reels · TikTok
18–24 stills→Press kit · SS27 lookbook · e-commerce · paid Meta · email · retail
how we’ll know it worked
measured against your own baselines.
Six measures across the launch window. Final thresholds calibrate against Snow Peak’s prior baselines once those are shared.
measure
source
window
working threshold
Qualified views (YouTube + Meta)
Platform analytics
90 days
Target: 1.5M+; paid and organic reported separately
YouTube completion (75% / 100%)
YouTube analytics
8 weeks
Beat Snow Peak’s prior baseline
Meta save rate
Meta Insights
8 weeks
Beat Snow Peak’s prior baseline
Branded-search lift
Google Trends + paid attribution
8 weeks
+10% vs. pre-launch
Earned media, outlet-quality weighted
Manual track
12 weeks
≥3 Tier-1 pickups
Vimeo Staff Picks consideration
Vimeo
12 weeks
Selection or named consideration
door 03 · expansion path
Kindlings. A field weekend designed for storytellers.
Snow Peak Way already gathers the right people. Kindlings is what happens when the camp is designed for story from the start: guest mix, meals, workshops, product use, fire, light, printed objects, and editorial capture all curated as one composed world.
the cast
every guest has a defined role.
The cast is structured around four constituencies. Each generates a different kind of asset. The gathering stays small enough to feel like a Snow Peak Way table.
3–4
creators
Sef plus a cinematographer and a paired stills photographer; possibly a Field Mag-grade writer. The people paid to observe and shape what happens.
2–3
cultivators
Chef-host (Alex Kim from Takibi PDX as a working anchor), a foraging guide, a Snow Peak product designer. The people whose craft is the content.
3–4
consumers
Paid models who wear, use, and live with the gear in scene. The lookbook, in motion.
4–5
curious
SPW alumni and adjacent-community guests. Real users telling their own stories. The presence of this group is what keeps the gathering from feeling staged.
what comes out of one weekend
a season’s worth of stories, all from one designed camp.
Kindlings is not just coverage of a weekend. It is a camp curated for story: the guest list, meals, rituals, workshops, product moments, light, sound, and fire are composed in advance so the story is already alive at the camp before the cameras arrive.
the designed camp
- A composed guest mix: creators, cultivators, real users, and Snow Peak hosts
- Meals, fire, workshops, and product use staged as real rituals, not content prompts
- A visual system for the weekend: table, wardrobe, gear, light, printed matter, and take-home object
- A clear editorial spine before arrival, so every moment knows what story it serves
film
- A 5–7 minute field film, Sef-directed. The spine of the weekend.
- Workshop how-to films, ~5 across the days
- 3 cooking shorts, chef-led
stills + editorial + print
- A photo essay (20–30 frames) pitched to one editorial outlet
- A full product and wardrobe lookbook
- 4–8 real-user story shorts, with raw audio that can serialize as podcast content
- A printed take-home object designed for the night
Plus a press kit for the editorial drop, and a small set of cinematic hero stills for paid placement.
how we’ll know it worked
measured by what travels after.
Five measures across the launch window. The asset reuse rate is the one we care about most: it’s the proof that one designed weekend earned its place in a season of brand storytelling.
measure
window
working threshold
Editorial pickup (Tier-1)
90 days
≥1 (Field Mag or Atmos)
Workshop / cooking breakout
90 days
1M+ qualified views (paid + organic reported separately)
Attendee UGC
90 days
≥30 tagged posts
Branded-search lift
90 days
+10% vs. pre-event
Asset reuse rate
season window
≥50% of stills in non-event placements
door 04 · expansion path
Short Doc. A story Snow Peak couldn’t tell about itself.
A 30-to-40-minute documentary directed by Sef, co-sponsored alongside aligned brands. Snow Peak appears as the named cultural patron. The story belongs to its subject, and the subject has to matter to someone who has never bought the gear. This is the prestige horizon: the festival circuit you mentioned wanting to enter, with the relationships to open it.
territories we believe in
the shape of stories worth telling.
Subject lock comes after a working session with Sef and you. The territories below are starting points. Each is Snow Peak-adjacent without being directly about the brand. Snow Peak appears through setting and context, never through narration.
A Niigata metalworker
hand-finishing a Snow Peak titanium piece. The most direct lineage.
A multigenerational SPW family
across Japan and the U.S. The brand’s signature gathering through three generations.
A chef on the road
cooking over fire across Niigata and the Pacific Northwest. Food, place, craft.
A quiet revival of an at-risk craft
lacquerware, indigo, knife forging. Tsubame-Sanjo’s deeper lineage.
A landscape, through one inhabitant
Echigo region, or the Olympic Peninsula. One character, one place.
An unhighlighted community
a queer-outdoor collective, an immigrant outdoor club, a multicultural SPW chapter.
the route snow peak hasn’t taken yet
festival, then critics, then awards, then the screening tour.
tier 1 · world premiere
Sundance Shorts · Big Sky (Oscar-qualifying) · Mountainfilm · IDFA
↓
tier 2 circuit · 12 months
Hot Docs · Tribeca · DOC NYC · True/False · Camden · BFI London
↓
tier 3 outdoor circuit
5Point · Banff · No Man’s Land · regional outdoor
↓
awards · parallel track
Cinema Eye Honors · IDA · D&AD Film Craft · AICP · Vimeo Staff Picks · Webby
↓
snow peak screening tour
Takibi PDX · Long Beach · SoHo · (Japan)
↓
year 2+ · distribution
NYT Op-Docs · MUBI · Criterion · Vimeo on Demand · Apple Films
how we’ll know it worked
measured by the festivals it enters.
Festival selections, awards shortlists, critic counts, and theatrical or streamer pickup are the proof. The audience that matters here isn’t the channel audience; it’s the cultural-stewardship circles a film like this enters.
measure
window
working threshold
Festival selections (count, tier)
18 months from premiere
≥4 selections, ≥1 Tier-1
Awards shortlists / wins
18 months
≥1 Cinema Eye / AICP / D&AD nomination
Critic coverage
12 months
≥8 outlets, ≥3 Tier-1 film press
Streamer / theatrical / educational pickup
18 months
≥1 pickup
Branded-search lift + screening attendance
12 months
sustained lift; full attendance at the tour
where we fit
We turn Snow Peak moments into stories people can enter.
Sef shapes the story. Ophelia produces the system around it: the gathering, the rollout, the partners, the assets, and the handoff so Snow Peak can keep carrying the format.
- doesn’t sell.
- stays snow peak.
- real craft.
- measurable.
the storyteller
sef matsuyama.
Sef Matsuyama is a director, photographer, and musician whose work moves between documentary, brand films, and music videos without changing posture. He’s Japanese-American, based between New York, Japan, and LA, comfortable in a Niigata workshop and a Brooklyn edit suite. He thinks about story the way a film editor thinks: at the level of what’s said and what’s withheld.
On this proposal, Sef carries the story spine. He directs A Takibi Tale, shapes the field storytelling at Kindlings, and leads the Short Doc. Ways of Being, the first proof in this deck, is already his film. Each opportunity carries his sensibility in a different shape; the same mind is behind every one.
What he’s been working toward, and what Ways of Being is the most recent expression of, is documentary work that respects its subject without performing distance. The films are made for the people in them as much as the people watching. That posture moves cleanly into brand-funded work without softening.
the studio
We don’t compete with Snow Peak’s in-house team. We extend it. The arc on every project is the same: arrive, embed, scale, step off, leave a process behind that your team can run.
the calendar
The only decision now is whether to test the format.
Ways of Being is the low-friction proof. If the format feels right, the larger story can move into your normal 2027 build and 2028 release cycle. If it does not, nothing else has to move.
2026 · first proof
Host one screening.
Sef sends the film. Snow Peak hosts the evening. We learn whether the story, audience, and venue language feel right before asking for a bigger build.
if yes · 2027
Choose the first authored story.
A Takibi Tale, Kindlings, or Short Doc development.
release · 2028
Put the story into market.
The film lands when Snow Peak can support it through retail, owned channels, and the 70th anniversary.
only if needed · 2029
Let the long piece keep traveling.
The Short Doc path can extend through festivals and screenings after launch.
what each path asks
resources and requirements.
The first proof asks very little. The larger builds ask for more time, access, and production commitment.
opportunity
production shape
snow peak provides
we bring
investment
Ways of Being Sponsorship
crew ≤5 per venue; 2-month rolling
4 venues, gear, lists, hosting
run-of-show design, capture, editorial pre-warm
No cash · in-kind only (venue, gear, lists, hosting)
A Takibi Tale
crew ≤10; 14 weeks; 3 shoot days
subject access, location, product, premiere hosting
story, director, crew, post, distribution
$175K–850K, excl. paid media
Kindlings
crew ≤10 + 8 leads + 15 cast; 16-week build; 3 event days
Campfield venue, gear, hosts, SPW lists
production, workshop curation, photographer, post
$300K–1.5M, scope-dependent
Short Doc
doc unit ≤8; 12–18 month arc
patron credit, screening venues, gear, lists
director, production, festival strategist, publicist, awards entries
$350K–1.8M, likely co-sponsored
next step
You already have the stories. We’re proposing to make them travel.
Start with one hosted screening. If that works, choose whether A Takibi Tale becomes the 2028 build.
hosted screening
autumn 2026
Sef sends the cut of Ways of Being separately. If it resonates, we plan a Portland or Long Beach screening this autumn.
2026–2027 build
production 2027 · release 2028
Choose the right scale: A Takibi Tale (the first authored story), Kindlings (the field weekend), or Short Doc development (the long-form horizon).
thank you
thank you.
jeff haskell
ophelia & co.
jeff@ophelia.company
sef matsuyama
sefmats.com
private contact
ophelia & co.
ophelia.company
portfolio.ophelia.company