Profile

The Silakhan Route is a strategic marketing group. We prosecute expeditionary marketing campaigns for clients worldwide. We develop strategy and tactics, write the plan, determine the rollout, create the elements and execute the rollout. We launch new products, open new markets, establish channels of distribution, defend market share, increase revenue, and raise capital.

Our partners and clients have included GTE, The Paul Allen Group, CALTEX (Chevron & Texaco's Asia Operations) Minnesota Mutual Life, SyQuest Technology, Marshall Industries, and the ACLU. The Silakhan Route is led by Michael Smock and Paul Losee, two industry veterans who have an intriguing combination of real life experiences and outside the box thinking.

Michael Smock is the founder of Hunters & Gatherers and a former investment banker. Over the past twenty years as a marketing executive and agency founder Smock has gained extensive experience conducting marketing campaigns in highly competitive, commodity-driven, global markets. As an operating principal Smock has steered both start-ups and turnarounds into successful organizations. As an investment banker he's negotiated trade agreements, joint ventures, R&D limited partnerships, leveraged buyouts, private placements, and acquisitions. Smock is the author of Heavy Weather... A Sales Manual and is an expert on Sun Tzu's Art of War. He studied Urban Planning while attending Michigan State University and graduated from the Elmhurst College Executive Management Program.

Paul Losee is one of the original founders of IOMEGA. He began his career at IBM in 1974 after graduating from Brigham Young University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. In 1980 he left IBM as one of the original founders of the IOMEGA Corporation. While involved in technology development, Losee was granted 8 U.S. Patents. Losee has held a broad spectrum of management positions at IBM and Iomega including: Market Research, Product Assurance, Channel Development, R&D and Competitive Analysis. Losee has conducted groundbreaking research into NLP patterning and imprinting as applied to business decision making. While at Iomega, Losee's research was used for the positioning and launch of IOMEGA's successful Zip drive. Losee is also the founder of M+ Research, a marketing research consultancy and is the author of Losee's Law.

Today, as a global competitor, you have to be part trader, part merchant, part capitalist, part dealmaker, part acquirer, part builder, part dreamer.