
Patagonia and The North Face - waqasaday
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/07/the-north-face-patagonia-saving-world-one-puffer-jacket-at-a-time
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angerbot
I've noted a marked decline in North Face quality compared to even 5 years ago
(Steep Series notwithstanding). It's a shame, they used to be one of my go-to
brands when I wanted to spend a bit more but get solid gear.

MEC in Canada has the same problem. Sometime around when their logo changed
from the mountains to a modern box with "MEC" written in it they stopped
stocking as much high quality gear and much of their in house stuff saw a
decline in durability/functionality in the name of fashion. Although speaking
to people who work there they had solid market research showing that the old
audience of hardcore outdoorspeople would no longer be enough to support them
as it was shrinking fairly rapidly.

These days I mostly stick to Arc'teryx outers/shells, Patagonia for my mid
layers, and icebreaker for baselayers. All of my gear from any of those
companies has proven to be reliable and durable if pricey. I've heard good
things about Peak Performance and Rab as well, but I've yet to purchase
anything from them.

Edit: since this is now the recommend brands that are good but people maybe
haven't heard of thread, I'd also like to plug Hestra, Fjallraven, and Osprey
Packs

~~~
rch
Key people left North Face over a decade ago, and some started Mountain
Hardware. Then they moved on from there as well.

I like the way Voormi is coming together. Really high quality from a small
company. Also Big Agnes for tents, sleeping bags, and the like.

~~~
hackuser
> Key people left North Face over a decade ago, and some started Mountain
> Hardware

Mountain Hardware was founded in 1993, per Wikipedia, and purchased by
Columbia in 2003. Are you thinking of someone else?

~~~
et-al
OP might be thinking of Sierra Design guys starting up MH. It's a common cycle
for these people to jump ship as companies get entrenched and they lose their
creative freedom.

Same thing happened with backpacks: Dana Gleason of Dana Designs, sold to K2,
fulfilled his noncompete, he starts up Mystery Ranch.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Design)

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gdubs
There's a great podcast series from NPR called How I Built This. They recently
interviewed Patagonia's founder Yvon Chouinard:

[http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-
radio/how-i-...](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i-
built-this/e/patagonia-yvon-chouinard-48508362)

I found it inspiring. If you're unfamiliar with the podcast, it's focused on
makers and entrepreneurs.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
+1 to this, this was one of the best podcasts I've heard recently. I didn't
know anything about Patagonia at all before listening, but it really made me
respect him and his company.

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owenversteeg
> Selling professional-grade gear to people with no intention of using it
> professionally isn’t exactly a new trick in marketing, as the makers of
> SUVs, digital cameras and headphones can tell you.

A ton of companies started out selling legitimately tough things and then
turned into just another logo on semi-acceptable products. The Hummer H1 was a
legitimately strong vehicle, and could easily climb a 60% slope and travel
over actually tough terrain - with 16" of ground clearance on a 72" tall
vehicle. The H2 was a disgustingly fuel inefficient large truck, and the H3
was just a standard pickup with an ugly grille.

Some of my friends who explore/climb/etc all the time used to buy North Face
gear; now, it's mostly another brand for college students. The last thing I
personally bought from North Face was a jacket a few years ago - I wore the
jacket a handful of times and into the closet it went.

Anyone else know more brands that did this? Start out selling gear for pros
and then use that image to sell to people who just like the logo? I'd also
love to hear about brands that aren't just clothing.

~~~
eigenvector
Every brand goes through this cycle, although they don't all end up
cannibalizing their original high-end products. You start by making gear out
of the best available materials and with high-quality construction. You sell
direct to the customer and have minimal marketing spend. It's expensive
because of the materials that, in the modern era, are engineered synthetics
you have licence from textile companies like Gore, Schoeller, Polartec,
PrimaLoft, etc. and the low volume, but at least you don't have retailers and
middlemen taking a cut of your revenue. Your gear becomes more popular, starts
to get mindshare within the climbing, hiking, skiing, etc. communities. But at
certain point, you've sold every climber a great jacket that stands up to
years of abuse.

Now you have two options. First, you can start making more types of items. You
go from hard shells to insulated jackets to footwear to tents to sleeping
bags. You sell the guy who already likes your jacket a few pairs of gloves,
pants, etc. But that also scales up your costs, because you've got to sink
time and money into designing these new items and learning to properly use new
materials.

So how do you make more money? You increase your addressable market by putting
your brand on down-market items. You don't need to do any R&D, you just
replace the top quality materials in your existing products with cheaper
alternatives and outsource the manufacturing to Bangladesh. To reduce prices,
you stop doing quality control. Not only are you cutting your retail price of
a jacket maybe from $700 to $200, your actual revenue is now going from $700
to maybe $50 because you're selling at Walmart, Target, etc., but your volume
goes from thousands to millions. You still sell your original high-quality
products, but they aren't making nearly as much money as the cheap stuff
anymore.

At some point the original owners of the company exit, sell it to a larger
company or hedge fund, and the cycle accelerates further. They get rid of the
high-end products and axe the R&D team, seeing it as a cost centre.

It's an unavoidable part of trying to sustain your growth curve. Some
companies have resisted it and simply stayed small and high-quality, but it
takes a special type of founder. A good example is Western Mountaineering,
which continues to make top-quality low-volume down products and refuses to
branch out into selling everything and the kitchen sink with their name on it.

[http://www.westernmountaineering.com/about/](http://www.westernmountaineering.com/about/)

~~~
owenversteeg
Yep, in an ideal world there would be two lines of products - the "wait for
the bus" jacket and the actual tough jacket. In the real world, this sometimes
happens but after a while it's seen as a cost center and killed, like you say.

One example of this (that hasn't been killed yet) is LL Bean's Katahdin Iron
Works stuff. It's excellent quality for the money and has held up unlike any
other clothing I've bought recently. That's not to say their regular stuff is
lower quality, however.

Western Mountaineering has pretty good quality stuff from what I've heard.
Personally, my favorite piece of outerwear is a vest I got in Ukraine -
handmade, for a couple bucks. Extremely warm, and no fancy micromaterials but
it works and it works well. I'm wondering what other little gems of high-
quality clothing at a low cost are out there - I imagine sherpas would know.

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sedachv
One thing the article does not mention is Chouinard's 1% For The Planet
association (member companies pledge to donate 1% of gross annual sales to
specific environmental organizations). Chouinard's approach to environmental
lobbying and nonprofits is very outcome focused. If you run a business I
recommend joining 1% For The Planet:
[https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/](https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/)

A lot of details on environmentalism are described in Chouinard's _Let My
People Go Surfing_ , which I highly recommend reading. It is a great book
about quality, technology, supply chain, and ethics in business.

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pizzetta
Their "rivalry" reminds me of the Canon/Nikkon co-existence model. Where they
competed but in slightly different market segments. One would have lenses for
x-type of photography, while the other had them for y-type photography. Or one
would have great sensor in some dimension (color vs bleed) or flash system,
etc. And they both co-exist without annihilating the other one -although
Nikkon seems to have made some poor decisions of late (and nixed one of their
most anticipated products due to costs and ongoing product issues)

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burntrelish1273
REI, Land Rover and most high-end mountain bikes arguably sit in the same
microfiber travel chair that folds up into a credit-card: ostensible
backcountry use luxury city gear.

Some motivations:

0\. In affluent/flat societies, status is everything, even with home-
improvement, camping and other common items. Showing overpaying for shit that
doesn't matter is SharperImage's whole business model.

1\. Some people want non-crappy, daily-practical, multi-use items: sure an
over-priced rain jacket shell is good for running but it also fits into a
glovebox. Or a sleeping pad that collapses down and fits in the closet behind
all the other camping gear used at home.

Btw I bought a $250 Colombia Titanium GoreTex jacket with an actual lifetime
warranty some years ago that's deteriorated not from normal W&T. Obviously, it
cost them probably $15-20 landed to make it so it makes sense to honor such
warranties for a time.

~~~
throwaway729
_> REI... Showing overpaying for shit that doesn't matter is SharperImage's
whole business model._

Comparing Sharper Image to REI isn't fair at all.

REI is the only and cheapest place to buy a lot of "backcountry" gear (aside
from online, which has obvious downsides) in huge swaths of the country.

And not just for big ticket "could make do with cheaper variants" stuff like
backpacks and tents. I've never found low-volume quantities of isobutane fuel
canisters cheaper anywhere, including online, than when they're on sale at
REI.

 _> Or a sleeping pad that collapses down and fits in the closet..._

"I have so little dwelling space that I'm willing to pay $100 for a sleeping
pad the size of a plate" doesn't exactly scream "luxury city" to me.

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sizzzzlerz
I've still own a North Face down jacket I received as a birthday gift 45 years
ago. It doesn't fit me any more and could use a good cleaning but it is still
wearable and useful for keeping warm. I also had a tent I used regularly for
more than 20 years under all kinds of weather until the floor finally gave
out. They made really quality stuff back in the day, expensive, yeah, but it
lasted.

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ErikAugust
The North Face does quite a bit of its branding work in the ultrarunning space
- they have their own race series, sponsor high-level athletes, and have Dean
Karnazes as a spokesperson.

But the reason I call it branding is because most actual ultrarunners flock to
other shoe brands - Hoka One One, Altra, Brooks. They also know Dean wasn't
all that of a top elite in the sport... ever. And the secret is most of North
Face's top ultrarunning athletes aren't winning the races actually running in
their shoes.

All that said, it's a pretty fringe sport and it isn't a bad thing they have
gotten involved - as they provide some cash into a sport whose top athletes
make in a year what a top software developer makes in a month.

~~~
dwyerm
> top ultrarunning athletes aren't winning the races actually running in their
> shoes.

I recall 1993 when Rockport sponsored the Leadville Trail 100. They released a
specialized trail-running shoe called the Leadville Racer. At the same time,
someone invited the Tarahumara to give the race a try and Rockport offered
them their fancy shoes. They changed back to sandals at the race's first aid
station.

Then the next year they set a race record running in the same sandals -- the
ones they built out of leather straps and discarded tires from the Leadville
landfill.

~~~
yoodenvranx
Isn't this a part of the book "Born to run"?

~~~
dwyerm
It could have been, but I haven't read the book. I was doing race operations
for the LT100 (FoxPro 2 and NetWare Lite), so I saw a lot of it personally. I
used this RunnersWorld article to get my dates right:
[http://rw.runnersworld.com/selects/tarahumara.html](http://rw.runnersworld.com/selects/tarahumara.html)

------
wink
Pretty sure this article[0] went round here last week.

[0] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/19/patagonias-
phil...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/19/patagonias-philosopher-
king)

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hprotagonist
Yvon Chouinard is a real fun guy. (and a stonemaster of old, so he's gotta be
OK..)

Politics aside, I am thrilled with Patagonia's repair policy. They've repaired
a pair of jeans for me 7 times now, several hoodies a few times each ... the
up front cost for goods is high, but the durability and service life more than
makes up for it.

~~~
olivermarks
patagonia boardshorts are easily the best, all the surf lifestyle brand
equivalents are junk in my experience

~~~
hprotagonist
I've had a similar experience. There's some ratio of "really good gear" to "
ehhhh fashion crap" for every company, and ideally it's above 3/4 or so.

the only thing the north face makes that's really truly excellent any more are
their duffel bags, which are absolutely indestructible.

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sunstone
About face North Face in Patagonia.

