Patagonia and The North Face | Hacker News Reader

Patagonia and The North Face

theguardian.com

75 pointswaqasaday42 comments

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

I think the term you're looking for is "athleisure". It is mostly associated with Lululemon and yoga pants all day, but I'd argue that TNF was the pioneer of it decades ago as climbing and hiking became mainstream and people started wearing practical outdoor gear everyday.

My problem with athleisure is that, while I enjoy that outdoor gear has gotten more fashionable and fit better; the trend tends to slide more into the "leisure" category than the "athletic" category over time. For people like me who actually do all those things in the marketing material like climb and hike, I find myself quickly running out of legitimate outdoor equipment options. Hell, even Arc'teryx now makes suits and topcoats for the Wall Street crowd! At the end of the day, this stuff still needs to be made by somebody because climbing and expedition hiking isn't going away.

I used to walk into REI and be bombarded by choice, but now more and more of their floor space is being taken over by casual clothing. The backpack area is now mostly laptop and messenger bags. The climbing section has gotten smaller and smaller.

Some years ago, after a visit to a college campus where TNF gear was everywhere, I found myself on a city bus, standing next to a young woman in a TNF sun dress. I guess it was well made, and certainly she looked charming in it, but it didn't seem the sort of thing to be worn on the north face of anything much but Capitol Hill. I was amused.

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.

Colorado fan, huh? I'll admit it was my desire to buy local that initially directed me towards Big Agnes. I've been very happy with their products, but "Buy Local" starts ringing a little bit hollow when every product I've purchased from them was actually manufactured in China.

At Melanzana the sewing machine is right there in Leadville. My friends were surreptitiously snapping photos of the people sewing together fleeces. There aren't many places were you can actually see your gear being made.

I actually found out about Big Agnes while I was living in NYC, but I'd like to see more domestic production as well. Melanzana looks interesting - I'll stop by sometime.

> 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?

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

I'm just old - I forget how long ago some of these conversations took place, but mid-90s sounds right.

My wife has a great Rab jacket. Some other very high quality brands I've bought from that people might not have heard of: Mont-Bell (Japan), Montane (UK).

I've had very good experiences with Mont-Bell as well.

Some folks were saying TNF was on a decline even 15 years ago when the VF Corporation bought them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VF_Corporation

MEC in fact now charge 20 CAD to have a "life warranty" backpack repaired, or give a rebate on a new one, and sure enough they break earlier and earlier.

Be simpler, people. Old Navy, Zero Exposure, Merona and Levis. Cheap and somewhat crappy, but worth every penny.

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-...

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

For those who prefer a direct NPR link to stream from:

http://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=504852483:505017995

+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.

Another interesting podcast here, with the story of how Chouinard gave the CEO position of Patagonia spin-off Black Diamond to Peter Metcalf

http://enormocast.com/episode-90-peter-metcalf-big-peaks-and...

That was a great episode!

For those looking for even more Chouinard, check out the documentary 180° South. (Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWBz_pxYC0A)

> 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.

Abercrombie & Fitch completely changed - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Abercrombie_%26_Fit...

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/

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.

Eddie Bauer used to make expedition clothing.

"In 1960, Eddie Bauer and William Niemi took on their sons, Eddie C. Bauer and William Niemi Jr. as partners in the company. Eddie Bauer went on to supply his equipment for the American K2 Himalayan Expedition and several journeys through Antarctica. In 1963, James W. Whittaker, the first American to climb Mount Everest, was wearing an Eddie Bauer parka. He wore Bauer's products during his whole expedition.[8]"

Wikipedia

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/

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.

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)

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.

> 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.

It's those moments when you see a dude in a $600 Arc'Teryx jacket at Safeway ;)

https://archive.org/stream/theoryleisurecl00veblgoog#page/n1...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Cl...

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.

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.

> 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.

Ha - awesome that you saw this first-hand. It is definitely in Born to Run.

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

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

Well, shoes have very individual fit which especially important in ultras.

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

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

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.

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

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.

About face North Face in Patagonia.

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