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Comment by macNchz | Hacker News Reader

I have a lot of appreciation for the fact that, despite how large the company has become, it's very clear that outdoorsiness is still a big part of the REI's DNA, especially with so many companies these days owned by private equity firms that seem to be most interested in milking their brands for all they're worth.

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I love how they close the stores on Black Friday[1] and invite members to spend the day outdoors.

https://www.rei.com/black-friday

In a similar vein, the state parks of Minnesota usually charge a fee for parking and sometimes for entrance, but those fees are waived on Black Friday. I call it State Park Friday and my wife and I go for a short hike every year :)

State Park passes are cheap enough in MN. If you enjoy them consider an annual pass to support the DNR and enjoy the parks year round!

I wish they would just wrap a state park pass up with the conservation plates...

You're in luck, MN State Park Plates came out a few months ago! http://dnr.state.mn.us/parksplate/index.html

Awesome! Thanks for the information.

I especially appreciate this when I visit REI as a Canadian. Our REI 'knock off' MEC (Mountain Equipment Coop) was inspired by REI, but in the last few years has diverged away from enthusiast mountain equipment and a lot more toward urban oriented fitness activities such as running, yoga and cycling.

I still like MEC, but I like how committed REI has been toward hiking, camping and more backcountry activities.

That is a shame to hear. As recently as 2011 I thought that MEC's house brand gear was much higher quality and had better design and features than REI's house brand. The MEC stuff I bought was comparable to some of that made by more specialist outdoor manufacturers and was a fraction of the price. I still have most of it, and the things I gave away are still in use. I think REI very much caters to the car camper and Instagram hiker consumers who don't really go outdoors. You really have to be careful with the stuff you buy there.

REI has actually begun a fairly substantial investment in improving the quality of their private brand in recent years, actually building an engineering team to take a critical look at everything that they're putting out instead of just relying on the word of whoever they're sourcing it from. I would expect the REI brand to improve a good bit in the coming years

2011 is a long time in gear years! I went to a flagship REI here in Seattle the other day and was happily surprised when I played with the REI house brand gear. I'd recommend giving them a visit and seeing if they have improved (I have no idea what it was like in '11).

Quality at both places seems all over the place.

I bought a great bag at REI a few years ago that was praised by the ultralight hiking community for being a great, cheap ultralight pack, but now I've heard that REI discontinued it and everything available is a lot heavier.

It's worth noting that REI is a co-op, which means it's owners are actually it's customers.

I've got annual checks sitting here somewhere for both me and my wife. They're never huge, since REI sells such expensive stuff, we never spend much. I think both of our checks add up to around $50. Still, it's nothing to sneeze at.

I'd never actually dealt with a co-op before REI. The profits shared aren't huge, but combined with the membership discount it's often cheaper than shopping online resellers. I'm impressed.

Well technically speaking, REI profits aren't huge because its a retailer. You're looking at generally 2-10% margin businesses.

Yeah, I don't meant to imply they're shortchanging anyone - retail sales are tough even on higher-margin goods like outdoor gear. I was just comparing to online retailers, where profit-share + member discount brings them to rough parity.

Yeah...REI is definitely doing it right. The amount of love and loyalty the company gets from it's customers is awe inspiring.

They had some drama a few years ago with how staff were treated.

http://gizmodo.com/rei-ceo-goes-on-reddit-employees-reveal-h... (first Google link)

EMS used to be a go-to of mine. High prices, but good student discounts and sales. I stuck with them because they were incredibly good to their customers - they actually cared about getting people outside and had permanent return/replace on their gear.

But... then an equity firm bought them out. The discounts shrunk, the warranty vanished, and even for material defects within a year there's enormous flak when you try to get support.

REI has been my go-to ever since. They're the only big outdoor supplier left that seems to actually give a damn about what they're selling.

Although REI also eliminated their lifetime guarantee.

It's apparently really hard for this type of store to scale and stay at least somewhat aligned with their initial vision. They almost all become clothing and gear stores oriented to well-off urbanites who want to project an outdoorsy vibe. I agree that, among relatively large chains, REI has stayed closer to its roots than most.

> Although REI also eliminated their lifetime guarantee.

IIRC, that was due to blatant abuse (e.g. people scrounging up worn-out stuff from garage sales to trade in for new).

http://www.dailyemerald.com/2013/06/04/rei-changes-infamous-...

People abuse these sorts of guarantees. Always have. Always will. But it hasn't made LL Bean get rid of theirs. And, especially for many of the sort of goods REI sells, I may not use them much and if they blow a seam or something after a couple of years after they've been used a couple dozen times, I don't think I'm abusing anything by asking them to repair or replace.

So, yes, I understand why they cut the guarantee but, as a longtime customer, I don't like it. (I assume they're still reasonable on a case-by-case basis.)

For whatever it's worth, I've never had issues. They seem to have mostly cut the 'lifetime' part of "lifetime guarantee", and still deal with defects even outside of a one year window.

I suspect it's mostly a matter of REI employees having more discretion than most retail workers - they're usually quite outdoorsy and have a decent eye for what's an unreasonable failure.

That's good to know. I've been annoyed a few times over the years when I've run into someone who was basically boasting about how he wore stuff out over a number of years and just took it into REI for new kit. Why we can't have nice things and all that.

I agree that REI staff are much better than average.

Yeah, I was sad about the loss of a lifetime guarantee, but not very surprised. It seems like a lot of people were either using them for free 'rentals' (returning gear after the season) or lifetime replacements on normal wear. I've still had good results returning anything broken or ill-fitting, at least compared to competitors like EMS.

I assume there are smaller co-ops that are truer to their intentions, but I suspect economies of scale might leave them with very high prices.

LLBean doesn't have the same reputation as an outdoors/backcountry store, but there's a large overlap and they still offer the unconditional warranty REI has since abandoned.

This could change:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-ll-bean-shipping-r...

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