While working together at North Face, Jan Fletcher, Tom Mann and Mark Erickson fell in love with the outdoor and technical apparel business. When they moved on, they found a way to leverage their shared experience. They noticed that outdoor retailers were moving toward merchandising their own ”house brands“ or private labels. Tom, Mark and Jan began to offer these retailers apparel design and production services integrated into a seamless whole. Friends at L.L. Bean and Eastern Mountain Sports took a leap of faith, and placed the first orders. Erickson Outdoors was launched in a spare bedroom in Berkeley in 1989.
The three partners had simple operating principles. They wanted a company with integrity — one which treated its customers and employees as they would like to be treated. These principles were tested early on, when a shipment of foul weather gear proved defective and no one in the supply chain would share liability. The three dug into their personal savings and immediately replaced the shipment. Jan, Tom and Mark also wanted to strike a healthy balance between employees’ personal and professional lives. Soon, little babies were napping among the fabric rolls while their moms worked nearby.
One of their first projects — commissioned by The North Face — was to create the apparel and equipment for the International Trans-Antarctica Expedition in 1990. Erickson Outdoors worked with the international team to produce the equipment and apparel required to withstand wind chills of -150 degrees for the six men and 36 huskies traveling nearly 4,000 miles. This challenging assignment allowed Erickson Outdoors to demonstrate its skill with myriad critical technical details: from special zipper controls that could be manipulated with numbed fingers, to high-tech booties to protect the huskies’ paws from razor-sharp ice. read more…
In September 2001, Erickson Outdoors expanded into a 9800 square-foot building in Richmond, California, doubling the size of its previous facilities. Its new headquarters houses a spacious apparel design studio, fabric testing center, sewing area, production staging area and administrative offices. Today, Erickson Outdoors continues to offer technical apparel design and production services to large and small retailers and wholesalers and is a trusted leader in the apparel design and manufacturing of activewear and technical apparel.
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SNEWS© Live: Erickson Outdoors founder’s Hollywood career still on hold after four decades designing high-end outdoor gear and apparel.
