Please Note: All Material below, and in all my "History of Gear" webpages, is copyrighted, and no usage of my material is permitted unless explicit permission is granted by me, Bruce B. Johnson, owner of OregonPhotos.com. ..... Editors: Please contact me if you have interest in publishing....Others: if you were involved with one of the old-line, vintage gear companies and have a story to tell in these pages, please contact me soon.
How does one begin to tell the story of the humble climber's gear Co-op that has grown into one of the World's largest outdoor gear retailers?
Here is some detail about REI from the company website, where it is stated that REI is the nation's largest consumer cooperative with more than 2 million active members: "In 1938, mountain climbers Lloyd and Mary Anderson joined with 21 fellow Northwest climbers to found Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI). The group structured REI as a consumer cooperative to purchase high-quality ice axes and climbing equipment from Europe because such gear could not be purchased locally. The word quickly spread, and soon many other outdoors people joined the co-op. As REI grew, so too did the range of outdoor gear available to the co-op members." History of Gear readers should note that REI is unique in the History of Gear-- unlike nearly every other classic gear company, it has never been taken over by a Corporation-- remaining true to its roots as a Cooperative. I believe they are to be commended for this!
I will not attempt to summarize REI or provide a comprehensive account of its history. Instead, I will focus briefly on the REI of 1957. I will also include a snippet about REI's association with "Thaw." My hope is to introduce some additional perspective on the story of such much-smaller innovators such as Holubar and GERRY.
In 1957, Dwight Eisenhower
was President of the United States, and there were only a handful
of sources for quality backpacking and climbing gear. In California,
there was only The
Ski Hut/Trailwise.
In Colorado, there were only the Boulder twins, Holubar
and GERRY. In Washington, there was REI Coop on Pike St. (although
Eddie Bauer Co. was selling its down-filled jackets and sleeping
bags, it was not a source of general backpacking/climbing gear
in the same way that REI, Holubar and GERRY were).
Sleeping Bags: are still pretty primitive. The lightest shell material is not modern ripstop or taffetta nylon, but the old war-surplus-type "Balloon cloth" that Alice Holubar had begun using shortly after WW II. Bag shape and features are still very unrefined and not very comfortable. No nylon zippers or cord-locks! The insulation choices are down, or an early synthetic called dacron. Prices are astoundingly low by today's standards.
TENTS for Backpacking: as one can easily see in the catalog
image below, tent design was still struggling to rise above old-time
Boy Scout "pup" tents. 
Tent
canopy's are still made of cotton, heavy and prone to mildew in
the wet, not to mention dark inside and difficult to waterproof.
Poles do not bend or flex, are not shock-corded, and are essentially
just "I" poles. A self-supporting tent design like a
geodesic
dome is still 20
years in the future.....Would you trust your life to this tent
during the high winds and heavy snows of a high-mountain blizzard?
Click here to see an image of the ultimate evolution of the A-frame style tent, a great example of which was the REI Denali Expedition, circa 1975. Far stronger and more evolved than the 1957-era A-frames, but destined nevertheless to be rendered extinct by the next generation of tent designs.
For many years "Thaw," a manufacturing
company in Seattle, produced much of REI's down clothing and sleeping
bags. Eventually, REI began to manufacture in their own facilities,
and so the "Thaw" label shown on a down sleeping bag
purchased at an REI store is now a piece of REI's history (image
contributed by reader Frank H., and reworked by me).... The reader
will note that the camping scene in the upper left of the label
is very similar to the scene shown in another old REI label, as
shown in a previous image on another page (click
here to see).
Please Note: All Material above, and in all my "History
of Gear" webpages, is copyrighted, and no usage of my material
is permitted unless explicit permission is granted by me, Bruce
B. Johnson, owner of OregonPhotos.com. Some of the material above
is derived from interviews and correspondence with Gerry Cunningham....
Editors: Please contact
me if
you have interest in publishing....Others: if you were involved with one of the
old-line, vintage gear companies and have a story to tell in these
pages, please contact
me soon.
