Event Report
Sept. 26, 2024 – Modern Outdoor Gear Makes Today’s Exploration Possible
Rachel S. Gross, historian and author based at the University of Colorado Denver addressed the Rocky Mt. chapter on Sept. 25, 2024 at the Fjallraven Boulder store, to review how the development of outdoor gear and equipment led to modern-day exploration.
Gross is author of Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America (Yale University Press, 2024).
Her book is partly a business history how various entrepreneurs found a market for outdoor products, and partly a cultural history of the evolving appeal of nature recreation and exploration.
Ms. Gross is quoted in the WSJ in March 2024 explaining, “many outdoor entrepreneurs called themselves ‘reluctant businessmen’ who got into the outdoor industry for the love of sport and only accidentally became millionaires.”
Advancements in apparel and gear have opened the door to untold explorations and numerous discoveries that wouldn’t be possible if Explorers Club members dressed like George Mallory in 1924.
From 1970-1980, companies started to view explorers as business partners, creating formal agreements regarding the use of name, likeness, and imagery. She says today, sponsors are offering less in terms of support but asking for more in terms of marketing rights. They’re also working more with so-called “gear ambassadors” and influencers.
The talk included display of custom-made expedition gear used in the 1986 Steger North Pole Expedition, the first confirmed dog sled expedition to the North Pole, and the 1990 Trans-Antarctica Expedition, the first-ever non-mechanized crossing of Antarctica (3,741 miles).
Event Announcement
- Presented by Rachel S. Gross, historian and author, University of Colorado Denver
- Wednesday, September 25, 2024, 6:30 p.m.
- Boulder Fjallraven store, 1048 Pearl Street
- Guests welcome, no charge.
- RSVP to jeff@blumenfeldpr.com
In the 1950s, outdoor retailer Eddie Bauer donated down jackets to American mountaineers embarking on climbing expeditions to the Himalayas. In the 1990s, chemical manufacturer W. L. Gore & Associates donated both goods and $2 million to an expedition in Antarctica. The funds dedicated to sponsorship by the end of the Twentieth century reflect a shift in how companies saw expeditions as useful to their marketing goals. One benefit was the opportunity to demonstrate product performance in extreme conditions, and use that data to increase sales.
As Rachel S. Gross tells us in Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America, discovering the outdoors during the first half of the 20th century was marked by “nostalgia for an authentic American past, the days of the robust pioneer on the frontier,” and a “skepticism about the trappings of modernity.”
Gross, a professor and historian at the University of Colorado Denver, will share a fascinating look at the history of outdoor apparel and gear and how it opened the door to new discoveries. It may even help you land a sponsor or two.
Learn more here: https://rachel-gross.com/