Mountain Equipment Company

You look at, um, all the big adventure brands as, like, North Face, Patagonia, Arc'teryx, and all these things have, like, big prominence in Alberta, like, in the great outdoors, and you kinda, um, have something to aspire to, I think, in terms of when you're building a brand.

You think, uh, "I wanna be at Mountain Equipment Co-op," or, "I wanna be at these places where it's not just hardcore users, they get trusted by hardcore users, but then it's like everybody else is like, 'Oh, yeah, that's good stuff.'" So, um, having that mentality is kind of really important to, I think, building a brand of, like, um, making sure that the enthusiast really appreciates it, but everyone can look to it and not have to think, like, "Oh, man, that's, like, really spendy or whatever."

Mm-hmm.

And where did your journey start in, like, designing a product that you eventually, like, held in your hand or put your brand name on? Like, what, where...

You know, whether it was because we wanted to make our dollar stretch or because I really invested in like heritage and storytelling because usually people who do things for a long time, um, build brands that last 100 years and I, I explained that to my partner as well is that if we want to build something that lasts 100 years, the product has to be something that lasts 100 years and if it's not the product, then the identity of it has to be that.

So when I thought about things like Carhartt or Patagonia or Canada Goose, you can always trade in your product and I was like well, it's like if you're developing a hard good, you should always be able to find a way to move it on or get rid of it.

Like what if we take trade in on everything forever? It's like not really something that you think about in the watch industry, but then I'm like there's no reason why you can't do that and that's something that I think is a, is one of those buy it for life things and Mountain Equipment Co-op is something that I think as a young age I was like, "Oh man, you can buy a backpack like that's basically Jansport and you know that you can like absolutely destroy this and bring it back? That's sweet." Yeah, I think that that's something that, uh, is a ...

Everybody in enthusiasm wants that.

And it's not like we're short of BC brands when it comes to outdoor apparel here in British Columbia.

You have Arc'teryx, you have Tentree, you have Mountain Equipment Company, you have Lululemon.

And, you know, so from the optics to the substance, there just doesn't seem to be much that David Eby has so far offered British Columbia.

And so I think making him the primary target makes a lot of sense.

I think I bought mine from Mountain Equipment.

Back then, it was Mountain Equipment Co-op.

It's a Mountain Equipment company now.

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