follow up to innovators

FOLLOW UP OF INNOVATIONS OF YEAR

For those of you who do not know who Gert Boyle is, she is the Chairman of the Board of Columbia Sportswear Company. She is and has been the driving force behind the success of the company. A very bright business woman and in my opinion someone who is a great example of one pulling themselves up by their boot straps.

That said while the SGB publication has recognized her for the so called achievement of innovating the materials I mentioned in the previous article I doubt that it is accurate. The Columbia Sportswear Company has hundreds of employees and most are not in their 90’s as Ms. Boyle is. They have grown up with the Gore-Tex product and therefore are familiar with what it is, does and does not do. It is these people who I am sure that in an effort to bring to market a product of their own came up with their version of a non-functioning just like Gore-Tex product that the erroneous claim is waterproof and breathable.

Now I ask you why a company as successful as Columbia would (I read $2.5 billion) want to put their name on products that simply do not perform as advertised. This is not the first time they have done this. They own the Mountain Hardwear (MH) Company and for several years they have been selling under the MH label a line of sleeping bags called Lamina, when I asked why they called the line of bags Lamina I was told that was because it was as close to Lamilite as they could get and everybody knew the Lamilite name. My response was thank you for the free advertising since many buyers of Lamina bags found out they were not the same as Lamilite bags. They are made in China and they are filled with chopped staple polyester fiberfill, probably the cheapest that they could find. They now own Lamilite bags.

Back in the early 1980’s when I was still in S.C. Columbia (a guy named Don) called me about laminating Thinsulate to a nylon fabric that was backed with Gore-Tex for rain hats. They had a factory working for them in I believe Missouri.

The reality of these very large companies are always the same especially when they are publicly traded as; the bottom line. The investors must be satisfied and if that means selling products that are not what they are cracked up to be.as in the case of waterproof breathable so be it, the customer will not bring it back anyway.

Of course the falsehood of the other materials I mentioned are viewed by the retail store owners as presold because of the advertising these large companies present to the public; so Columbia is not alone; add to the mix every other major marketing company you can think of as well as the large retail chains who also want people to come in and just take product off of the racks not knowing if the products they put on the racks actually does what the hang tag says.

In my philosophical view honesty and integrity have been withered away at the expense of the consumer. What a tragedy that there are consumers who support such products that are also made off shore and while they want to have the opportunity to support American made products they have very little choice. If any of them was a fly on the wall in my office and could listen to the number of people who call and state unequivocally they are happy to deal with an American manufacturer and vehemently refuse to by any product with a made in China label they might look into bringing production back to the USA.