Marmot (company)

Marmot Mountain, LLC.
Subsidiary of Jarden
Founded 1974
Headquarters Rohnert Park, California
Key people
 Mark Martin
Products Clothing, Tents
Slogan Marmot For Life
Website www.marmot.com

Marmot is an outdoor clothing and sporting goods company founded in 1974 as Marmot Mountain Works.[1] The company was founded in Grand Junction, Colorado by local resident Tom Boyce and by two University of California, Santa Cruz students, David Huntley and Eric Reynolds, who wished to make their own mountaineering equipment. Tom Boyce had secured an order for the climbing apparel used to make the movie Eiger Sanction starring Clint Eastwood. Huntley made the original prototype gear that Boyce was using on the Wolper Productions/ National Geographic documentary Journey to the Outer Limits, about the Colorado Outward Bound School. It was during this documentary production that cameraman Mike Hoover, who later worked on the Eiger Sanction, saw the equipment that Tom was using during the portion filmed in Peru. Just prior to Christmas 1973 Mike Hover called Boyce and placed the order that led to the formation of the company in Grand Junction.

In 1976, another meeting would change the future of Marmot when Reynolds met Joe Tanner of W.L. Gore & Associates. Within a couple weeks Marmot had sewn prototype sleeping bags using the then-new Gore-Tex fabric for field testing. He and Dave proceeded to spend seven nights in a commercial frozen meat locker comparing bags with and without the Gore-Tex fabric as well as testing the bags under fire sprinklers. They liked what they saw and immediately changed everything in the line to Gore-Tex fabrications.

Today Marmot is globally distributed and part of the Jarden Corporation. Now based in Rohnert Park, CA, Marmot celebrated its 40th Anniversary in 2014.

References

  1. ↑ Marmot (2006). Marmot's History. URL accessed March 12, 2007.

Marmot was founded in Grand Junction, Colorado by local resident Tom Boyce. Tom secured the initial order from cameraman Mike Hoover for the filming of Eiger Sanction and financed the initial startup co-founding the company with two University of California students David Huntley and Eric Reynolds. The company first operated in a historic stone building on Pitkin Avenue across from the train station and later move to two manufacturing building in Grand junction built by the Boyce family. The three founders met on the Juneau Icefield Research project where they also met Wenloc Miller. Miller later invested in the company via a franchise purchase and owns the Marmot stores in Berkeley California and Seattle.

The term Marmot as a "club" was by Ome Daiber, the inventor of Sno-Seal who met the three founders on the Juneau Icefield Research Project. To become a member of the "Club" you only had to climb a major glaciated peak with another Marmot. How "major" and how "glaciated" depended on how much the Marmot member you were climbing with liked you.

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