Marmot

Since 1974, Marmot has been providing high-quality, functional clothing and equipment for mountaineers, outdoor enthusiasts and extreme alpinists. From the very beginning, Marmot set itself the goal of producing the best outdoor clothing and equipment in the world. The idea of the Marmot Club was born in 1971, when students Eric Reynolds and Dave Huntley were on a glaciology project at the University of California Santa Cruz on the Junear Icefields in Alaska. The condition for joining the climbing club was to conquer a glaciated peak together with another Marmot. That same summer, Eric and Dave began developing prototypes for down products in their dormitory in Santa Cruz. A down vest, a sweater and a parka as well as three down sleeping bags were the result of their tinkering. The warmest sleeping bag, the PIKA (now known as the Cwm), withstood freezing temperatures down to -40 degrees Celsius.

In 1973, Eric and Tom Boyce from Grand Junction/Colorado succeeded in the winter ascent of the Grand Teton in Wyoming. The following spring, Eric and Dave moved in with Tom in Colorado. There, the three of them rented a 100-year-old stone building and opened a ski rental store and a down jackets and sleeping bags store under the name 'Marmot Mountain Works'. This laid the foundations for the Marmot company in 1974. A year later, in 1976, Eric met Joe Tanner from W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc. Eric was one of the first in the USA to recognize the concept of new, high-performance outdoor materials: GORE-TEX®. He was fascinated and within a few weeks he had sewn several sleeping bag prototypes from the new fabric. Together with Dave, he spent the following seven nights in a cold store for meat products to compare sleeping bags with and without GORE-TEX®. They then tested the sleeping bags under sprinklers and were thrilled with the results. The team converted the entire Marmot collection to GORE-TEX® materials. Marmot developed the first GORE-TEX® bivy sack and a light, single-walled GORE-TEX® tents: the Taku. Marmot can now boast the longest partnership with the membrane manufacturer in the outdoor sector. From the very beginning, Marmot set itself the goal of driving forward technological and functional development in the outdoor sector. In 1986, Marmot set new standards in the field of extreme mountaineering with the production of the Alpinist expedition jacket, creating a classic that is still extremely successful today. Marmot also developed its own fabrics and materials, such as the waterproof and water vapor-permeable Marmot MemBrain® in 1995.

Today, Marmot has around 650 knowledgeable and trained retailers in the USA and over 800 in Europe. Marmot now sells its products in 44 countries. The Marmot headquarters are located in Rohnert Park, California. Further branches have been opened in Colorado, Canada and Hong Kong. The philosophy has not changed in all these years. Innovation, quality, performance and functionality are Marmot's top priorities. More than ever, they are inspired by professional mountain guides and top international athletes like Stefan Glowacz to develop products that are up to all the challenges nature throws at them.