What Backcountry Garage Isn't Telling You & 35 Years On The Inside of Patagonia
7/13/202638 min
Today on the show Eoin Comerford breaks down what Backcountry Garage is actually asking of emerging outdoor brands and whether it's worth it, Grassroots Outdoor Alliance's positive mid-year results, and what's next for Portland's Next Adventure.
Then Eoin sits down with Bruce Old, Patagonia's Chief Marketplace Officer and 35-year company veteran, for a candid conversation on Patagonia's business performance, product innovation, the Work in Progress sustainability report, the Hold Fast Collective ownership structure, and where Patagonia stands on the future of outdoor trade shows. Sponsored by ENDVR and Crux Retail.
Timestamps
0:00 -- Introduction: Backcountry Garage, GOA specialty retail update, Next Adventure, and Bruce Old of Patagonia
0:47 -- Backcountry Garage deep-dive: what the program actually requires of emerging brands, including two-year exclusivity on online marketing and third-party marketplaces like Amazon
8:15 -- ENDVR ad: how ENDVR connects brands directly to over 140,000 frontline retail associates to drive sell-through
9:30 -- GOA mid-year update: Gabe Mayer reports GOA member retailers up 4.9% year over year through May, with analysis on what's actually driving the growth
12:11 -- Crux Retail ad: custom retail fixture design for outdoor brands including Yakima, Dometic, Wahoo, and Clif Bar
13:01 -- Unfiltered Upside: Next Adventure in Portland is staying open under original co-founders
15:05 -- Guest intro: Bruce Old, Patagonia Chief Marketplace Officer and 35-year company veteran
16:10 -- How Bruce landed at Patagonia in 1991 and what drew him to the company's values from day one
20:06 -- How Patagonia's business is performing today: modest growth, international expansion, and navigating tariffs
21:04 -- Patagonia's distribution strategy: specialty retail, run, fly fishing, surf, and what's happening in run specialty
24:03 -- Product innovation: what's new for spring '26 across sun protection, run, surf, waders, footwear, and fishing
27:42 -- Patagonia's Work in Progress sustainability report: radical transparency, the blowback, and why 95% of emissions are in the supply chain
29:00 -- The Hold Fast Collective: how Patagonia's ownership restructure works and how it's accelerated environmental giving to $75-100 million per year
31:15 -- Trade shows: where Patagonia stands on OR, Switchback, TRE, Grassroots Connect, and what it would take to return to a national show
34:48 -- What excites Bruce most about Patagonia's future: talent, shared sustainability infrastructure, and the next 40 years
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Our Sponsors
ENDVR -- The network that connects brands, retailers, and frontline associates to power sell-through across your wholesale channel. www.endvr.io
Crux Retail -- Creating bold retail displays for bold brands. www.crux-retail.com
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsEoin Comerford· Host0:00
Welcome to Outdoor Unfiltered. Today we'll be covering the real story behind Backcountry Garage, GOA's update on the state of independent specialty retail, good news about Next Adventure in Portland, and then later in the show I'll be joined by Bruce Old, Patagonia's Chief Marketplace Officer and 35-year veteran of the iconic outdoor brand, to talk about the current business climate and the state of outdoor sustainability. This is Outdoor Unfiltered, where we dig beyond the PR speak to see what's really going on in the outdoor industry, not just what happened, but why it happened and why it matters. I'm Owen Comerford, a former CEO, advisor to outdoor brands, and consigliere to The Rock Fight. Okay, let's get into it. So for our first topic, I'd really like to dive into the Backcountry Garage. If you listen to the pod, you may have heard my interview with Kevin Lenow, the president of Backcountry, where he introduced Backcountry Garage, this kind of accelerator for outdoor brands and everything that it was gonna do. So it really sounded pretty amazing. There was gonna be a streamlined onboarding process, significant one-year exceptions to packaging and delivery expectations, a ton of free advertising, even a willingness to accept a lesser margin if necessary to get things rolling. So since then, I've actually talked with a number of brands who have inquired about the program, and, mm, maybe it's not quite as altruistic as it first sounded, right?