Alicia V. Nieva-Woodgate
Nov 4 · 3 min read
Courtesy of Columbia Sportswear Website

One Tough Mother

I interviewed Columbia Sportswear’s Gert Boyle for “Sports Illustrated for Women,” back in 2001. Unfortunately the magazine ceased publication before the article was published. Posting today as a tribute — she was quite a formidable woman!


Most people would raise more than an eyebrow if they saw a mother strap her son to an SUV rooftop, or make him sleep out in the cold and snow with the sled dogs. But, in the case of Gertrude Boyle, Columbia Sportswear’s Chairwoman, it’s just another way to test her son Tim’s patience — and the quality and durability of Columbia’s latest outerwear — as part of the company’s successful “Mother Boyle” ad campaign.

Funny and irreverent, these ads proclaim that before any product “passes Mother Nature, it has to pass Mother Boyle,” testing which usually involves her long-suffering son as the guinea pig. So is she really one “Tough Mother?”

Son Tim Boyle, president & CEO of Columbia, says she’s “basically a pussycat who thinks she’s a lot tougher than she is.” True to form, 77-year-old Gert counters, “I’m a tiger. Pussycats don’t get far in life.”

Gert Boyle and her family fled the Nazis and Germany, immigrating to the USA in 1937. She was 13 and spoke no English, but taught herself enough in two weeks so she could attend the seventh grade with all the other kids her age. A year later her family owned the Columbia Hat Company.

This resolve would prove invaluable later in life.

In 1964 her husband Neal took the helm of the family business, which had expanded to the distribution and manufacturing of outerwear targeted primarily to hunters and fishermen. Six years later he suddenly died of a heart attack, leaving Gert with three kids and the burden of running a business heavily in debt. Her closest encounter with anything remotely financial was taking the monthly bills and throwing them across the room, paying whichever landed the farthest. Creditors were banging on her door, banks were calling in their loans, and most people assumed the company was going out of business. Undaunted by such obstacles, Gert enlisted son Tim, then a college senior, and together they set out to prove everyone wrong. The bankers seriously underestimated her tenacity and tried to convince the neophyte CEO to sell the struggling company. Her response was to play hardball, declaring she would rather run the company into the ground than sell it. Instead, the former housewife and her son built Columbia into one of the world’s leading outerwear manufacturers.

In 1983, their ad agency, Border’s Perrin and Norrander (BP&N), came to Gert and Tim with the idea of the Mother Boyle campaign. Now in its 17th year, both print and TV ads have won multiple awards. The company’s sales have increased from $13 million in 1984 to $614.8 million in 2000. “Columbia is a global leader in outdoor wear, with sales that have beaten expectations, observes Lisa Hickey, CEO of Velocity, Inc., a Boston ad agency. “The ad campaign is what put them on the map 17 years ago.”

“She was the inspiration for the campaign,” says Jack Peterson, director of client services at BP&N. “She has an overall toughness, a dogged determination to make things great and assure the highest quality. She puts the heat on everyone to make sure everything is perfect, and truly embodies relentless determination.” Don Dickinson, director of the Advertising Management Program at Portland State’s School of Business says the ads have given the brand a unique personality. “They do a good job of executing with a unique approach. They did not set the trend, but now they own it.”

“I’ll do anything to sell coats,” says Mother Boyle. And how does she spend her time, when not torturing Tim? “Watching the grandchildren.” Yup, one tough Mother…

Alicia V. Nieva-Woodgate

Written by

Died in Wool NY'er. Reluctant flack, sometime freelance hack, and SNCR Fellow. Famous peeps I wish I could talk to? Thelonious Monk, Churchill, and Charlemagne.

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