The No-BS Formula to Building a Cult Brand
How one innovator gives outdoor apparel new meaning
Yvon Chouinard got his start in 1953 as a 14-year-old climber at the Southern California Falconry Club. He studied climbing under one of the adult leaders, Don Prentice, learning to rappel down the cliffs to explore the falcon nests. Those lessons stuck with Yvon and sparked his lifelong love of climbing.
Shortly thereafter, Chouinard began hanging out at Stoney Point and Tahquitz Rock, where he met some other young climbers who belonged to the Sierra Club. Eventually, the friends moved on from Tahquitz to Yosemite, to teach themselves to climb its big walls.
Back then, climbers only had access to pitons made from soft iron. Pitons act as a climbing anchor to protect climbers against deadly falls. Each piton looks like a metal spike and it is driven into a crack or seam in the climbing surface. Placed once, then left in the rock forever, pitons littered mountainside cliffs. In places like Yosemite, a single ascent required hundreds of placements, ruining the natural beauty of the rockface.
After meeting John Salathé, a Swiss climber who had once made his own pitons, Chouinard decided to start making his own reusable hardware. Chouinard went to the junkyard. He bought a used coal-fired forge, an anvil, some…
