Eddie bauer who owns

Still in his teens, Bauer already had gained the attention of Seattle's sporting community. He often was referred to in local newspapers for killing the biggest elk, or catching the most fish, or for winning rifle- and pistol-shooting competitions.

Encouraged by his initial success, Bauer arranged for credit from a bank and opened his own shop, Eddie Bauer's Sport Shop, in , the predecessor of Eddie Bauer, Inc. In addition to his renowned racquet-stringing abilities, Bauer also offered golf equipment and trout fishing flies during his first year of business, and the foot storefront quickly became a haven for sporting enthusiasts throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Bauer's success during these nascent years was in large part due to his reputation as an experienced outdoorsman and his active participation in the sporting community.

He worked at his store from February through August each year, then hunted and fished throughout the winter. During these sojourns in the wild, he field tested all of the equipment he sold in his stores, which, after the first year, included an array of outdoor equipment and clothing. Two years after he opened for business, this firsthand knowledge of his stock enabled him to offer an unconditional guarantee of satisfaction on all of the products sold in his store, a rarity for retail businesses during the s; he also established a company creed.

Bauer promoted sporting activities in his spare time, increasing the public's awareness of such sports as skiing by importing Norwegian hickory skis and persuading Norwegian skiers to come to the Pacific Northwest to help foster growth in the sport.

By , Bauer had added a complete selection of fishing tackle, firearms, and skeet and trap equipment to his store and renamed it Eddie Bauer's Sporting Goods. Customers continued to flock to Bauer's store, lured by his unconditional guarantee and his knowledge of the outdoors. Eddie Bauer's Sporting Goods had quickly become a favorite place for outdoorsmen to outfit themselves for a wide variety of sporting endeavors.

With a large and loyal clientele, Bauer's future success appeared as guaranteed as the products he sold, but, in the coming years, Bauer's position as a successful operator of a local sporting goods store would be elevated to a height not imagined even during the optimistic s.

Bauer's success had been predicated on his experience and interest in sporting equipment, so it was fitting that the innovation that would eventually launch his company into the upper echelon of the outdoor apparel industry came as a result, at least in part, of his desire to improve sporting equipment.

In the late s, Bauer attempted to improve the consistency of flight in badminton shuttlecocks. He imported premium feathers from Europe and developed a method utilizing buckshot that achieved the desired results. In , his design was patented and eventually adopted for use in the badminton world championships. While investigating which type of feather would improve the flight of shuttlecocks, Bauer came across goose down, reminding him of an uncle who had once extolled the virtues of goose down's insulating quality.

Years earlier, Bauer's uncle, a Cossack fighting in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese war, had worn a coat lined with goose down to stave off the 50 degrees below zero winter weather. Bauer, who had suffered through many cold winters fishing and hunting in the mountains near Seattle, decided to use goose down to make a coat for himself. After designing and sewing a quilted goose down jacket for himself, Bauer discovered the truth of his uncle's story and soon was making down jackets for a few of his friends.

The popularity of these jackets led Bauer to patent his design and begin production of America's first quilted, goose down insulated jacket in Starting with ten seamstresses in , Bauer needed by to meet the voracious demand for his quilted jackets. By this time, Bauer had secured a virtual monopoly on the insulated jacket market, employing as many seamstresses as his rapidly expanding business required and purchasing all the European and North American goose down he wanted.

This supply of goose down, however, ended just as Bauer's quilted down garments began to attract orders through the mail.

When the United States entered World War II in , the war production board requisitioned all of the goose down supply on the market and froze Bauer's existing supply. No longer able to purchase or use goose down, he was relegated to using eiderdown as a replacement, a substitution that negatively affected his sales. It appeared as if his flourishing retail trade had been swept away from him, but whatever losses Bauer incurred as a result of the government's seizure, he more than made up for them by providing goose down products to the U.

Army Air Corps, beginning in At first, Bauer provided the military with sleeping bags and snowshoes and binders, which he sold at retail prices, and eventually his business with the government increased considerably.

Using the war production board's goose down, Bauer manufactured 25, flight suits and nearly , sleeping bags for Air Corps flight crews and those fighting in the frigid Aleutian campaign. This prodigious wartime production salvaged what otherwise could have been a recessive period for Bauer's company and, more importantly, it also carried the Eddie Bauer name across the nation.

All of the garments Bauer manufactured for the military had the Eddie Bauer label stitched on them, the only garments during the war that carried the manufacturer's private label. Although Bauer's civilian business slackened during the war, he continued to advertise to create a demand for his products when the war ended. Once it did, he steeled himself for an immediate return to the prosperous days of the late s.

Expectations now ran higher, however, considering the tremendous strides in name recognition the company had made as a result of the war, so Bauer introduced a new way to bring his products to the public. In , just as many of those who had worn Eddie Bauer products during the war were returning home, Bauer issued the company's first mail-order catalogs, through a division that had been formed in to sell the goose down products, Eddie Bauer Expedition Outfitters. Although the introduction of the catalogs represented a significant landmark in the company's history, a more pressing concern during these immediate postwar years overshadowed their import.

Bauer's company seemed in danger of failing. To fill the demands of his contract with the Air Corps, Bauer had invested in equipment that could serve only his production needs during the war. Both the profits and the machinery were temporary, so, once the war ended, Bauer was left with the machinery and nowhere to sell it, leaving him in a precarious situation.

As he would later recall, 'We were stuck with the machinery and I lost practically everything I owned, down to where I had to start all over again. Niemi, Sr. Niemi Co. Eddie Bauer currently has approximately stores, mostly located in the U. All rights reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of American City Business Journals.

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They teamed up last year to purchase Brooks Brothers Group and Forever 21 out of bankruptcy and preserve store locations. Another partner in the Forever 21 acquisition, Brookfield Property Partners, converted its stake to equity in Authentic this year. Private-equity firm Golden Gate bought Eddie Bauer out of bankruptcy in , another period that saw a rash of retailers seeking court protection.

Sales of outdoor gear thrived during the pandemic as Americans sought diversion from lockdowns and worries over the disease. The new owners plan to keep Eddie Bauer headquartered in the Seattle area and under the leadership of current President Damien Huang.

The deal is expected to close by June 1.