Working at Trailhead allowed me to take advantage of store discounts and amazing pro-deals. I was able to get all my outdoor gear sometimes as low as 60% off the cost. Cost for a retailer from manufacturer is usually marked up considerably. The average costumer is paying 2, 3, or even 4 times the amount the store paid for the product -honestly we get ripped bad.
Employees get these deals as a bonus along with having first hand knowledge of the equipment to better sell it. Being a gear geek I read about every piece of gear we sold and I used -pretty much the same thing. Anytime a new catalog came out, be it Patagonia, The North face…, I felt like a 12 year old boy finding a playboy -of course so I have been told.
The feeling was heightened by the fact that trailhead was a locally owned outfitter that sold a great deal of Canadian brands. Arc’teryx being my favorite Canadian company making some of the best looking and practical gear for climbing and hiking.
Tracy and I own Arc’teryx gear and all of it has held up. Tracy’s 80 liter pack is a testament to the company and has been dragged from Ireland, Peru to many hiking trips. My Arc’teryx shell I purchased 7 years ago is still in great shape -except for a puncture whole I gave it while on a hike, but the rip stop worked and the whole is no bigger today.
But the luster would soon be tarnished when I returned to work for a summer, two years ago. I was extremely discouraged to hear that the small but prosperous Burnaby B.C. company Arc’teryx, as many Canadian companies, was bought out. NO!
A golf ball sized lump filled my throat as Salomon took over ownership and stated "we will let Arc’teryx be Arc’teryx." As a Canadian and an Arc’teryx fan I was not so easily convinced. The fear of drastically changing the look or quality had me concerned. But Salomon has invented and developed some of the most amazing skiing gear since 1947, so I tried to be patient and trusting.
Then it happened, oh god the pain of it all, that golf ball sized lump grew in my throat to the size of a grapefruit filled with bitter acidic bile. As we know all Transnational Corporations (TNCs) are the creation of the devil, AKA the greedy money hungry elite businessmen that have no regard for the environment, human rights, and developing nation progress.
The chain reaction that depicts what a corporation will do to monopolize a market place and dilute the original product which the users -you and me- purchase as an inferior form of the original at an inflated price.
So why the gross description of the bile filled mass in my throat? Here we go: In 1997 the Salomon group was purchased by the Adidas group to create Adidas-Salomon. In 2005 Adidas agreed to sell Salomon, for 485 million Euros to the massive Amer Sports of Finland. Ok so what is the problem.
See the Amer group began as a tobacco manufacturer that obtained the rights to sell Phillip Morris cigarettes in 1950. They did this up until and including the year 2004 were they publicly stated that they wanted to focus on their growing collection of sporting good companies -check the site there are many including my beloved Suunto- and promote healthy lifestyles.
Wait a minute, you mean to tell me a huge corporation that would sell cigarettes to a 12 year child lying in a cancer ward, attached to a machine that breaths for him is going to focus on fitness products and promote healthy living? Yes Forts that’s right they will even give him a playboy.
Oh ok for a minute there I forgot that this company sold cigarettes for over 50 years and now out of the kindness of their hearts they are going to promote health and at the same time most likely end up affecting the look and quality of my beloved Arc’teryx products.
But Forts how can this company affect Arc’teryx by imply owning it? Glad you asked, you see Arc’teryx created all their products in B.C. Now while under the umbrella of Amer, the products are being mass produced in poor working environments in developing nations.
This will soon leave Arc’teryx as just another brand name that doesn’t hold up to its previous standards b/c it was mass produced by children smoking cigarettes in armed labor camps around the world. The guys at Arc’teryx had to decide sink or swim as they can not compete agains major TNCs. So shame on you greedheads at Amer, you suck!
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