Eddie Bauer (Outdoorsman)
| Eddie Bauer | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 19, 1899 Orcas Island, Washington |
| Died | April 18, 1986 (aged 86) Bellevue, Washington |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Founder, inventor, outfitter |
| Website | Eddie Bauer |
Eddie Bauer (October 19, 1899 – April 18, 1986). was an American outdoorsman, inventor, author, and businessman. He founded the Eddie Bauer company to sell tennis related items in Seattle in 1920. From a rented workbench inside another man’s shop, it grew to become an international brand outfitting mountaineering and scientific expeditions with down-insulated garments and sleeping bags.
Bauer’s passion for the outdoors was apparent from an early age. Born outside of Eastsound, Washington on Orcas Island in 1899, he grew up exploring the woods and waters of the Pacific Northwest, learning to fish before he was in school, and to hunt before he was a teenager.
His parents, of German ancestry, immigrated to Seattle from Russia in 1890, the year after the Great Seattle Fire when the city was booming with reconstruction. Bauer’s father, Jacob, worked variously as the manager of a plum orchard, the caretaker of a country club, and as a carpenter on Seattle’s first world’s fair, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.
At the age of 13, the young Bauer left school and went to work at Seattle’s Piper & Taft, one of the largest sporting goods and outfitting stores on the West Coast. For the next six years he apprenticed among the experienced hunters and fishermen on staff. At the age of 20, he left Piper & Taft and went into business for himself.
In February 1920, Bauer rented space in Bob Newton’s Gun Shop, set up a workbench, and opened "Eddie Bauer’s Tennis Shop," where he sold and strung tennis rackets. Seven months later, around Labor Day, he put up a sign on his bench, "Eddie Bauer has gone hunting. Back February 1st." That practice of spending a significant portion of the year in the backcountry became a hallmark of Bauer’s operation when his business expanded enough to support his own space and he shifted its primary focus to outfitting outdoorsmen. While unconventional, it gave him the opportunity to develop and test the products that established his reputation as an outfitter for expeditions all over the world.
His backcountry experience was also a key component in his offering an unconditional guarantee on everything he sold. As an outdoorsman, Bauer understood that in the wilderness, clothing and gear was life support. His groundbreaking development of the Skyliner, the first down jacket patented in America (U.S. Patent D119,122; 1940), came as the result of his suffering nearly fatal hypothermia on a winter fishing trip in 1935. In his words, "There can be no compromising quality when lives depend on performance."
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