The North Face was founded in 1964 by billionaire environmentalist Douglas Tompkins and his friend Kenneth Klopp, both passionate hikers.
The two decide to transform their passion into a small mountain equipment shop.
But, ironically, the legend of The North Face was born on a beach, more precisely, in the North Beach area of San Francisco.
Just 45 metres above sea level where Tompkins and Klopp decide to open their shop.
The logo features the famous Half Dome, which, along with the other peak El Capitan, is located in Yosemite National Park.
Half Dome is an immense granite peak, almost 2,700 meters high.
When viewed from the side it appears to be cut cleanly in half, taking the shape of a sharp bird of prey's beak or a sharp claw.
The cut wall is the dream of many climbers and climbing enthusiasts. Alcorn used the color red for the brand to express passion and courage. The color black to express dominance, supremacy and elegance.
This is a real path of activism, which materializes, for example, with the choice, starting in the 70s, to begin producing high-altitude equipment using the least possible quantity of material.
Never Stop Exploring : this motto quickly becomes a fundamental reference for The North Face's corporate philosophy.
A brand that is structured year after year as an example of excellence for outdoor sportswear in extreme conditions.
The North Face sells products designed to do their job—keeping the wearer warm or dry—in extreme conditions.
Behind every item sold there are years of improvements and studies to make it lighter, more practical, comfortable and beautiful.
The company invests a lot of resources in sponsoring athletes who are little known to the public but at the highest levels of their sports, whether they are mountain climbers or sailors or ultra-marathon runners.
If you watch a National Geographic documentary about an expedition to the North Pole, or a particular mountaineering undertaking, or even just the BBC series “Planet Earth,” set in extreme places on Earth, you’re likely to often notice clothing by The North Face.
But the marketers at these companies are well aware that the majority of their revenue does not come from people who need a jacket to cross-country ski across Antarctica, nor from amateur mountain sports enthusiasts at a certain level who need technical clothing to climb four-thousand-meter mountains or shelter from the wind on rock faces.
The main customer base is represented by those who will wear a puffer jacket for two months of the year to stay warm on the way from home to the office.
Or by simple hiking enthusiasts who will use it for quiet walks in the mountains at the weekend.
