Marmot

Through the semesters until 1973, Eric Reynolds and Dave Huntley made prototypes of down products in their dorm room in Santa Cruz. Their Eric did a winter ascent of the Grand Teton in Wyoming with Tom Boyce of Grand Junction, Colorado in 1973. Eric and Dave joined Tom in Colorado that next Spring. There, the threesome rented a 100 year old stone building near downtown that used to be a grocery store, and opened a rental and retail shop under the name of Marmot Mountain Works. They taught cross-country skiing in the winter to get by. Thus, in the spring of 1974, Marmot the company was born. Eric met Joe Tanner of W.L. Gore & Assoc., Inc. in Elkton, Maryland in 1976. Eric was one of the first in the US to see a new concept in outdoor performance fabrication: Gore-Tex®. He was intrigued and thus one of the longest business relationships started.