Kelly Bastone

We used to come to Outdoor Retailer just to ogle gear, but these days, we’re devoting just as much attention to our industry’s environmental and social impacts. “Responsibility” may have been the biggest buzzword from last week’s convention: Attendees rallied against climate ...read more

It can feel like more rumors than facts swarm around Amazon, in part because the retailer is notoriously secretive—and that makes it hard to separate truth from speculation. In most news articles that discuss the world’s largest retailer, experts point out, you won’t find any ...read more

If Terramar was a national park, it would be Capitol Reef. The Utah gem doesn’t get a lot of fanfare compared to its neighbors, but it conceals some of the best redrock scenery in the Southwest. In a similar way, this apparel company has been engineering some of the most ...read more

Gaze around at contests such as the GoPro Mountain Games and Red Bull Rampage, and you might think that only men play sports—on a professional level, anyway. Women’s sport sponsorship lags well behind men’s, and although comparative data is scarce, the one nation that did study ...read more

There was a time in Tayson Whittaker’s life when $200 was a lot of money. In 2014, when Whittaker was a 23-year-old finance student at Southern Utah University, he struggled to come up with enough cash to buy ultralight backpacking gear. He already had a closet full of hunting ...read more

Some of the nation’s biggest retailers are using augmented reality technology to help shoppers evaluate products—and Mountain Hardwear is bringing this high-tech tool to the outdoor industry. The company is developing an app that lets shoppers crawl inside a tent, fit a backpack ...read more

Climate change is big—so big that we often assume that no ordinary person could possibly slow its progress. And maybe that’s true: One changed light bulb probably can’t preserve Arctic ice or save New England’s maple trees. But when you recruit a handful of bulb-changers, who in ...read more

On Aug. 14, half of NEMO’s workforce reported for duty at a quiet grove of hardwoods near Barrington, New Hampshire, about a 30-minute drive from company headquarters. Each employee arrived ready to sweat. Their task was to build two bridges on trails through a brand-new, ...read more

During the entire month of July, NEMO’s 24 employees conducted a silent negotiation. Dover, New Hampshire (where NEMO is headquartered) was experiencing record high temperatures, and some employees craved ultra-cool office temperatures. Yet the company had challenged itself to ...read more

Down is everywhere these days, on city streets as well as in the backcountry. Even the water repellent version has become ubiquitous: Twenty brands now use DownTek, the leading brand of DWR down. Yet most devotees of down know nothing about the plumage they love to swaddle ...read more

If Vincent Colliard were a smaller-minded person, he’d be a surf bum. That’s what his six-year-old self wanted to be. Growing up in a Paris suburb, Colliard kept a poster of surf legend Kelly Slater on his bedroom wall, and every day he’d stare wistfully at the sunkissed ...read more

Trends in street fashion will determine what your buyers will want next year—and beyond. We talk to three outdoor designers and curators to find out how they interpret fashion trends for the outdoor market. Everyone wants to know what the next hot trend will be, because big ...read more

Manufacturers put tons of effort into predicting buyers' whims when it comes to color. Here's how gear designers peer into the crystal ball. Design veterans know that the difference between a blockbuster product and a total flop isn’t always about materials or high-tech ...read more

Women's gear is niche no more. It’s hard to imagine a world in which women didn’t have access to outdoor gear that’s optimized for them. But that wasn’t always the case: Ill-fitting apparel and hard goods were the norm for women as recently as 20 years ago, and even now, ...read more

Shoppers on Amazon.com can buy an entire backpacking setup for less than a hundred bucks. You’ll find a 4-ounce canister stove for $5.60; a 50-degree-rated sleeping bag for $25.98; a two-person, 3.3-pound tent for $20.99; a 90-liter backpack for $39.90. Need hiking boots, too? ...read more

This article is brought to you in partnership with Farm to Feet. Not since “Flashdance” has American manufacturing seemed so sexy. Back in 1983, Alex Owens created sparks whether she was wielding a welding torch or corkscrewing across the stage as an exotic dancer. Then the ...read more