The company continued to expand, and now offers equipment for outdoor activities like cycling, skiing, camping and hiking from a thriving catalog and online business and more than 140 stores in the United States. Anderson made sure the operation ran smoothly by coordinating orders and deliveries, stitching tents and packaging food for expeditions. Over the following decades the Andersons ran REI from their Seattle home, where they stored most of their merchandise. The idea behind the cooperative, a business model that peaked in the Depression, was to supply gear at fair prices and return some of the profit to members, in that way encouraging outdoor activities.īy the end of the year, membership had more than quadrupled, with members receiving a dividend based on the amount of gear they had bought. In 1938, 21 of those friends paid $1 each for a lifetime membership in the Andersons’ company, originally the Recreational Equipment Cooperative, which imported outdoor equipment for lower prices than it could be bought domestically. So they began to import less expensive, high-quality ice axes from Austria, and these soon caught the eyes of their climber friends. Anderson and her husband, Lloyd, were unhappy with the ice axes available in the United States in the 1930s. She was 107.Īvid climbers and outdoor enthusiasts, Mrs. ![]() Slotnik | Ap| Mary Anderson, who, with her husband, founded the mountaineering importer in 1938 that became REI and helped it grow into the nation’s largest consumer cooperative without betraying its founding principles, died on March 27 in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Mary and Lloyd Anderson, who founded REI in 1938, modeled mountaineering clothing for a 1946 newspaper photograph.ĬreditCreditMOHAI, Seattle P-I Collectionīy Daniel E. Mary Anderson, a Founder of the Outdoor Cooperative REI, Dies at 107 The WAP has funded the restoration and archiving of many historically significant websites, which are made available as reading materials for courses in higher education.Ĭontent is from the site's archived pages, as well as from other outside sources.Įnjoy learning more about REI history from the 1930's through the 2016's.Īnd don't forget to visit their website: Celebrating 75 Years of Adventure They applied for and were awarded a grant from the Web Archive Project which enabled them access to TNG/Earthling, Inc.'s technical staff, including CEO Bob Sakayama and wunderkind Rev Sale. As avid outdoor adventurers who have purchased many REI products, the new owners decided to bring back the archived content of REI's history. Eventually the domain's registration expired and the site disappeared from the web until new owners bought the domain's registration. This was originally created to show the historical highlights of REI history as the company celebrated 75 years.
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