John Junky knew the beat-up REI Half Dome tent belonged in a museum as quickly because it hit the counter of the Fairbanks, Alaska, retailer. The client who introduced it in instructed him he’d slept over a thousand nights in it. However lastly, it began to delaminate, and he was prepared for a change.
So he’d come to money in on the model’s lifetime guarantee. Little did he know he’d truly introduced a present to the co-op.
That tent was one of many unique manufacturing variations of the Half Dome from 1980. Junky, a savvy REI retailer supervisor, acknowledged it immediately. He couldn’t imagine it was in such good situation and he knew precisely what to do with it.
He dialed up the model headquarters to inform them what he’d discovered. From Anchorage, that outdated Half Dome was shipped to Seattle, cleaned up, catalogued, and entered into the model’s “residing archive” underneath the care of Will Dunn. There it could exist as a historic exhibit, not in contrast to these saved in libraries and museums.
“The forty fifth anniversary of the Half Dome Tent actually got here to life due to the 1980 Half Dome Tent that we’ve got within the archive,” Dunn instructed GearJunkie. “It led to a few of the design parts within the new Half Dome redux for the forty fifth anniversary version.”
Dunn is REI’s historian and visible storyteller. He curates the model’s assortment of retro and traditionally vital gear, which it calls the residing archive. It’s an inside useful resource for product builders on the lookout for historic inspiration and normal R&D.
The forty fifth Anniversary Half Dome tent is an ideal instance of its operate. REI’s product builders used the archive’s 1980 Half Dome for shade samples and to information their design of the brand new tent.
The residing archive is a purposeful useful resource, positive. However Dunn stated it’s excess of that, as effectively. To him, it’s a set of tales — virtually as if each jacket, pair of pants, ice axe, photograph, and love letter to REI (sure, these are in there) is a cassette he can pull out and play.
“I really feel so fortunate to have the ability to do that,” he stated. “I get to spend my day listening to and studying about these tales and celebrating them.”
Getting into the REI Residing Archive
I received to go to the residing archive on a media journey to the model’s Seattle inventive hub. It’s an understated, unsigned brick constructing. In case you didn’t comprehend it was there, you’d stroll proper previous it. Not that you just’d have any purpose to go to, anyway — the REI inventive hub isn’t open to the general public.
I needed to register and get a badge earlier than they’d buzz me in from the ready room.
The extent of privateness made sense as quickly as I used to be inside. If Willy Wonka had made outside gear as an alternative of chocolate, his manufacturing unit would have regarded comparable. There have been individuals experimenting with stitching luggage and attire. In a single nook, a crew pored over shade samples, photographs, and squares of cloth. And on the far finish of the constructing was the Magnusen lab — the place REI’s mad scientists put merchandise by means of rigorous lab testing.
On the coronary heart of all of it was the residing archive. It’s a clear, well-organized space with sliding cabinets decked with a retro rainbow of classic REI attire and outerwear. Images and a few gear hold in frames on the partitions.
A big desk within the center serves as a spot for individuals to tug gadgets from the archive and lay them out for research — which, in keeping with Dunn, REI Co-op crew members do often on the inventive hub.
“It’s sort of develop into our little campfire that everybody can collect round,” he stated.
However, if it hadn’t been for Dunn and some different REI Co-op crew members, that collective little campfire wouldn’t exist because it does right now.
Bringing the Archive to Life
Dunn began at REI in 2017. At the moment, he stated the archive was an unorganized jumble of bins and gear saved in a locked convention room that wasn’t even technically a part of the REI workplace. Individuals had been squirreling away classic gadgets in hopes of sometime constructing one thing extra organized and extra helpful.
Finally, Dunn and his colleague, Hallie Knigge, put collectively a pitch. They introduced it to REI management, and Dunn stated, “We received a knee slap and ‘Hell yeah.’”
That was the start of the residing archive because it exists right now. Dunn was put in control of the gathering, organizing it, cataloging its contents, and caring for it into the longer term. This system formally launched in 2022.
“Once we first kicked off the mission, we partnered with the Museum of Historical past and Business in Seattle,” Dunn instructed me.
They labored with a contract archivist to do all the foundational work and to discover ways to correctly deal with, retailer, and preserve historic artifacts. They ran a list evaluation and made a collections improvement plan and coverage. Principally, the REI archive crew realized how one can function like an actual museum.
“These are actually treasured artifacts — at the least to us — and we’re going to deal with them as such,” Dunn stated.
A Library of Tales
After I visited the archive, there was a smorgasbord of historic gadgets laid on the massive middle desk. A picture on a display screen caught my eye. It was a photograph of a tent strapped to the highest of a truck.
“That was REI’s unique wind testing setup,” Dunn stated. “It was simply an worker’s truck that they constructed a platform on prime of.”
He defined that somebody could be within the tent with a radio whereas the motive force picked up velocity down Freeway 410 by Mount Rainier. The motive force would relay his velocity to the tent tester, who would then describe what was occurring inside. A passenger would take notes on the change.
“They did that from the late-70s right through 1993,” Dunn stated.
A duct-taped Petzl ice axe with the initials E.E. written on the deal with lay on the middle of the desk. Dunn stated that had been Erin Parisi’s ice axe throughout her quest to develop into the primary trans individual to climb the Seven Summits.
“Her ice axe has the initials E.E. as an alternative of E.P. as a result of, within the nation the place she was climbing, it was unlawful for her to bodily be there as a trans individual,” Dunn stated, so she needed to change her identify on all of her paperwork and even her gear.
Then there was REI’s April Fools’ “ZipAll” outfit. It sports activities 3,500 totally different zip combos and was jokingly marketed because the “solely piece of outerwear you’ll ever want.”
An extended picket alpenstock was one of many oldest artifacts on the desk. Scattered round had been varied classic REI catalogs, board minutes from vital conferences, and an enormous assortment of affection letters written to REI by the model’s clients.
Each merchandise had a quantity and a tag, and as Dunn had defined, each single one has a narrative connected to it. This wasn’t simply a formidable assortment of outdated gear. It was a library for a few of REI’s most cherished tales.
REI Residing Archive: Accepting Donations (However Not All)
Little question, a few of the individuals studying this are occupied with all the classic REI gear they’ve been saving that would develop into a part of REI’s residing archive.
That outdated tent might encourage the colour scheme and structure for the latest mannequin. The classic REI puffy jacket might assist create a brand new line of throwback clothes. Dunn stated they even have scientists and researchers who’re writing papers who are available in to review the gathering.
It’s potential your outdated gear might develop into a part of REI historical past. Dunn encourages individuals to achieve out to livingarchive@rei.com if they’ve one thing that may be of curiosity, like that unique 1980 Half Dome Tent that was returned in Alaska.
However he additionally qualifies that invitation: Taking over somebody’s outdated gear is an funding for REI. Dunn is being very intentional about what will get entered into the residing archive.
“Like most museums, libraries, and archives, issues are gifted to the [REI] assortment,” Dunn stated. “However the true treasure in all of that’s the story that comes alongside it … we’re usually closely influenced by the story that follows an artifact or an merchandise.”
These are the items of drugs that REI hopes to gather — those that include epic tales that contribute to the model’s historical past and legacy.
