Podcast appearances and mentions of bill amos

Bill Amos is the Founder & CEO of NW Alpine based in Salem, Oregon. NW Alpine has been producing technical outdoor apparel in the US since 2010. For many of those years, NW Alpine produced everything in-house and was the contract manufacturer for several other brands.Here are a few of the topics covered in this episode:How alpinism prepared him for entrepreneurship Starting a USA-made brand in response to the 2008 financial crisisLessons learned from starting, growing and eventually closing a factoryWhy manufacturing in the US is critical for the future of the economyLearn more about NW Alpine and see their gear: NW AlpineLearn more about KORE: KORE OutdoorsConnect with Bill on LinkedIn:  Bill AmosConnect with Christian on LinkedIn: Christian RawlesWant to get in touch? Send an email: christian@koreoutdoors.org

It's rare to find American-made climbing companies. The shortlist includes the likes of Metolius, Organic, Misty Mountain, UnParallel, and a handful of rope producers.It's even rarer to find technical apparel made in the U.S., which makes NW Alpine so distinct. And by technical, I mean purpose-built clothing designed for the elements, not adventureleisure masquerading as such.Anywho, the idea for NWA was born out of the 2008 financial crisis. Founded by Bill Amos, a quote-unquote “climber dude” at the time, he wanted to understand what was happening and brushed up on economics. He concluded that basing the economy on financial shenanigans instead of manufacturing wasn't the way to go.So, his solution to one of the worst recessions in the history of the country was to create a pair of pants. At its height, the company employed 75 people and put millions back into the local economy.In this episode, we talk about how NW Alpine is developing innovative apparel (in the true sense of the word), the economic and free trade factors that led to mass offshoring, and how many of your favorite brands are making huge profits off the back of exploited labor.NWA harkens back to an older ethos for climbing companies. I particularly enjoyed this chat and hope you do too. Timestamps:02:00 - Bill's climbing journey 05:57 - Adventures in the Cascades and Alaska20:10 - The birth of Northwest Alpine20:13 - Understanding the economic shift in the U.S.24:41 - The impact of offshoring on the U.S. manufacturing33:01 - Journey to Kachatna: Scaling manufacturing37:37 - Rise and fall of Kachatna Apparel40:59 - Innovation in apparel: The Fortis line and rainproofness post-PFAS50:36 - The reality of how products are made overseas58:03 - The Future of Northwest Alpine Resources and links:Bill is graciously giving away two Black Spider Hoodies for listeners — one men's and one women's. To enter, head to our Instagram @ice_ice_beta to find the details.If you'd like to follow along with what NW Alpine is up to, their Instagram is @nwalpinegear. To check out their products head to nwalpine.com. They have several new lines dropping this year.Here is the video of Sir James Goldsmith predicting the future impact of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in an interview with Charlie Rose (which we reference in the episode). And NW Alpine's blog also has a lot of great trip reports from the past 14 years.This is the "contentious" IG post where Bill breaks down how much overseas workers are paid to make expensive outdoor apparel.Find the rest of the notes, timestamps, resources, and more on the episode page. Credits:Episode cover photo provided by the NW Alpine courtesy of GearJunkieIntro music by Hannah Noelle Enomoto (thanks, sis!). Patreon:For the price of a beer per month, you can help us produce episodes like this and much, much more. If you've been enjoying the podcast this season, consider supporting us on Patreon. 

Welcome to Episode 384 of The Outdoor Biz Podcast, before we get into today's episode I've got a quick question for you . . . What is the topic or guest you want to hear about on a future episode? Hit the 2023 survey link in the show notes or go to ricksaez.com/2023survey, no caps, and tell me the topic you want me to cover or the guest you want me to have on the show. That's rick saez dot com slash two zero two three survey . . . . no caps, or hit the link in the show notes I'd love your input, Thank you, and now let's get to the episode . . .  In the early 2000s NW Alpine founder Bill Amos found himself dissatisfied with technical clothing options for alpine climbing. At the tail end of the 2008 recession, Bill was inspired to realize his vision. He believed that the only way we would have a real economic recovery in the U.S. is if we started making things here again and Northwest Alpine was born. Facebook Twitter Instagram   The Outdoor Biz Podcast   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!   Sign up for my Newsletter HERE.   I'd love to hear your feedback about the show!   You can contact me here: email: rick@theoutdoorbizpodcast.com   or leave me a message on Speakpipe!   Presented to by: Show Notes How did you get into skiing in the outdoors? I actually grew up in the southwest Chicago suburbs. So not the best place to be for mountain sports. But my dad actually grew up in East Tennessee and he was a big hunter and fisherman and outdoor guy down there. So he got me into Boy Scouts when I was pretty young and we had a really active group. So we did a lot of hiking and camping and all that sort of stuff. So that kind of started to foster my love for the outdoors. What jobs did you do before starting their business? After college, I did some teaching jobs, including teaching in the outdoor program at a community college in Gresham, just outside of Portland. I also worked as a ski patroller at Timberline. How did you start Northwest Alpine Gear? Northwest Alpine Gear began in 2010. I didn't have any experience in manufacturing, apparel design, etc. I posted an ad on Craigslist asking for help and found a woman with experience in women's athletic brands who helped me develop the first few products. I started the business with no budget, doing everything myself including manufacturing and photography. I initially used a small factory but eventually, we started our own factory. Where does the name come from? I think the mountains in the northwest and the alpine environment's kind of, unlike any other mountain range in the lower 48. It's just very unique. It's burly, there's terrible weather. A lot of times in the technical climbing the rock is rotten, the snow is rotten, the ice is rotten, it's getting scary. Right? And it's just hard, it's just difficult. So I kind of think that US manufacturing in some ways is the same way. It's hard, but it's worth it What are the benefits of localized manufacturing? The benefits of localized manufacturing include being in the same time zone, speaking the same language, and having faster transportation to factories and distribution centers. The core benefits are resiliency and sustainability. What challenges did you face when moving production from Asia to the US? Moving production from Asia to the US is a significant investment. It is difficult to rebuild the supply chain due to the limited number of companies making necessary products in the US. Tell us about the Fortis collection. The Fortis Collection is a project that I've been working on for some time. It uses ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene known as Spectra or Dyneema fibers, which are strong and lightweight. The initial products received an editors' choice award. Did you have any previous product design or development experience? Most of my experience with apparel came from just using it for climbing. After college, I worked at a North Face retail store in Chicago and at one of the retailers in Portland called Next Adventure. Do you get outside much? Do you get to climb and ski still? Oh, definitely, but not as much as I would like to. Do you have any suggestions and/or advice for folks wanting to get into the apparel biz? If you're interested in starting a brand, don't do what I did. You know, start a company with no knowledge, or understanding of what you're doing. It might be good to try and go work at another brand and get some experience. The other side of that though is that had I known what it was gonna take to do this, I never would've started. Might not have done it. Do you have a favorite piece of outdoor gear under $100?  In our line, we have our Volo pants, which are kinda a super light, and soft, and people use them for hiking, running, and, climbing in them. And then my friend Pete Hill has a company called Freestone Equipment. They're based up in Squamish and if you're a climber, they've got a little product called the Love Handle. It's just a small, I think it's a $35 piece of climbing gear organizer that's really cool. What are a couple of your favorite books? Eiger Dreams by John Krakauer The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan Follow up with Bill Website Email YouTube Facebook Instagram

To understand why your elected officials will not raise the question of passing a bill in favor of our people, we must understand who we are. Recently the Senate and President passed an anti-Asian hate crime bill. There has been a rise of violence against Asians in America, due to the view that they brought COVID-19 to the country. One …

Josh sits down with NW Alpine brand manager Cameron Larson. NW Alpine makes technical apparel for women and men climbers, mountaineers, and anyone in an alpine environment. Their products are not only of the highest technical quality but are made responsibly, and they pay a living responsible wage to all their employees. Infact, they're one of the few brands that's focusing on making gear IN house and in the US. Longtime climber and NW Alpine founder, Bill Amos created NW Alpine during the 2008 recession after becoming absolutely fed up with the state of the outdoor apparel industry. Climbing heritage brands were producing great things but geared towards lifestyle, losing a lot of unique features that were being robbed from climbers (just fashionable enough to sell on a rack at a retail store). It's not everyday that you find a climbing brand that got its start due to the ripple effects of a financial recession, so we're thrilled at the chance to dig deep into the fine details of how NW Alpine got started and snowballed into this climbing apparel behemoth

Bill Amos, writer/adapter, director, actor; Joyce Vandermark, assistant director; John Schugard, actor; Donna Voitek, actor, speaking about a production of "Sherlock Holmes & the Scarlet Avenger", an original mystery play by Bill Amos, adapted from "A Study in Scarlet" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. DM Performance Works will present the play February 8, 2019 through February 17, at the Factory Theatre, 15 School Street, in Nuremberg, PA. Shows Fridays and Saturdays at 7:00 pm. Sundays at 2:00. www.performanceworksatthefactorytheatre.com/ 570-710-7244

Cambridge has a rich history of making discoveries about DNA - the genetic code inside each and every one of us. In the 50s Watson and Crick announced that they had unravelled the structure of DNA - the famous double helix shape. Now, 60 years later, another Cambridge scientist - Bill Amos - has made a further DNA discovery - this time about the way the genetic code changes or mutates to allow evolution to happen, as he explained to Graihagh Jackson. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Cambridge has a rich history of making discoveries about DNA - the genetic code inside each and every one of us. In the 50s Watson and Crick announced that they had unravelled the structure of DNA - the famous double helix shape. Now, 60 years later, another Cambridge scientist - Bill Amos - has made a further DNA discovery - this time about the way the genetic code changes or mutates to allow evolution to happen, as he explained to Graihagh Jackson. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Bill Amos has built up a wonderful collection of cars throughout his career as a physician. It doesn't hurt living on Amelia Island, Florida where in March the area becomes the center of car universe. His philosophy on collecting cars is simple. Don’t buy them as an investment. Buy cars to enjoy and drive them. Bill has some great advisors when it comes to buying cars: Ray Shaffer, Ramsey Potts, and friends Hurley Haywood, Dan Davis, Magnus Walker, and the Ingram Family to name just a few. While he leans toward the Porsche marque you’ll find a few Ferraris and a British car in his collection.

Melvyn Bragg and guests Steve Jones, Bill Amos and Eleanor Weston discuss the evolutionary history of the whale. The ancestor of all whales alive today was a small, land-based mammal with cloven hoofs, perhaps like a pig or a big mole. How this creature developed into the celebrated leviathan of the deep is one of the more extraordinary stories in the canon of evolution. The whale has undergone vast changes in size, has moved from land to water, lost its legs and developed specialised features such as filter feeding and echo location. How it achieved this is an exemplar of how evolution works and how natural selection can impose extreme changes on the body shape and abilities of living things. How the story of the whales was pieced together also reveals the various forms of evidence - from fossils to molecules - that we now use to understand the ancestry of life on Earth.Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics at University College London; Eleanor Weston is a mammalian palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, London; Bill Amos is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at Cambridge University.

Melvyn Bragg and guests Steve Jones, Bill Amos and Eleanor Weston discuss the evolutionary history of the whale. The ancestor of all whales alive today was a small, land-based mammal with cloven hoofs, perhaps like a pig or a big mole. How this creature developed into the celebrated leviathan of the deep is one of the more extraordinary stories in the canon of evolution. The whale has undergone vast changes in size, has moved from land to water, lost its legs and developed specialised features such as filter feeding and echo location. How it achieved this is an exemplar of how evolution works and how natural selection can impose extreme changes on the body shape and abilities of living things. How the story of the whales was pieced together also reveals the various forms of evidence - from fossils to molecules - that we now use to understand the ancestry of life on Earth.Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics at University College London; Eleanor Weston is a mammalian palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, London; Bill Amos is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at Cambridge University.

Melvyn Bragg and guests Steve Jones, Bill Amos and Eleanor Weston discuss the evolutionary history of the whale. The ancestor of all whales alive today was a small, land-based mammal with cloven hoofs, perhaps like a pig or a big mole. How this creature developed into the celebrated leviathan of the deep is one of the more extraordinary stories in the canon of evolution. The whale has undergone vast changes in size, has moved from land to water, lost its legs and developed specialised features such as filter feeding and echo location. How it achieved this is an exemplar of how evolution works and how natural selection can impose extreme changes on the body shape and abilities of living things. How the story of the whales was pieced together also reveals the various forms of evidence - from fossils to molecules - that we now use to understand the ancestry of life on Earth.Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics at University College London; Eleanor Weston is a mammalian palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, London; Bill Amos is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at Cambridge University.