Western Mountaineering

Western Mountaineering was founded in the summer of 1970 by two San Jose State students, Gary Schaezlein and Jeff Jones, who were frustrated that the lightweight down sleeping bags used by European alpinists weren't available from American makers — domestic gear at the time tended to be heavier and wool-based. With no formal training, the pair began building bags themselves, starting production in a two-story building on 1st Street in San Jose, with manufacturing downstairs and retail upstairs. Since 1993 the company has operated from a renovated former Coca-Cola bottling plant just south of the freeway in San Jose, where seamstresses still hand-finish each bag — a deliberately small-scale, unautomated process the company has maintained rather than scaling into mass production. Western Mountaineering states that it sources goose down through a direct contact in Eastern Europe supplied by a mother-goose farm, specifically to avoid down obtained through live-plucking or force-feeding. Unlike most contemporary outdoor-gear brands, which have moved manufacturing to Asia, Western Mountaineering continues to make its sleeping bags and down apparel entirely in the United States, a point the company and outdoor press both cite as increasingly rare in the category.