Welcome, guest [login | register]

Posted by Bill S on April 7, 2008 at 12:22:00 pm EDT
In reply to Customer Service posted by hahayourdead941 on April 6, 2008 at 10:01:42 pm EDT

The negative feelings about TNF are not recent, but date way back. First thing is that they are a BIG company (to borrow from a certain person who posts on Trailspace), and a few years back, they were taken over by a Major Corporation (VF, which originally was a small lingerie company Vanity Fair, that grew huge by acquiring other companies - take a look at their corporate website). Many woodsy folk prefer to deal with small companies rather than huge impersonal multinationals which outsource their products (second irritation point). North Face was started by a former employee of the long departed and much lamented Ski Hut (Berkeley, CA, also known as "Beserkeley", by city ordnance a "liberal city" and "nuclear-free zone", which also highly restricts the presence and appearance of homeless people). After TNF had grown tremendously, the founder and CEO wrote a personal puff piece, er, biography and corporate policy book, which irritated a lot of people in the basically anarchist outdoorsy community. In getting to the huge size, TNF had gobbled up a lot of smaller outdoors companies (such as Sierra Designs), later spinning them off or just dropping the brand names. (You can find all this on various non-corporate websites, by the way).

Then TNF started having financial problems, which led to quality control problems (in some cases affecting their expedition-level gear as well as their more popular gear). Also, along the way, during the backpacking boom of the late 1960s through 70s and into the 80s, lots of people began wearing TNF gear (and some other outdoor companies' gear) as fashion statements, particularly college students. The vast majority of these people never went into the woods and hills, which added yet another irritation (what am I up to, 5 or 6 points now?) for the True Woodsy Folk. I recall when I was a professor at BU that a lot of students would show up for class with Kelty packs (the early Tiogas) and TNF internal frame packs, and in winter wearing the early version of Goretex shells and down parkas with the TNF logo prominently displayed. Well, ok, it can get pretty cold in Boston in winter.

TNF ended up being acquired by VF, which inspired lots of jokes about TNF lingerie for the backcountry, and a lot of worry about what might happen to the quality (an example being extrapolated from what happened to Eddie Bauer, another company which originally was a top quality expedition gear manufacturer). Big corporations tend to be very unresponsive in their customer relations, and when gear is outsourced to SE Asia and other overseas places, the lines of communication and responsiveness to problems just seems to get worse.

However, TNF (and VF) has gotten worried about the brand losing its cachet, and they have involved some real mountaineers and adventurers to act as consultants and testers. This has shown some results in improvements in quality and customer responsiveness. So basically, it really isn't anything particular lately; it is more the history of the company that is hanging on like the legendary "albatross around the neck". Their expedition-level gear is good quality in my recent experience, though not up to the level of some other companies (including some which are also part of big corporations). For example, my experience with Mountain Hardwear tents is that they are better designed and better quality, with better customer responsiveness than North Face's tents (but there are other companies whose tents I find better than either MH or TNF, and they happen to be from smaller, independent companies). As another example, I find Patagonia's expedition-level clothing (another big company, which is not part of a huge conglomerate) to be better than TNF's, and Pata is far more environmentally conscious, with the company more responsive to customers. But again, there are smaller companies whose expedition-level clothing I prefer.

Well, gotta get back to preparations for the Olympic Torch visit in 2 days. Free Tibet! (Zounds! Another one of those SFBay Area Aging Hippies!)

Replies

View: flat | threaded

There have been no replies

Post a Reply

Before replying, please read the complete thread.