Trailblazers: Bob Swanson

During the summer of his final year at San Francisco State College in 1961, Bob Swanson worked in the Central Coast town of Big Sur, Calif., when he got interested in kayaking along California’s coastline. “That,” he said, “somehow led to lots of hiking around Big Sur and an interest in the mountains.”

After buying a French-made rucksack, Swanson headed off on his first-ever trip to California’s Sierra. “Having been raised in Philadelphia,” he recalled with a laugh, “I really didn’t know there were mountains like the Sierra.”

Despite his love of the big mountains, he headed back to Big Sur to work at Nepenthe, arguably the hippest restaurant in the United States at the time and the home away from home for countless artists, writers, musicians and beatnik poseurs.

“In 1962, I left California and drove to Boulder, Colorado,  and I started knocking on doors in search of work.” He landed a job at LeRoy and Alice Hoiubar’s small outdoor shop. Ten months later, he headed to Berkeley where he got a job at The Ski Hut/Trailwise running the mail-order operations.

There, he met George Marks, and in 1965, they founded Sierra Designs. “We were both interested in the mountains and in climbing and backpacking, and making gear for those activities seemed like a happening business.”

Out of a small building in Point Richmond, Calif:, Swanson and Marks handled every single aspect of their burgeoning business together. “I came up with the design concepts as I was more conversant with the marketplace and George executed them. Slowly, I evolved into the business person in our enterprise,” Swanson said.

From the start, Sierra Designs (a name Swanson came up with) was noted for its tents and down products. including jackets, parkas and sleeping bags.

The business grew and Sierra Designs moved from Point Richmond to Berkeley in 1968. With the change of address and expanded sales came some of the outdoor industry’s most interesting catalogs, featuring the Bodie, Calif., ghost town, the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island, and water-colors and sketches by a top California ailist.

All this called attention to Sierra Designs, and large corporate suitors came calling. “We could have sold to Parker Pen for cash,” Swanson said, “but we decided to go with CML mainly because of who they owned at the time—Kelty, Hood Sails, Boston Whaler, among others— and the prospect of getting rich via stock options.”

Unfortunately, they didn’t get rich, and after four years and growing acrimony with the CML operations people, Swanson left Sierra Designs in 1979. 

Here's the link for Woody's Trailblazer account of Sierra Designs' other co-founder, George Marks.