Paige Springer Boucher Halloween 1993

...we all put our letters of resignations on Jack’s desk and walked out!

Transcript:

Al Tabor: Okay, good. So now we move forward a little bit and it’s Halloween 1993. I’ve got that from everybody’s perspective but you and Clareanne. 

Paige Boucher: Well, this year long process of being for sale at Sierra Designs was getting really old. And Jack had filled us in on the plan which was to buy Sierra Designs. And we’d found an investor and as I understand it Jack and Paul had made two offers to Odyssey International to buy Sierra Designs and been turned down for them both and so we started talking about plan B which was to start our brand. Which was, actually Jack purchased this little brand American Hardwear and so that was the plan.

And so there was one more offer made. Anticipating that the offer might be turned, we all had plans to write a resignation letter and put it on Jack’s desk and walk out if the plan was turned down. And it was!

But it was Halloween, so Jack was dressed as a cowboy and I was dressed as a witch.  I always dress as a witch on Halloween and Jack usually dresses as a cowboy. So that wasn’t that abnormal but it added this kind of bizarre element to the whole day. So Jack took off, we got word that the offer was turned down as I remember, I don’t know about the timing exactly. But we all put our letters of resignations on Jack’s desk and walked out.

That was a Friday and we had a nice weekend. Side note; I just decided as long as I was ending things I would end my marriage as well, so that was the end of that. It was a big weekend.

Monday we all showed up on Gilman Street at this empty building which Jack’s buddy had and had loaned us for three months. We showed up and some people brought folding chairs and folding tables and I had a laptop, which was kind of a novel thing in those days and so I brought that. There was a phone wire hanging from the ceiling and I remember walking in and that was the only thing that was there, besides the folding tables which somebody had brought. And someone went home and found a phone and plugged it in and it worked. So we actually had phone service. And that was way before cell phones. Some people had car phones but nobody had cell phones.