Topic: Berghaus buy The north face (Read 3357 times)

LennyJ1 · « **on:** April 01, 2011 »

Just been reading in the news that Berghaus have bought The North Face for 25 million.

DryBag · « **Reply #1 on:** April 01, 2011 »

I heard it was sold, but I thought the buyer was Mike Ashley.

suspectmonkey · « **Reply #2 on:** April 01, 2011 »

After reading this thread I chucked it into Google News to find out more, but no joy. I did, however, find this: The Jacket That Defines Britain.

Quote

"...central London was a riot of what in every British town and city centre has been the default shade for some years now: North Face slate – the matte black of a plastic mac.

Since that day, I spot the North Face logo badging its dingy urban camouflage everywhere: on, it seems, every third person not uniformed as a police officer or an anarchist in last Saturday's protest against the cuts; even, foregrounding a stream of refugees, on the BBC-TV news reporter at Libya's border. Such is the unregarded ubiquity today of the North Face brand that a BBC representative may unthinkingly grant it free screen time without anybody in the corporation, with its stringent rules on product placement, even noticing.

...Unless they're making an effort, the women of 2011 dress much like their men, give or take an Ugg or two: from the mid-thigh down, the dullest denim indigo; above, the modern utility garment that is the North Face jacket, almost always, by customer demand, in black... Given a choice from the North Face "family" of 12 colours, not all of them boring, it seems we're all Henry Fords now: any colour you like as long as it's, you know, blackish.... The North Face jacket is the talismanic sign of the times where we feel the need to fade into the background and tone down our style to match today's mood of muscular austerity.

...Since at least the turn of the century, the North Face look has been soaking eastward like a damp patch into the visual fabric of society from its foggy San Francisco epicentre, where North Face's outdoor-wear first wind-and-waterproofed weekend hikers and sailors sandwiched between the roaring Pacific and soaring Rockies.

Today, of course, the most daunting ascent faced by most outward-bound North Face wearers is a shopping mall's escalator, assuming their apparel is bought in a store and not mouse-clicked from an online catalogue illustrated by healthy wind-burnt families backdropped by enticing peaks of surf and mountain. Colour-matched with just about every laptop that does not bear an Apple logo, the grimly fun-free North Face leisure look is actually a form of casual Friday work wear which looks forward to the weekend, while chromatically restraining itself from any visible joy at the prospect. It emanates from Seattle and Silicon Valley, where Starbucks-glugging Microsoft monkeys, Cisco kids, Facebook friends, Intel drones and the rest hit the great outdoors straight after clocking off on Friday.

...Today, with the likes of North Face as its ubiquitous manifestation, we're being marketed an ersatz freedom that expresses itself as a uniform of self-repression. Moreover, we're being sold a talisman of technological progress enmeshed with outdoor environmental consciousness that is no less bogus upon a moment's examination. Leaving aside the inconvenient truth that its very fabric owes much of its being to unsustainable fossil resources, the popular off-black default choice turns its wearers into living, breathing, grey-day office-blocks – an environmental eyesore no less drearily offensive to the retina and crushing to the soul than Centre Point."

So there you are, a thought for a Friday afternoon

I loved this line:

Quote

"Today, of course, the most daunting ascent faced by most outward-bound North Face wearers is a shopping mall's escaltor"

twentyclicks · « **Reply #3 on:** April 03, 2011 »

I would look at the date this was posted... I ignore most strange news around this time. TNF is a much bigger company globally than Berghaus - I can't see it unless they over-extended and went bust.

Northern Ireland Outdoors Forum - Hiking, camping and more

Useful Links

Follow NI-Wild

Author Topic: Berghaus buy The north face (Read 3357 times)

LennyJ1

Berghaus buy The north face

DryBag

Re: Berghaus buy The north face

suspectmonkey

Re: Berghaus buy The north face

twentyclicks

Re: Berghaus buy The north face

Bottom Sponsor

Recent Topics