Bauer also produced a quarter of a million sleeping bags and countless other items to meet military orders. Army Air Corps commissioned more than 50,000 “Eddie Bauer B-9 Flight Parkas,” designed to help keep pilots warm during high altitude flights. He affectionately called her “my wilderness companion.”īetween 19, Bauer took out more than 20 patents for a wide range of outdoor clothing and sporting equipment, including the down parka.ĭuring World War II, production at Bauer’s factory in Seattle was diverted to military needs. The two were married in 1929, in a union that would last 56 years. (“Jim”) Whittaker of Seattle wore one when he became the first American to climb Mount Everest in 1963.īauer’s chief field tester was his wife Christine (“Stine”) Heltborg, an accomplished sportswoman whose skill with rifle and fishing rod equaled his. In 1936, he introduced the “Skyliner,” a quilted, down-filled jacket that soon became standard gear for outdoorsmen.
He made several jackets with down insulation for himself and a few friends. Bauer tamed the bulkiness by adding quilting. The down was insulating and light weight, but bulky. He bought $25 worth of down and began experimenting with various designs. He made it back to Seattle, where he began trying to develop alternatives to the heavy wool outer garments that he and most other sportsmen used at the time.īauer had heard stories about the goose down clothing worn by his uncles in Russia during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).
I realized I was freezing to death” ( The New York Times). “I reached to touch my back and it was ice. “I was climbing a very steep hill when I started to get sleepy,” he recalled in a 1981 interview. In 1923, Bauer was on a winter fishing trip in Washington when he developed hypothermia. The Bauer Shuttlecock popularized the game of badminton in the United States and remains the standard for the sport today.Įarly on, he offered customers an unconditional, lifetime guarantee: Any product that failed to perform as required would be returned, no questions asked. Later, he developed and patented a regulation badminton shuttlecock. Initially specializing in tennis rackets, he soon expanded his line of merchandise to include his own hand-made golf clubs and fishing tackle. He turned his avocation into a vocation in 1920, opening a sporting goods store called Eddie Bauer’s Sport Shop. He developed a deep love for the outdoors at an early age. By 2004, however, its parent company was bankrupt and the future of the Eddie Bauer chain uncertain.Įddie Bauer was born October 19, 1899, on Orcas Island in Puget Sound. expanded from one store and a catalog division in Seattle to more than 600 stores in the United States, Germany, and Japan. In the hands of General Mills, and later Spiegel Inc., Eddie Bauer Inc. By the time he retired, in 1968, he had turned an initial investment of $25 for goose down into a multimillion-dollar business.īauer sold the company to a group of Seattle investors who, in turn, sold it to General Mills. His own brush with hypothermia while on a fishing trip a few years later led to his experiments with down-filled clothing. An avid outdoorsman, Bauer opened a small sporting goods store in downtown Seattle in 1920.
Eddie Bauer, inventor of the down parka, made his name synonymous with high-quality outdoor clothing and sporting goods.
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