I've been building Alpine Fit for a while now, and sometimes I forget how much of the story lives only in my head.
Not because I'm trying to keep any of it a secret, but because so much of what makes Alpine Fit what it is just feels normal to me at this point. The Alaska roots, the fabrics I am way too excited to talk about, the very specific reasons certain design details exist, the places our prints are named after, all the testing and changing and figuring things out behind the scenes. I live inside all of this every day, so it doesn't always occur to me that most people have no idea. 😆
Someone recently suggested I do a reel about "10 things you probably don't know about Alpine Fit," which sounded fun, so I sat down to make a list... and then had trouble stopping at ten.
So here's the longer version, because apparently I have more to say about all of these things than will fit into a reel.
1. I started Alpine Fit because I wanted the right gear that worked for long adventures, and the dream began on a multi-week kayak trip in Southeast Alaska.
This is really where the whole thing begins.
I was gearing up for a three week kayak trip paddling the coastline in Southeast Alaska, with salt water, rain, long days in a kayak, camping on remote beaches, wearing the same few pieces over and over again, and I kept running into the same problems. Things didn't dry fast enough, they started to smell, they weren't versatile enough for everything I was doing, or they just didn't fit my body very well.
I wasn't setting out to start an outdoor brand. I was just really frustrated by my outdoor clothes. 😂
And eventually I got frustrated enough that I started thinking about what I would make instead, and one thing led to another, as these things apparently do, and here we are.
That original problem-solving mindset is still a huge part of how I design. I want to know what something is like after you've worn it for hours, gotten sweaty in it, stuffed it into a backpack, pulled it back out again, worn it three days in a row, washed it a bunch of times, gotten rained on, changed activities and generally asked way more of it than you probably should.
2. Yes, I test most of our gear myself.
My closet is basically an archive of Alpine Fit samples at this point, including many things that never actually became products.
I wear samples hiking, traveling, running, biking, camping, kayaking, walking Willow, running errands, sitting on airplanes, and generally just living my life in them. And I pay attention to really specific things. Is this seam annoying after four hours? Do I keep tugging the hem down? Does this pocket actually work with a phone in it? Does the hood stay where I want it? What happens when I'm sweaty? What happens when I'm cold? Do I still want to wear it at the end of the day?
Sometimes this means everyone around me gets to hear a running commentary about a sleeve length or waistband for several months. 😂
But I think there's a big difference between something that looks right on paper and something that has actually been lived in, and I really, really care about that part.
3. A film crew followed us around Alaska in 2022 and made an actual film about Alpine Fit. And then it played at a real film festival. Wild.
This one still feels slightly surreal to me.
The team at Local Studio came to Alaska and made a short film about Alpine Fit, the Alaska story behind the brand, and what we were building. They followed us around, filmed the workshop, filmed outside, interviewed me, and basically took this thing that had mostly existed as my everyday life and turned it into an actual FILM.
And then it played at the Wasatch Mountain Film Festival.
Sitting in a theater watching strangers watch a film about this weird little thing I had built from scratch in Alaska was... very strange. 😂 And also really special. People clapped! People came up afterward and wanted to talk about it! I remember sitting there thinking, how is this my life?
Still one of those Alpine Fit moments that I never would have expected.
4. Backpacker and Outside put one of our shirts through 350 miles of testing and named it one of the best hiking shirts.
And yes, we still talk about this all the time. Probably more than feels comfortable considering it was a few years ago. 😂
But come on. We are a tiny independent outdoor brand that started in Alaska, and Backpacker and Outside took our Men's Treeline Long Sleeve, put it through something like 350 miles of actual testing, and then put it on their best-of list alongside brands considerably larger than ours.
That was a BIG DEAL around here.
There are plenty of moments when you're running a small brand where you wonder whether you're doing any of this right, so having people whose actual job is to test outdoor gear take something we make, really put it through its paces, and deem it award winning means a lot.
5. Some of our fabric has actual silver in it.
Actual silver. In the fibers.
This is one of my favorite fabric-nerd things to explain because it sounds slightly ridiculous until you understand how it works.
Our Sterling™ fabric uses yarn with silver embedded right into it at the fiber level, which helps manage odor. It's not something sprayed onto the finished fabric, so it isn't a topical treatment that just gradually washes away. The silver is literally part of the fiber and yarn.
This is one of the reasons I love this fabric so much for travel and multi-day adventures (I'm wearing it right now in fact, as I type this), and really it goes all the way back to that original Southeast Alaska problem of wanting to bring fewer things, wear them longer, and not be completely disgusting by day three.
I could keep talking about fabric technology for a very long time.
6. Every one of our print names means something.
Our prints are named after real places, landscapes and experiences, many of them in Alaska and places that are part of my own outdoor life.
This is one of those little details that probably means much more to me than anyone else, but I love it. The print names have to feel right and evoke the same emotions as the places or experiences they remind me of.
I'm not sitting in a room trying to think of a name that sounds outdoorsy. There is an actual place or story behind these names, and often a memory attached to them too. So when I see an Alpine Fit print out in the world years later, I still know exactly where its name came from and why.
7. We give 1% of every sale to environmental nonprofits.
Not 1% of profits. One percent of sales.
We've been a member of 1% for the Planet for years, which means every time you buy something from Alpine Fit, a portion of that sale is going back to organizations doing important work. We typically focus our spend and donations on supporting trails and access to the outdoors.
It is kind of ridiculous that we do this and never talk about it. But nevertheless, it is just part of what happens when you buy something from us.
We're an outdoor company. Our entire existence is tied to people having wild places, trails, water and landscapes to go enjoy, so contributing to protecting those places and ensuring people can access them is all part of it.
8. Everything is Made in the USA, and in the beginning we actually sewed it ourselves in Anchorage.
This is a BIG part of the Alpine Fit story.
We started with our own workshop in Anchorage, Alaska, where we were cutting and sewing Alpine Fit gear ourselves. And when COVID happened and supply chains went sideways and so many small brands were scrambling to figure out production, we were still there in Alaska making things.
As we've grown, our production has grown with us, and today we work with amazing manufacturing partners in California while still doing some sewing in Alaska.
But everything we make is still Made in the USA.
And having actually been the producers ourselves has shaped SO much about how I approach product development and production now. I know what goes into making these pieces because I've been on the other side of the sewing machine making them.
9. Our community sends us the BEST photos.
This might genuinely be one of my favorite parts of the whole job.
People send us pictures from trails and campsites and mountaintops and kayaks and ski trips and vacations and places all over the world, wearing something that started as an idea in my head, and I still can't believe it. It shocks me every time.
Especially because so much of running a brand is very much NOT standing on a mountain thinking about how wonderful it is to make outdoor gear. It's spreadsheets and production schedules and emails and inventory and shipping problems and fabric quantities and staring at a fit sample wondering if a hem needs to move half an inch.
And then somebody sends me a photo of themselves halfway through some giant adventure wearing Alpine Fit and it reminds me, OH YES. THAT'S WHY I DESIGN WHAT I DESIGN, AND WHERE IT GETS TO TAKE PEOPLE.
So please keep sending them. We really do look at them, we really do share them around, and they make us very happy.
10. We are a really tiny team doing a surprisingly large number of things.
If you've emailed Alpine Fit, there is a very good chance I have personally read your email.
We're small. There aren't layers and layers of people between me and the people buying and wearing our gear. I work very closely with our little team, I see customer feedback, I hear about fit questions, I know when people are asking for a color over and over again, and yes, I definitely notice when all of you suddenly start buying the same thing at once and we are scrambling behind the scenes trying to figure out how quickly we can make more. 😆
And I love all of it.
Your feedback gets back to the person designing the product. Your photos get seen. Your requests get talked about. Sometimes something one person says in an email turns into a conversation that eventually changes a product.
I started Alpine Fit because I had some very specific problems I wanted my outdoor clothing to solve, and all these years later I'm still doing basically the same thing, except now there are a whole lot more of you telling me about the challenges you want your gear to solve too.
And as it turns out there are also film festivals, silver yarns, 350-mile gear tests, sold-out fleeces, piles of samples in my closet and a whole lot of other things I definitely did not anticipate when I started.
So there you go. Ten things you may or may not have known about Alpine Fit.
And I had to stop myself at ten. 😂
With so much love and appreciation for everyone in our community, thank you for being here and being part of this with us.
Jen Loofbourrow, Founder/Owner @ Alpine Fit
