TerraPax A brief history of a natural fiber pack company Founded in 1992, California
founder James Cox in 1992, Chico, California The beginning James Cox was design director for The North Face in the late 1980’s. He spent his spare time alpine climbing, hiking, mountain biking and enjoying nature. “I had this startling revelation,” says Cox. “Here I was, a selfproclaimed outdoorsman and nature lover, using clothing and gear made from petrochemicalbased synthetics. I knew these materials were manufactured with methods that were not ecofriendly.” The irony of it caused him to embark on a quest for a better kind of gear. He left The North Face and formed a partnership with Greg Fritsch, the owner of OverLand Equipment who at the time specialized in bicycle panniers. Greg and James had collaborated on a few pack projects during James’ North Face tenure, and the two shared curiosity about the impacts of modern fabrics and methods on the environment. Plus, Greg had an active design studio and a small sewing shop the perfect place to incubate a new idea!
Enter Ken Reed, a world traveler, craftsman, woodworker, welder, with a degree in literature from Berkeley. Ken was a mutual friend and upon hearing that James wanted to “save the world with a new pack company”, Ken proposed the name TerraPax, which translates from Latin “Peace on Earth”. Ken was immediately pulled into the project for sourcing and logistics, which was no trivial task. The challenge The three men, James, Greg & Ken, in early 1991 asked the questions and began a year long quest to solve the design challenge: Could they build packs that worked just as well as modern day packs, but with only natural materials? Could the company foster markets for organic suppliers and influence a “nature based economy”? It was a bold plan challenging conventional wisdom about materials, products, manufacturing, and waste. The idea was to do business in the way natural process work; with sustainable materials and zero waste. As the team grappled with the notion of only using natural materials, it became apparent that almost nothing available was free from coatings, electroplating, synthetics, or wasn’t made from petrochemicals. Cotton, for example, was grown with synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and had one of the largest chemical footprints of any agricultural crop. This wasn’t always the case, but just after World War II, farms started being treated like factories with huge inputs of oil based fertilizers, herbicides and pesticide applications. While on the surface it looked like farming yields were going up, the actual outputs of calories (food) per unit energy (inputs) was way down, and no one was measuring the real costs to soil loss, the health of the farmers, planet, animals or the long term viability of these changes. Energy was cheap, tractors were big, and the chemical industry found a great market. From what we know now, these were very shortterm gains. The same happened in the late 30’s with textiles. Nylon was invented in 1938, and natural fibers were quickly replaced by nylon and polyester. As with agriculture, many of the great “advances” in textiles had a hidden cost. Teflon, for example, is a great waterproof treatment that is applied to almost all “outdoor industry specification fabrics” and a key part of the very famous GoreTex brand of materials. Telfon has a chemical called perfluoroctanoic acid, or PFOA, that has been called the most “persistent chemical known to man”. According to a broad range of studies, PFOA can be found in the bloodstream of every American, in polar bears in the Arctic and dolphin in Florida. Nonstick cookware, stain resistant pajamas and pillow cases these chemicals are everywhere, and the benefits of not having a stain on our hiking shorts might be at the cost of a great stain on the global ecosystem. 1 TerraPax bag company history
The answer for TerraPax was found traveling back in time where materials and methods of the early 1900’s were still being used. Eastern Europe, including Hungary and then Yugoslavia, and parts of China were still growing and weaving fabrics from hemp and linen which were beautiful and strong fibers and didn’t require herbicides and pesticides to thrive. TerraPax commissioned blends of these simple natural fibers, along with custom made thread coated with beeswax, and nonelectroplated brass hardware made from reclaimed metals. Everywhere the team looked they discovered opportunities for improvement. Even the leather industry was a mess, with tanneries using heavy heavy metal and dyes in production. TerraPax sought out small producers who worked with local farmers for hides and tanned only with treebark. The company even went so far as to collect the UC Berkeley bleacher seats when they were torn down and replaced, taking the Port Orford Cedar and making structural stiffeners. The list of materials grew: Wood. Untreated leather. Organic cotton. Hemp and linen. Post industrial wool. Most of the materials that at one time were standard but had been passed over for “technological and performance improvements”. The simplicity of the materials and limitation of available options informed the bag designs. James admits, “there is a time and place for fancy technical fabrics with teflon coatings and formaldehyde fireproofing. But if you're not fighting fires or working on a fishing boat, you can walk more gently on the planet with a TerraPax bag over your shoulder.” James started calling the mission “Industrial Ecology” the art of making products with only natural materials, with zero waste, and the longterm health of people and planet as essential considerations for material choices. While recycled materials were getting popular, TerraPax instead choose to use materials that were so natural they could be composted in a garden. No need to recycle them, just return them to the earth. Guidelines Terrapax’s guidelines for their materials selection read: 1. Does the material have any historical significance? 2. Is the origin of the material close to the earth (e.g., minimum processing?) 3. Can the material be returned to the earth (does it produce usable biomes) or continually reused without requiring remanufacturing? 4. Does the processing of the material encourage a sustainable ecology and economy in the communities where it is developed? Is there educational value in the material production? 5. Does the material meet or exceed performance standards for its application? 6. Is the material beautiful?
Yvonne Chouinard of Patagonia James had met Yvonne Chouinard, owner and founder of Patagonia, on a fly fishing trip in Idaho the summer of 1990. They were both in Idaho for a board meeting of The Peregrine Fund, which was reestablishing the Peregrine Falcon from near extinction due to DDT and pesticide used in agriculture (DDT was banned in 1972). Another stark example that industrialized 2 TerraPax bag company history
methods were not always gentle on the natural world. Chouinard’s reputation for being a leader in the Outdoor Industry was well known so James knew Chouinard would be a good first stop to show off the very first prototype bags. James remembers Chouinard saying, “This is fantastic. But use thick thread”. About six months later Chouinard called James to check on the progress of the company. He said, “how is it going? Because if you’re not going to do this project, I am”.
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Paul Newman The company’s first product was a personal script bag for actor Paul Newman, a friend of James’. Paul was also the first investor in the company and secured a credit line that got the fledgling company off the ground. Paul eventually introduced the product to Robert Redford, and the product became a number one seller for Redford’s mail order business, The Sundance Catalog. The first retail location for sales was The Down Works, a store in Santa Cruz, California which famously is also where Osprey Packs was founded by Mike Pfotenhauer. Nick and Shelly of the Down Works still own and operate the store and original TerraPax photos can be found on the walls of the store 24 years later.
“The Script Bag” designed for Paul Newman
The bags became a hit for celebrities and musicians. Tom Petty would order 30 bags for his band and crew each year when they played in San Francisco. In 1995, Ron Howard order 300 custom embroidered for crew gifts during the filming of the movie Apollo 13. TerraPax made a series of gig bags musicians including Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, Shawn Colvin... and the list goes on. There was even a side project called SixEight Music Bags which was a line extension making gig bags specifically for musicians, including a licensing deal with Gibson Guitars. 4 TerraPax bag company history
One of the key collaborations for TerraPax was with Green Field Paper company, who would take all the scrap fabric and use it for making paper. The paper would become the marketing materials, including tags, notebooks and stationery for the brand. As the brand grew it needed it’s own manufacturing and split off with OverLand Equipment. Brian Fredson, who originally joined the company to run the music bag division was promoted to President in 2001, took the reigns and helped the final transition of the brand to a new and present day manufacturing facility, and eventually to the new ownership by Joe and Maria Jaurequi. Maria had been the top performing seamstress for Overland Equipment at the company conception. To this day Joe has been running operations while Maria continues to run production and design. The conversation and relevance of TerraPax 24 years later is startling. The company was way ahead of it’s time. Although there was a very loyal following, many customers purchased the bags largely because they were beautiful, not because they were making an environmental statement. If the organic 5 TerraPax bag company history
food movement is any indication, consumers continue to learn about how small our ecosystem is, and how important the choices we make as consumers are. One of the great marketing slogans the company used (later adopted by Patagonia) was “The more you know, the less you need”. This really captures the spirit of the brand. That simple is sometimes better. The designers at TerraPax are back looking for new materials and new pack designs to be introduced in the fall of 2016. Stay tuned!
Nell Newman, Paul’s daughter at the farmers market, 1996
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