BOULDER, Colo. — A Boulder outdoor equipment store has been named one of the 50 best clothing stores in the United States by the New York Times. Montbell is a Japanese company, and the Boulder store is its only one in the U.S.
Montbell's website says it produces all of the 5,200 products it sells in-house with the guiding Japanese philosophy of kinobi, which can be translated as "function is beauty."
The company sells alpine clothing, fleeces, hiking boots and shoes, backpacks, fishing gear, climbing gear, and even camping chopsticks. The New York Times describes it like this:
Montbell, the Japanese cousin of Patagonia founded by Isamu Tatsuno, has only one store in the United States. Wardrobe gems like fleece tabi slippers, down pants, ripstop tote bags and outdoor hats for a variety of face shapes are among its hundreds of products, which also include tents, glow-in-the-dark zipper pulls, camping chopsticks and watercolor painting sets. Even those not into roughing it might enjoy the house line of sandals, which are a stylish alternative (and priced comparably) to Tevas.
Denver7 anchor Shannon Ogden spoke with store managers Yuya Shirakawa and Brayton Maine, who handle Montbell's U.S. web presence. They said they found out about the Times article through customers.
"Obviously, very proud to be selected. Truthfully, at the store on Sunday, we had customers coming in congratulating us. 'What do you mean?!' And all of the sudden the search was on to find out those details," said Maine.
"We actually didn't know," added Shirakawa.
Montbell opened its Boulder store in 2003 and management says just in the few days since the Times story was published, foot-traffic has already noticeably increased.
"We are always striving for excellence with regards to our design philosophy based in Japan of kinobi or "function is beauty" and our philosophy of light is fast," said Maine.
He continued, "Just an example: All of our threads in our rainwear or alpine wear are coated with water-repellant fabric for just that little bit of extra protection from penetration and ingress from moisture. It's small details like that, that we're proud about."
Besides the Boulder store, Montbell has locations in the cities of Grindelwald and Zermatt in Switzerland, and 10 cities in Japan. The closest store for Denver7 viewers is most likely the Boulder location at 1500 Pearl St.
