Mountain Equipment

Mountain Equipment was founded in 1961 in Glossop, England by Pete Hutchinson as a small British mountaineering-equipment workshop specifically focused on producing technically-engineered down-sleeping-bags and alpine-and-mountaineering shell-jackets for the broader British mountaineering community. The brand has been one of the longest-continuously-operating British mountaineering-equipment brands and one of the defining anchors of British alpine-mountaineering-equipment heritage. The Mountain Equipment vocabulary settled around several specific products: the iconic Mountain Equipment Lightline down-sleeping-bag programme (the brand's defining alpine-mountaineering down-sleeping-bag since the 1970s), the Mountain Equipment Annapurna and Karakorum heavy-load mountaineering-down-parka programmes, the Mountain Equipment Tupilak Gore-Tex Pro alpine-and-ski-mountaineering shell-jacket programme, various technical-fabric mountaineering-and-thru-hiking equipment variations, and a colour palette anchored to alpine-blue, military-olive, washed-charcoal, ecru, oxblood, plus the brand's recurring use of saturated red-and-yellow safety colour combinations and the iconic British-alpine-mountaineering-aesthetic accent combinations. The brand is owned by Mountain Equipment Co-operative-and-Equip Outdoor Technologies (the broader British outdoor-equipment parent company that also operates Rab). Mountain Equipment operates flagship retail in Glossop (the brand's home factory shop), plus international wholesale through REI, Backcountry, the major US-and-European outdoor specialty retailers (Globetrotter Germany, Mountain Warehouse UK), the substantial Japanese mountaineering specialty distribution including Snow Peak and Beams Plus, and the broader 'gorpcore' streetwear specialty retailers. The brand has been one of the most rigorously committed continuously-operating British mountaineering-equipment specialists.