An Exit Interview With NW Alpine Founder Bill Amos

Why domestic technical apparel manufacturing is suffering, but may not be dead yet

After 15 years operating the small-but-mighty technical apparel brand NW Alpine, which made all of its clothes in Salem, Oregon, its founder Bill Amos has decided to close up shop. The decision comes amid an ever-worsening environment for both domestic manufacturing, and the outdoor recreation industry. But don’t take that from me, take it from Bill, who tried to do things right.

What follows are Bill’s words unabridged, with light editing only.

Before starting NWA in 2010 I’d gotten my bachelors in sociology and a masters degree in teaching. After grad school I was substitute teaching and teaching in the outdoor program at a community college. All of that was to have the flexibility to take time off to go climbing, which is what I did for most of my 20s. I participated in every climbing discipline, but especially enjoyed/enjoy ice, mixed and alpine climbing.

Like a lot of people that get into making purpose-built gear, I just wasn’t satisfied with the options that were available for technical apparel. By 2010 a lot of the heritage climbing brands had shifted from making purpose-built apparel to lifestyle clothing as the market for that is way bigger.

In 2008 I became really interested in what was happening with the financial crisis and really came to the conclusion that having an economy based on selling houses back and forth to each other probably wasn’t sustainable, and that the offshoring of manufacturing was going to lead to big problems for us. So my goal with NW Alpine was always to make technical apparel, and do it in the US. How hard could that be?

In 2014 I started a second company, Kichatna Apparel Manufacturing. I was meeting a lot of brands in a similar situation to us looking for contract sewing and having trouble finding it. My goal with KAM was to do contract manufacturing for other brands, and our own production.

The contract side of things really took off and became my focus for the following eight years until we shut down in 2022. NW Alpine was still operating, just more in the background as we focused on what was keeping the lights on. During Covid we got big into making PPE (masks and hospital gowns) and had some large contracts with hospital systems. We made big investments in equipment and people and when Chinese exports came back we were crushed as we could not compete on price. It was a bloodbath for the industry and a lot of factories, including KAM, shut down as a result.

Sewing is just plainly a labor intensive endeavor. When the NAFTA and GATT trade deals passed, and the multi-fiber agreement quotas expired in the 90s, it opened our markets to countries with far cheaper labor. Cheered on by Wall Street, politicians and economists on both sides of the aisle spoke about ushering in a new era of the US as a service based economy. While this was great for corporate margins it absolutely decimated manufacturing employment. That would go on to have lasting repercussions and arguably led to where we are today in terms of massive income inequality, political division, etc. The benefits of globalization have been very unevenly distributed. Textiles was the sector of the economy most impacted by so-called “free trade.”

As most cut and sew production left the US, thousands of domestic factories shut down. The factories that remained largely either made military products (the Berry Amendment requires that any textile product the US military buys be fiber-to-finish made in America), or had other niche customers where local production made sense.

The last thirty years have been rough for domestic factories, and many of those left haven’t had the profits to reinvest in new equipment and processes, so they still operate in an old school way. Most of the ownership remains the same as during the ‘80s and ‘90s as well. The industry is also extremely fragmented. Many factories don’t have websites, or won’t pick up their phones so it’s impossible to get ahold of them. There’s actually a lot of interesting capabilities around the country, it’s just not centralized in one place like in other global textile hubs.

Most American factories provide cut-and-sew only, so the brand must find pattern makers to work with, source all fabric and trims themselves, etc. It’s way more labor intensive on the brand side and the brands must have a lot more internal knowledge of the production process. Whereas, working in Asia, it can be as easy as sending over a tech pack with specifications and getting a sample returned. The factories do all the work and the brands are basically the marketing function of the factory’s capabilities.

I don’t think most economists predicted what they would eventually call the “China shock”. China would go on to subsidize industries in ways that no one predicted, driving the cost of everything lower and decimating a lot more of the textile industry than was predicted. The rules of global trade set out in the WTO agreements were largely ignored and eventually everyone stopped caring that they were dumping products at below cost. If you go back and look at interviews during the Clinton era, their trade policy advisors talk about how American companies will supplement their domestic manufacturing with overseas production. Who knows if they really believed that, but it’s what they used to sell it to the American people.

Most people seem to forget the 1999 WTO protests. Those were largely driven by leftist and labor organizations concerned with the environmental, social, and labor impacts of globalization. All of those concerns would be proven valid over the next 25 years. Unfortunately 9/11 and the rise of the global war on terror really put an end to the anti-globalization movement. Now you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that doesn’t treat globalization and free trade as an inevitability, when in fact it is a blip on the timeline of human commerce. I’d argue that a good number of the problems we face today, especially around climate change and environmental degradation, are a direct result of unfettered global trade.

Most of our employees at KAM were from immigrant communities from Mexico and Central America, and for eight years KAM had a fairly significant economic impact in the community. That’s one of the reasons I continue to believe that manufacturing products here is so important and can be a huge economic driver for largely ignored segments of the population. Wall Street and politicians don’t really care because it doesn’t make them or their donors money, but it does have a real and tangible impact for working people.

I think that ultimately one of our issues is that people always thought we were much bigger than we were. NW Alpine never broke $1 million in revenue. We usually only had me and one other person working on the brand, with freelance people and others at KAM helping out when needed. At KAM we peaked around $3 million in revenue averaging around 40-50 employees depending on what we were working on.

We weren’t really made to close by any outside forces. Like creditors or the bank or anything like that. I’m the sole owner of the company and we have little debt and no investors. Our revenue has been up 50% YoY and we’ve been marginally profitable. But that’s without paying myself a salary. We ran the numbers and figured that we would have to double our sales to get to a sustainable place. We tried, but ultimately were facing a lot of headwinds. Declining consumer spending, other brands constantly discounting, the expense of trying to acquire new direct customers, the demise of smaller specialty outdoor retailers, etc. All of it led to the decision that it made sense to wind down now while we were still able to, on our terms, liquidate our inventory while people still have money to spend and before a lot of other brands on the brink end up having to do the same.

My goal has always been to come out of this in a decent financial position personally, and doing this now will allow that to happen. Of course I was sad that this chapter of my life is closing. Fifteen years is a long time to dedicate to something and there’s definitely ego and identity tied up in the brand. But ultimately I’m a pragmatist and once I concluded it was the right decision I accepted it and moved forward.

In the US [the short term outlook for the outdoor recreation industry] is grim. Probably way worse than most people imagine. There are canaries in the coal mine all over the place. The fact that Next Adventure and Summit Hut, two prominent Grassroots Outdoor Alliance retailers, are closing is very concerning. REI losing $632 million over the last three years is very concerning. Looking at the financials of some of the brands that have launched Wefunder campaigns, also very concerning. I believe we’re going to see an absolute bloodbath in the next 6-12 months with layoffs and brand closures, and in 18 months the industry is going to look a lot different than it does now. I hope I’m not right, but I just don’t see how it turns out differently.

I believe the industry will remain challenged for the next five to eight years, another factor I considered when making the decision to shut down. I’m 44 and frankly don’t have time to muddle through for half a decade plus. I believe our nation is at a major inflection point, and that institutions we take for granted will be torn down and rebuilt. This will take time.

I think after we’re through this period of turmoil and transition there will be a golden age for the outdoor industry and that made in USA brands can dominate the resurgence. It’s truly the only way to run a sustainable business making things. Producing close to the consumer has obvious benefits in terms of emissions from transportation and stricter environmental standards. Perhaps most importantly is the ability to quickly respond to demand and avoid overproduction. Aside from a handful of brands the outdoor industry is actually quite small in terms of production volumes and a lot of the issues facing the industry now stem from large minimums leading to overproduction and discounting. This can largely be mitigated with domestic production.

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