A hippie whose inventions sent us all packing
Innovative JanSport designer fondly remembered for love of outdoors and original gear
In reinventing something as simple as a backpack, Skip Yowell opened the door to a new generation of hikers and seekers.
A passionate outdoorsman who helped found JanSport, a Seattlebased producer of backpacks, daypacks, totes, tents, waistpacks and other outdoor gear, Yowell died Oct. 14 of lung cancer in St. Peter, Kan. He was 69.
Purchased in 1986 by VF Corp., a global apparel concern, JanSport is currently the world’s largest maker of backpacks. Thousands of serious hikers and weekend warriors sport the products.
Fuelled by the ’60s back-to-nature craze and a love of the outdoors, the shaggy-haired, Fu Manchu-ed Yowell and a cousin, Murray Pletz, started JanSport in 1967 in a spare room above Yowell’s uncle’s transmission shop in Seattle.
Pletz had won a design competition for a flexible aluminum backpack frame. He promised his girlfriend, Jan Lewis, that he would name the new company for her if she would sew the packs and, incidentally, marry him. Both happened.
Cousin Skip (born Harold) was tasked with sales and had a hand in designing JanSport’s innovative panel-load packs and waist suspension flexible frame.
Sales took off in about 1972 when a buyer for a university bookstore gave Yowell a life-changing tip: Students were starting to use JanSport daypacks, then made mostly of vinyl, for hauling books. The buyer suggested JanSport should reinforce the packs with leather for heavier items.
“Thankfully, I didn’t ignore the tug inside of my gut that confirmed (the buyer) might just be on to something,” Yowell wrote in his book, The Hippie Guide to Climbing the Corporate Ladder and Other Mountains. “Today our daypacks are used worldwide.”
The company grew into a multimillion-dollar business, as its packs got sturdier and lighter.
Yowell had a “huge influence on the outdoor industry,” said Tim South- am, a spokesman for Vancouverbased MEC.
“In fact, my first backpack was a JanSport pack. It served me extremely well through numerous extended trips through the Rockies,” Southam said.
“I still have it today, although I don’t use it because the style of the pack, with an external frame, has gone out of fashion. Most backpacks now have internal frames.
Yowell was active in several philanthropies, including Big City Mountaineers, which takes inner-city teens to the wilderness, and he was a founding member of the Outdoor Industry Association, a trade group based in Boulder, Colo.
Writing on the association’s website, CEO Amy Roberts, a former di- rector for MEC in Canada, said she was forever grateful to Yowell for the opportunity he gave her to climb Mount Rainier in Washington.
“He was there with us before and after our trip and eager to hear us retell an adventure he had probably heard many times before,” Roberts stated. “That was the thing about Skip — he probably had more travels and adventures under his belt than most anyone else — but he always made you feel like your story was important. I hope I can emulate his humble yet steady example of what it means to truly be a leader.”
Yowell climbed mountains around the world and was on the support team for a 1984 ascent of Everest. In 1989, he took part in an expedition to Kanchenjunga, a peak in Nepal.
John Gauthier, JanSport’s manager for Canada, reports the company’s sales in this country are expected to surpass $16 million this year. As of 2013, “we are Canada’s largest backpack brand.”
That success, Gauthier offers, results in part from a lifetime warranty and esthetics. But mostly, it’s owed to Yowell, “one of the few hippies who made a buck,” Gauthier said with a laugh. “He was the sweetest, funniest guy ever. Everybody loved Skip.”
Company president Steve Munn said in a statement: “Veterans admired his long-term commitment and passion for everything JanSport. Newcomers, 20-somethings, admired him for starting a company to avoid getting a real job.” With files from the New York Times and the Washington Post