Growth and renown
"Relationships with climbers on high altitude expeditions was one of the keys to both innovation and marketing in both Karrimor and Mountain Equipment. Sharing the common ground of climbing and outdoor sport helped to create common understandings and shared perceptions.
This bridge between technical knowledge and sporting needs played a crucial role in ... establish[ing] a growing dominance of the rucksack market [...] [Karrimor's] early development involved combining old and new technologies, materials and skills with a far higher level of customer interaction than had been common in the cotton industry." Karrimor were still small when their son[2] Mike Parsons (1942–) joined in 1960, and began to build the 6-employee[6] company into an international outdoor equipment manufacturer. The company's growth arose from a number of factors.[7]
Indeed, the 30-year period 1960–1990 has been described as a "golden age" for UK outdoor pursuit entrepreneurial companies generally.[14]
A major example of this synergistic combination of factors was Karrimor's innovation of the first robustly waterproof lightweight nylon texturised fabric, marketed as KS-100e.[15] Within 1960s textiles, cotton fibres expand when wet, bond to many coatings, and cotton fabrics are therefore easily made waterproof and rot-proof, but remain relatively heavy and cumbersome, and far from an ideal backpack textile, while nylon fabrics are lightweight, tough, flexible, easily cleaned, but technically very difficult to waterproof other than by adding coatings (with existing coatings such as polyurethane readily peeling or wearing away[7]), and when untreated are always permeable to water (its fibres do not expand to fill the gaps when wet). Therefore, in the 1960s, robustly waterproof fabrics were still largely based on rubberised coatings, duck-cotton and the like, even though these flexed poorly and added weight. In collaboration with a local company (either BM Coatings or Gordon and Fairclough,[10] sources differ), Karrimor developed an elastomer-nylon process in which toughened nylon fabric was waterproofed without significant weight or additional coatings, and without losing its natural flexibility, durability, texture, or other desirable qualities.[10]
Designs were launched in backpacks, camping mats and other areas of equipment manufacture. Famous climbs such as Annapurna (1970)[10] and Everest (1975 twice and 1978) using Karrimor equipment (covered in prestigious[5][16] international mountaineering journals such as Ken Wilson's Mountain [17]) also had a lasting impact on the company's profile in its field, and gave its products a 'reputation for functionality and usability'.[10] At times, this left manufacturing output "struggling to keep up with demand".[10]
In this way, between 1960 and 1990, the company innovated successfully and gained international recognition for many of its products (see 'pre-receivership recognition' below). Its first factory opened in 1965, in nearby Haslingden,[18] with two more following. The 1960s also saw business revenue grow 800% and the first exports.[18] In line with its growing global reputation and prominence, in 1975 the company changed name once more, to Karrimor International Ltd. By then, Karrimor was supplying an estimated 80% of the UK backpack market, and exporting some 40% of products.[15] (After the company's 2004 collapse, its assets were acquired by a new company, Karrimor Ltd, and as of 2013 trades under that name.[3])
