Monday, March 10, 2008

viva la North Face


This is just a theory - but it's a fairly solid one.

Many years ago in a sweatshop far far away there was a young man that was working several sweatshops a day. After months and months of the same thing day after day he grew weary. Who wouldn't?
One day he had a particularly prodigious day of making fleece jackets. On a good day a normal manager would make 400 or maybe 500 jackets. On this day he'd made 1200 jackets.

Only there was a problem. Instead of sewing the North Face logo on the front left chest of the jacket, he'd mistakenly set up his machines in such a way that they sewed the logo on the back right. 1200 jackets ruined.

But this was a proud man. He would make this work somehow. So he hatched a plan to tell the North Face people that if they didn't accept this revolutionary new look, he would expose this winter weather company for what it really was, an insidious corporation bent on providing quality, albeit overpriced, products to cold weather cities across the country...made by 7 year old kids in basements located in third world countries...and also a small shop in Cleveland.

This was ridiculous! A logo that you can only see from behind. What if a young lady with long hair is wearing the jacket? What if it's covered by a backpack. This is just a stupid, stupid idea....but alas, North Face wasn't in a position to "quiet" this man and hadn't really created much of a market in the United States either. Why not take this huge mistake and turn it into a marketing ploy?

So now when you're standing slightly to the right and behind someone in a ski lift line - you'll know that this was the product of a young man with the funny first name - Fidel - a young "revolutionary" that would go on to become the rules of an up and coming young nation known for their hand rolled cigars and ski wear.

And now you know the rest of the fake story...

2 comments:

  1. You owe me 90 seconds of my life back. I'll just tack it on to my next Alpha talk.

    ReplyDelete
  2. looks like somebody has a case of the Mondays...

    I would have thought you'd leave a six word comment - try and do that...

    ReplyDelete