The North Face Rejects Making Clothing for an Oil and Gas Company, Is Clueless Concerning the Source of Their Products
In the news today is a hilarious case of lack of self-awareness and hypocrisy coming from The North Face, a popular outdoor clothing company. The North Face refused to make jackets for an oil and gas firm, saying the company’s products “didn’t align with its brand standards.” This shows an amazing lack of awareness because their outdoor wear fabrics are almost entirely created from oil.
Synthetic fabrics, for instance, acetate, acrylic, nylon, polyester, and spandex are all made from petroleum. In fact, a whopping two-thirds of our clothing is made from petroleum derived synthetic fibers.
The North Face’s faux pas started last year when the company refused to manufacture jackets for Texas oil and gas company, Innovex Downhole Solutions. Innovex was looking for a Christmas gift for its employees. In December 2020, they ordered jackets with an Innovex logo from The North Face, as they had done previously.
According to Innovex CEO Adam Anderson:
“They told us we did not meet their brand standards,” Anderson said. “We were separately informed that what that really meant is was that we were an oil and gas company.”
The North Face’s rank hypocrisy has been called out in a short video by Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Oilfield Services:
“I went through North Face’s website of wide-ranging products, and I failed to find a single product that wasn’t made out of oil and gas,” Wright says in the video. “The great majority of North Face’s products, jackets, backpacks, outdoor pants, shirts, shoes, hats, etc. are predominantly made out of the oil and gas that we so proudly produce.”
Wright points out approximately 60 percent of clothing produced globally is made using oil and gas. In The North Face’s case the number is likely 90 percent or more due to the fact that outdoor clothing is heavily dependent on synthetic fabrics for water resistance, breathability, and insulation.
Petrochemicals are also used to make backpacks, climbing ropes, hydration bottles, and other The North Face products, Wright says. Additionally, oil and gas powers factories that manufacture The North Face’s products, and the ships, trucks, planes, and trains used to ship their products worldwide use oil and gas for fuel.
“North Face is not only an extraordinary customer of the oil and gas industry,” Wright says. “They are also a partner in the oil and gas industry.”
In fact, on March 4th, North Face received an award for being an “Oil & Gas Extraordinary Customer” by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.
In a letter penned to North Face, which has gone viral, Innovex CEO Adam Anderson said this:
“The irony in this statement is your jackets are made from the oil and gas products the hardworking men and women of our industry produce. I think this stance by your company is counterproductive virtue signaling, and I would appreciate you re-considering this stance. We should be celebrating the benefits of what oil and gas do to enable the outdoors lifestyle your brands embrace. Without Oil and Gas there would be no market for nor ability to create the products your company sells.”
The North Face is either clueless about how the fabrics they use are made, or the company wanted to virtue signal to its nature loving customers hoping they wouldn’t realize that the clothing that they wear is created from petroleum.
In either case, it is turning into a major public relations fiasco for The North Face. This case provides a lesson for other companies considering embracing climate alarmism. Companies living in petroleum-based houses, shouldn’t start flame wars.
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Yes, I’ll not soon forget that brand name to skip over when picking among the dozens of other choices for myself and for gifts.
Yup, another virtue-signaler crossed of the vendor list.
What’s next, GM refuses to sell diesel trucks to oil and gas industry companies?
May Dieselgate bite their ass*es!
Go to their website (thenorthface.com), go to contact us at the bottom of the page, select E-Mail Us and ask them what products they carry that don’t contain petrochemical derivatives.
Perhaps they’ll begin to see their hypocrisy…or not.
I have just done that. Hopefully they will get hundreds.
Done
Done.
I notice that Coppertone has been silent on Black Lives Matter.
Tan lives matter too
Last I heard, GM was planning to go to all-electric anyway, so no more diesel trucks.
Last I heard, GM was planning to go
to all-electricout of business anyway, so no more diesel trucks.There, fixed it for you.
Max P
GM Australia already did that it but stays on as a car importer. As EV’s are sub 2% of the Australian market I think we can say they are dead in Australia it’s just the announcement that is pending.
The Patagonia brand is also another Billy Madison-level of virtue signaling stupidity. The climate virus has infected their brain and turned all those executives into morons.
we can’t win…..we’re arguing with morons
Moron that later.
~Mark Twain
Their minds are on vacation while their mouths are working overtime!
~Taj Mahal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii 🙂
Follow the money – IMO this is all about ESG ratings and their ability to borrow money.
What other “standards” are they compiling and enforcing?
on Israel?
on police?
on white males outside their corp. office?
on hunters?
on red states that don’t need parkas?
Do tell.
Can you IMAGINE the response from North Face … if I snapped a photo of ME … holding up a bloodied Stag that I had just bagged … the Stags blood smeared all over the North Face jacket logo? Celebrating the fibers which had kept me warm and comfortable while I stalked my prey across the rugged wilderness? The North Face needs a good ‘blooding’. Right?
Get all of your hunting buddies to do the same. Then post your pictures to all of your social media platforms and be sure to include #northface. That way it’ll appear in all their social media.
Easier plan. No blood (I am a big time hunter, but never clothed in North Face). My family has used North Face gear for years as winter ski clothing. Snap a picture all North Face dressed up after a big ski snow dump and say, you afraid skiing will vanish like Viner’s stupid 2000 UK snow prediction? Nope!
Yep. I don’t believe North Face sells ANYTHING in camo… hahaha ha ha
Ha! The modern, nominally “secular” religion. Who would have guessed that virtue signalling is playing with a double-edge scalpel.
When shopping for a new backpack (35-40l) I was appalled to see that practically all European or American brands are made in China. None in Europe at all. In the end I settled on a German brand made in Vietnam, my choice being based on information about how they treated their workers.
Do you think all the material used in the final product came from there? Therein lies the problem of tracing forced labor products and intermediate goods.
Try shopping at Savotta and Varusteleka. They have English websites.
Thanks for that. Looking great.
Look for Berry Amendment Compliant soft goods. They cannot label goods made offshore with the Berry Compliant label meant for DoD sales.
You will pay more, but the items will be made here.
I thought, idiocy may have lower limit – error, it’s deeper as previously thought
Our standards in the U.S.A. are so cool even the Big Guy has to wear sunglasses.
“Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of true democracy, that one moron is equal to one genius, is it necessary to go a further step and hold that two morons are better than one genius?
Leo Szilard”
Little did Dr. Szilard know that further steps will be taken in 2021.
I’ve heard some f’kn geniuses talk politics before. What was wrong with the morons?
Wrote in a recent guest post concerning the SciAm treatment of Koonin’s Unsettled, that since warmunists are immune to facts and logic, the best way to get at them is ridicule. This is a great example of that tactic.
This is Board of Directors stuff, not some mere academia. Either their lawyers play along to get along, or they install rooms with rubber walls for managers. Keep well away from the upper floor right now, watch for suits flying past windows….
The North Face is a red face.
South Butte
https://francisanderson.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/north-face-v-south-butt/
North Face plant, tripped on their virtue.
You can’t fix stupid.
Hold on!
There is huge money involved. The new Green Vetting by BlackRock and the UN demands full carbon disclosure, and such statements of policy. ESG pumped out…
It sure looks like the Board of Directors are driven literally insane. So much for shareholder value. It is going to get much worse.
And the idea of green e-currency proposed by the FED and ECB will involve plastic credit cards.
I actually pity the Board. How to fix this? Well, who ever said it was a rose-garden. Couldn’t happen to nicer guys!
I am going to really miss those jackets made by the Uighers. I should check out the MEC and see if any are left. Nope, MEC is closed.
The Red Face.
As if they are unaware of the source of their materials… yeah, right.
Left a comment at https://www.facebook.com/thenorthface/
So did a lot of people. Surprising you weren’t
liquidatedbanned.I just went to their actual website. I could not find a contact us form page. I do not do Facistbook.
Try here
https://www.thenorthface.com/help.html#contact-us
It is hard to soar like an eagle when your virtue signaling makes you look like a turkey.
Perhaps North Face will switch to making all their products from animals, including polar bears?
Whale oil would probably work. This is just toooo funny. The Egg on Face.
Baby seal fur clubbed by an authentic Native Alaskan.
Ironic isn’t it … synthetic fur is made from … ewwwww … oil. Oil that could very well have been piped from Alaska … from Native lands … for which the Native’s continue to be handsomely $$paid.
The average virtue signaler has the education of a kindergartner. Whose primary lessons are identifying the WRONG gender they were assigned by birth. Guess they can’t be bothered teaching science FACT … instead of science FICTION.
The native Alaskans aren’t “handsomely $$paid” for the oil pumped from their land. Drilling rights are sold by the federal government. Taxes on production are paid to the state.
Actually, many of them are. Not by the state, but by the Native Alsakan Corporations that they’re shareholders of (thanks to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971). Several Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) control huge tracts of land (and the rights to the minerals, including oil, of those lands). The Chugach Alaska Corporation controls 930,000 acres. Cook Inlet Regional Corporation controls 2.4 million acres, and Nana Regional Corporation controls 2.25 million acres. Many of the corporations have entered into joint ventures or partnerships with mining and oil development companies. The Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) holds entitlements to 5.1 million acres of land, including some lands rich in oil and minerals. The profits of those ANCs (like the profits of other corporations) go to the shareholders – who, in the case of ANCs, are all Native Alaskans from all walks of Native Alaskan life.
There isn’t a product that doesn’t make use of fossil fuel somewhere in its’ life cycle. OK, maybe the vendor selling wild mushrooms picked by hand and harvested within walking distance of their house and delivered to the open air market on foot. Better bring your own reed basket though.
I’m sure they don’t use 100% cotton shoelaces or walk barefoot while delivering to open air markets on foot though.
Go with clueless, a synonym for Woke.
Woke from woc, Old English for weak.
“Companies living in petroleum-based houses, shouldn’t start flame wars.”
Classic.
So sad. Saw this video the other day & when I went to share from Youtube, They won’t pass this on. WHY!
I could not share it either.
North Face makes nice products but way over priced.
Their products are not overpriced. They were all are made originally in China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India. Its the logo they overcharge for.
I have many NorthFace items in my drawers and closets, all mostly synthetic fleeces and running -hiking top layer shirts made with polyester fabrics. It takes a Liberal Arts college education to not know where that polyester fabric originated from.
These NorthFace execs objecting to the oil and gas industry that supplies everything their business is dependent on deserve a Billy Madison Award for their moron level of stupidity.
North Face claims that they rely on recycled water bottles for their polyester… Second hand petrochemicals are still petrochemicals… 🙄
And still consume energy, likely from fossil fuels, in the process
Recycled water bottles must undergo thermo-processing to convert bottle walls into filaments which are then spun, woven and cut into microfiber clothing patterns.
However, their packs, cordura items, waterproofing, stitching, sewing machines, plastic gear, tents, poles, etc. are all derived from fossil fuel heavy manufacturing.
I have a TNF expedition coat from the mid 1970s.
It’s still a solidly warm coat for outdoor wear on bitter days.
It is the old Michelin man design, not the new small tube fashions. Which is odd, because pictures from extreme environments, e.g. Antarctica, show fat fluffy coats with heavy exterior fabric hiding the fat down chambers.
Then again, that purchase occurred before TNF was sold to greedy international corporations that would rather utilize slave labor to maximize their profits and to hades with quality.
It’s worse than you think. North Face and other outdoor clothing and equipment providers support a number of Communist causes. Their money from their profits go to radical environmental groups who rail against capitalism and oppose profits, by any company or individual investor large or small. These groups desire that every company operate at a loss (the opposite of profit). In addition, they aspire to remove humanity from Planet Earth.
North Face sidles up to such crazies. They are not just morons, they are suicidal/homicidal morons.
There’s a lot of Greenmail about.
North Fave hoist by own petard.
Is there any objective evidence that this “major public relations fiasco” has hurt the company’s bottom line? While readers of this blog make derisive comments, other venues may be supportive of the companies actions.
Isn’t that part of the issue?
Sheeple support companies who virtue signal whilst being unaware of the vital role fossil fuels have in modern society.
We could always go back to using whale oil on canvas to waterproof our outdoor tents and backpacks.
They will smell funny. Candles are the thing to use.
They will now claim that they are doing their part in sequestering carbon that other wise would be released in the atmosphere by the evil oil & gas industry. They will ask for carbon credits.