Columbia Sportswear History

According to the article “Columbia Sportswear Company History”, Columbia Sportswear was founded in 1938 by a man named Paul Lanfrom and his family, who purchased “the Rosenfeld Hat Company” in Portland, Oregon and then renamed it the “Columbia Hat Company.” Later on Paul ran into some problems with some of the vendors for the company, so he decided to get rid of the vendors and manufacture the products himself. Although this spark the start of the Columbia Sportswear Company, it was still a small hat company in Portland, Oregon and Paul became concerned if it would help him support his wife, Marie, and their three daughters. A few years after they started The Columbia Hat Company, a man named Neal Boyle married Paul’s daughter, Gertrude, and

This lead to a buyer offering to buy the company for $1,400, but Gertrude refused to sell her family’s company. Then one of Gertrude three kids, Tim began to work at the company full time, after he left University of Oregon, to help his mom when she turned down the offer. The article says that Tim Boyle and his mother, Gertrude, reduced Culombia's involvement in the wholesaling side of the apparel

These apparels, along with some others, help the company move into the apparel market, which help the company’s label grow. This along with image of 'Mother Boyle,' by then in her 70s, in print and television advertisements, and being named official supplier to CBS Sports for the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, helped lead the company to reach $1 billion in sales by the end of the decade. Later on in 1995 Tim Boyle, President and Chief Executive Officer, acquired retail space for the company's flagship store in Portland, which opened next year, and included a full range of Columbia apparel, footwear, and accessories. Then in 1997, he expanded again with a retail store in Seoul, South