Mary Anderson, a Founder of the Outdoor Cooperative REI, Dies at 107

[JSngry]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/business/mary-anderson-died-co-founder-of-rei-cooperative.html?_r=0

Avid climbers and outdoor enthusiasts, Mrs. Anderson and her husband, Lloyd, were unhappy with the ice axes available in the United States in the 1930s. So they began to import less expensive, high-quality ice axes from Austria, and these soon caught the eyes of their climber friends.

In 1938, 21 of those friends paid $1 each for a lifetime membership in the Andersons’ company, originally the Recreational Equipment Cooperative, which imported outdoor equipment for lower prices than it could be bought domestically.

In 2016, REI reported revenues of $2.56 billion and said that more than six million active members had received dividends or credit card rebates worth a high of $193.7 million. The company said it returns 70 percent of its profits to the outdoor community, including $9.3 million to nonprofit groups.

“I never thought a man should make money off his friends,” Mr. Anderson once told Timothy Egan, who wrote about REI last week in an Op-Ed column in The New York Times.

Mrs. Anderson retired in 1968, followed by Mr. Anderson in 1970, but their influence was still felt at REI.