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Outside Magazine April 2002

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The Big Idea
The Outside Innovators

Stanley Selengut
Green Innkeeper
In 1974, on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Stanley Selengut built his first Maho Bay Camps—a series of cloth-covered cottages connected by foliage-sparing boardwalks and air-conditioned by trade-wind-catching ducts. He also started a "Trash to Treasure" program, in which artists turn discarded glass bottles into gallery-quality sculpture (available for purchase, of course). Thus dawned an eco-conscious resort style that has since become widespread. Inspired in part by three other Selengut-built St. John resorts (constructed largely from recycled materials), industry leaders from Marriott to Club Med have embraced a cleaner, greener vacation vision. "The world is changing because it has to," says Selengut, 74, who has worked with the National Park Service on eco-friendly projects and currently consults with resort companies on sustainable design. "Now you can't go into a hotel without a sign asking you whether or not you really want your towels washed."

Jake Burton

Jake Burton, son Timmy, and Ruby the retriever at home in Stowe, Vermont

Chairman of the Boards
Back when "sick" still meant you had to stay in bed and drink soup, five bucks hooked you up with a Vermont backcountry "snow-surfing safari" led by a shaggy 22-year-old named Jake Burton. The 1977 outings allowed the curious an opportunity to surf-float down slopes on "Snurfers," bent plywood boards you bought at a toy store and held with a rope. Snurfing was a novelty act, but Burton, peering deeply into his crystal snowball, bought power tools and set out to build something better. Twenty-five years later, snowboarding has become one of the great out-of-nowhere success stories in the history of recreation: It's now a lifestyle, a $350-million-a-year industry, and, as of 2000, the fastest-growing sport in America, with 4.3 million boarders heading out last season—a rise of nearly 3 million since 1990.

Burton, now 48, was a self-declared "loser in shop class" who took trial-and-error to the next level with industrial machinery, even sending a few early prototypes shooting through rustic walls. His one-man construction odyssey finally led him to the then-perfect material—wood laminate with a painted base, which he fitted with rubber water-ski bindings. In 1977 Burton Snowboards's first model, the Backhill, went into production. Only 300 boards were sold that first season, and Burton almost gave up. "I came incredibly close in the beginning to just bailing on the whole thing," he says.

But he pressed on, and the bet paid off: 700 boards moved the next season, and gross receipts started piling up like snowdrifts. (The company today controls 30 percent of the snowboard market.) All along, though, Burton was more than a mere buckraker—he also stood behind the fledgling sport, coddling it and marketing it during those pariah years when ski areas were skeptical and snowboarders were seen as lip-pierced scumbags. "From the inception," says Emmet Manning, who started boarding with Burton in 1978 and now manages the Burton Factory Store in Burlington, "he knew there was something else to the sport—a way for individuals to express themselves."
— Lisa Anne Auerbach



	Tool Time: Leatherman takes five on top of his Portland, Oregon, factory

Tim Leatherman
Handy Man
The Leatherman Pocket Survival Tool is a homewrecker. It came along in the mideighties, created an entirely new market, and turned monogamous Swiss Army knife lovers into two-timing Casanovas. These days it's standard equipment for anyone who needs a screwdriver, knife, saw, file, awl, wire cutter, or pair of pliers in a tight fix.

Tim Leatherman conceived of the tool in 1975—after he and his wife Châu found themselves needing pliers to fix a balky heater in an Amsterdam hotel—and then toiled in the basement of his Portland, Oregon, home for three years creating the first prototype. He hacked the arms off a pile of pliers. He welded on crude hinges, casings, blades. Then came the crucial breakthrough: handles that folded over plier jaws, allowing for a pocket-portable version of the feature Leatherman wanted most.

"I figured some company would pay me a million dollars for the patent and we'd live happily ever after," recalls Leatherman, now 53. If only. He shopped the thing to dozens of knife and tool companies (including Victorinox, maker of Swiss Army knives). Slammed doors all. Finally, in 1983, two catalogs took a flier on the Pocket Survival Tool; 30,000 sold that first year.

The privately owned Leatherman Tool Group Inc. enjoyed 50 percent annual growth over the next 12 years—success that can be attributed to Leatherman's fanatical attention to detail. He's notoriously picky about "walk and talk"—toolgeek speak for a blade's opening tension and locking click—and he wants his wire cutters so sharp that they cut paper.

What's next? "Customers send us ideas all the time," says Leatherman. "Add a marlinespike, that sort of thing." How about a laser, Tim? "If they want a laser," says the no-nonsense CEO, "then that's a feature we'll have." —Bruce Barcott

Yvon Chouinard
Benevolent Blacksmith
During his early twenties, Yvon Chouinard sold home-forged climbing pitons from the back of his station wagon in Yosemite. Before long, he was crafting revolutionary lightweight carabiners, curved ice axes, and "clean-climbing" cams and wedges, which reduced unsightly anchors bolted into rock walls. In 1973, at age 29, he started Patagonia Inc., and fleece was on its way to becoming a fashion statement. Now a $225-million-a-year mega-manufacturer, Patagonia gives back, too, donating millions annually to environmental causes. Chouinard's next big thing: persuading other companies to join his "one percent [of profits] for the planet" enviro-donation campaign.

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