S5E2: The Launch of REI’s Living Archives

Transcript:

Erin Narloch 0:12

Hey, welcome to the History Factory podcast. I am your host today, Erin Narloch, and today, we really have a very special treat. We are chatting with folks from REI, Co-ops, Living Archive, and two individuals are really responsible for its creation and its programming and embedding it into the business. We have Halley Knigge and Will Dunn. This conversation is so much fun. We really get into how this archive touches most parts of the business and how it’s positioned to show ROI and value to the organization. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did, let’s get into it.

Will, Halley, thank you so much for being with us today. I just want to start off by saying congratulations on the official launch of your archives. Can you just tell us a little bit more about when the project was founded, why you decided to kind of create a Living Archives for REI.

Halley Knigge 1:34

Thanks for having us today.

This is, I would say, a personal passion area for both Will and I, I previous, prior to REI, I worked at Alaska Airlines, and I was a volunteer on the historical archives Committee, which was really fun, lots of historic like flight attendant and pilot uniforms. And when I came to REI, our team, which communications team, sitting in public affairs, was sort of the keeper of REI archive, which was really a stack of fire safe boxes in a closet, sort of behind an IT department that had been thoughtfully organized and, you know, put into these fire safe boxes by a previous leader of the team. But we weren’t really dedicating company time or resources toward the archive. So a small group of us felt that this was big opportunity for the co-op. I think are we have a really rich history. We were founded in 1938 and we have so many cool stories. There’s a really interesting history of gear innovation and lots of people stories. And so we started, sort of pushing around this side or shadow project to get an archive stood up, and we really started to gain traction around 2019, we were preparing for a big headquarters move that didn’t end up happening, so we moved to a mostly remote workforce for our headquarters, but we knew that we had this campus move coming up, and we were very nervous that we were going to lose critical artifacts and history when we did that move. And so that was sort of the business moment that allowed us to come in and said, Well, it just so happens we have this beautiful pitch deck that Will has put together, and we’re ready to go when you give us the green light for this program. And that allowed us to really, really kick it off.

Erin Narloch 3:18

Amazing. Yeah, I think those campus moves can really unearth the most incredible artifacts and stories. And as soon as you say there’s an archive, people are in my experience and I would be curious about yours. People are willing to kind of give up what they’ve been holding on to, because now they know there’s someplace safe for it to reside.

Will Dunn 3:42

Yeah, that’s so true. Once you know the word kind of organically spread around the co-op, and like Halley mentioned, having a campus move is kind of the impetus that would push that word around the co-op, people would just reach out with so many things. And oftentimes it would be something that otherwise would be pretty special and personal like this. This was a matching jacket that my mom and dad bought when I was a kid. They were just these beautiful, 1970s puffy jackets. And wanted to give us that matching set just because they felt like it was a nice home for it. And there was just, I don’t know, it brought so much more gravity to that situation that I really appreciated,

Erin Narloch 4:23

That’s awesome, so why don’t we, as we kind of get into it, and I know we’ll be talking about items in the collection a little a little later, but can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do and how you collaborate with one another and the the archive?

Halley Knigge 4:39

I’ll go first, because I think Will is really the star of the archive show at REI. But Halley Knigge, she/her, based in the Seattle area, and I am a divisional vice president of communications, community and inclusion for REI. Um, so all things internal and external communications, employee events. Um. Some of our kind of customer facing inclusion work, and then our archive. And I sort of joke, I’m, like, our biggest fan and champion of the archive. My job is to, like, get us money and resources and make sure that Will can do the really cool work. So Will tell us about your job, which many people say is their dream job at the co-op. Well, many people say they never want my job. So

Will Dunn 4:41

Okay, well, I’m gonna start by debunking some of the humility that you threw out there, because Halley is really the dreamer that made all of this happen. We wouldn’t have an archive if it wasn’t for Halley’s fierce advocacy, and just like not not even asking if this could be a thing, but kind of telling people this is an important thing that we need to do. So I think our collaboration goes really, really deep. And was even like the brilliant branding that came of thinking that we should be something like a co-op, Living Archive instead of something like a historical society, has allowed us to be so much more nimble and just focused on all of the we’re never stuck looking forward, backward or inward. It’s just been a really something that I’m really grateful for that allows us to position ourselves. So Halley is kind of the dreamer. Anytime we need a big idea or for something to just be cool, I go to Halley otherwise, like, I kind of got involved because I was the nerd peeking around the corner, like, Ooh, look at that closet full of old stuff. And that’s how I got involved. So yeah, we end up collaborating a lot of things, and I think we can bring, especially being within the communications team. We could bring so much, so much more gravity, just just a lot of realness and fact checking to a lot of our communications that can feel grounded by looking backward in order to look forward, and really just making sure that we have self awareness as the co-op when we do or say anything.

Erin Narloch 6:46

Thanks for that. So how are you sharing the stories that are coming out of the archive?

Will Dunn 6:53

Yeah, in quite a few ways. We do a lot internally. We use, we have, like a SharePoint system, and we get a lot of content coming through there, but we also get to do a lot of work being on the communications team with our internal News Channel, Co-op News. Halley, do you want to talk about that?

Halley Knigge 7:10

Yeah, we are our employee news platform as well. Said, it’s called Co-op News, and so we showcase a lot of different employee stories, and have really had a lot of success with sharing. Some of the fun ones. Will mentioned the bite valve teeth. That was a really popular story, and people are just kind of clamoring for stories. We also show up in our marketing from time to time. And I would describe Will, I would describe you as maybe a reluctant hero, where we can’t, we can’t always get him on the public Rei social channels. But when we do, it’s really, really fun. And there was an amazing, I think it was a TikTok where the title was, things Will won’t let us touch in the archive. And they kind of follow them around and try to touch things without the gloves on. And it’s very, very funny.

Erin Narloch 7:54

That’s great. Yeah, I love all the storytelling opportunities. Will, can you expand a little bit on what is a Living Archive, and how is that different from how you made the comparison to a Historical Society?

Will Dunn 8:10

Sure, historical societies are great. That’s not a dig. Just want to be clear, we love our historical societies. We work with many of them, but as we are kind of a corporate archives and part of a co-op, we wanted this to really be making sure that we are honoring our past, figuring out who we’ve been, over time, spending time reinvestigating that, relearning that, I think that’s a really important part of history, is always being open to learning something that you didn’t know about yourself before. That’s one of my favorite parts about history. So a Living Archive just allows us to be very forward thinking as well. So we understand that we have almost 87 years of history that informs who we are today and allows us to build upon that in who we are tomorrow. And within that, we get to do a lot of current day things. Like over the summer, we did something that we call the co-op legends event, where we brought in our 10 most tenured employees across the co-op, each of whom had 40 to 47 years of tenure. And it was all rooted in activities around the archive. They all brought artifacts to donate, and we took oral histories from each of them, and it was just this really profound moment where we were listening, and it was very reciprocal. And I think that’s a really important act that an archive can do

Erin Narloch 9:23

That’s amazing. So if you think about what’s held in the collection, right? You’ve mentioned products, you’ve mentioned oral histories, what are some of the other items that we can find in the REI Living Archive?

Will Dunn 9:40

Yeah, it is actually kind of surprising. We have things that go back over, like almost 150 years, which doesn’t really match up, because the co-op wasn’t founded until 1938 which was not 150 years ago. But like everything else in this world, it didn’t just suddenly, poof, like, show up out of nowhere. There were some. Much that led to that moment of us being founded in 1930 and I think that’s really important. And again, another really cool act that an archive could do is show not just what happened, but why something happened. I think that’s sometimes more important. So we have tin types that go back to the 1880s and those are descendants of Floyd and Mary Anderson, our co-founders, and they’re just like these very rugged people up in the far north that they have, like dog sled teams. They’re phenomenal photographs, and then going all the way up through creosote bricks from our Capitol Hill store that are the stinkiest things in our collection. And then current day artifacts are things from just a couple years ago. We have our own product testing lab that we founded in the 1970s and one of my favorite items is a little chatty tooth toy that they used to test the flow capacity of bite valves for water hydration systems. But that was like actual testing equipment that we used in our product testing lab, and it was just like a cheap toy that they walked across the street and bought Frankenstein, and now that gets to live in the archive, and that’s a story that we get to tell. So the collection varies.

Erin Narloch 11:06

Yeah, I love that. I love when you can see innovation and action, and that iteration and product design and testing is maybe one of my favorites. And to your point, it’s not just the content of the archives, right? It’s the context that you all can provide. So how do you actively collect? You mentioned that you’re collecting and from recent years. But how are you growing the archives?

Will Dunn 11:33

Well, we do have a couple items in the archive specific to Halley.

Halley Knigge 11:39

Yes, I, well, every so often I clean up my garage, or I’m over at my mom’s house, and I find something just when I think that I’ve gotten all historic REI gear over to Will I find something new. So we get a lot from current employees and former employees. We’ll have folks who will come visit the archive, and when they do, they’ll often bring a few things for us as a gift. And so one of the things that I gave, gosh, maybe over the summer, was a kids backpacking backpack from the mid 90s that my brothers and I had gone backpacking with as kids. And I have a seven year old now, and I was like, this will be so cute. I’m going to make him go backpacking with me, and he’ll carry my old backpack. And let me just say, backpack innovation has come a long way, too, and kids packs today are much more comfy and ergonomic. So we tried one trip in which my husband carried the backpack in his hand the whole time, and then we donated the 90s pack to Will and got him a, you know, a modern day backpacking backpack. So we can enjoy modern, modern backpacking innovation. But there’s lots of fun things like that, and I still owe, well, some photos. My mom dug some up on old backpacking trips that we have so we can have the actual photos and the stories to go with the item.

Will Dunn 12:57

And to follow the thread of the backpack, you know. So, like, employees are a great, just golden resource of where incredible artifacts come to us. But we also have a lot of people, like members, reaching out from the community. A couple weeks ago, we had someone reach out with the most perfect little kids backpack that I’ve ever seen from 1965 it’s this little orange rucksack, and immediately started parading it around to everyone in the product design community at REI, and it was always met with squeals and just pure, pure glee. And it would be, I guess, unsurprising if you don’t see something similar coming out under the REI label soon, and which is something that we really like to do. We’d love to do these reproductions, kind of stitch for Stitch. But I like to say that like so, that is just a perfect example of something that represents a cool design that is just enduring, that we’ll want to make sure it’s part of our product identity. But we, we kind of like to say that we’re equal parts information and inspiration. So we do have those cool design pieces. We also have things that otherwise would just be a thing, but the story is the real value, and those often are my favorite, where we have like a poncho that was sewn by Delia Cana, one of our first known product makers in the 1960s and she has this incredible story as an immigrant, and it just brings tears to my eyes every single time you talk about her, but otherwise it’s just an orange poncho. But knowing her story and being able to piece those two things together makes it something truly special.

Erin Narloch 14:30

That’s incredible. So you mentioned the product creation part of REI, so who’s using the archives today at REI, what employee groups?

Halley Knigge 14:44

Anyone who can get their way in people, it is a hot ticket to get an invite to the archives, and we have our building where it’s located somewhat protected just because we’re there. There are trade secrets in there where we are innovating and developing brand new products. Um, but people love it is like everyone’s favorite team building event to come do some work for their team in the archive with Will. So everyone from legal to merchandising to our membership team have spent time there. And then there’s teams that I know spend time with Will and actually really inform some of the work that they do. So our marketing teams love the archive. Our product design teams love the archive because they’re often able to visit and like to pull some threads through that can inform future work.

Erin Narloch 15:32

That’s really exciting. Do you, do you think that now, with the archives centralized and available to employees. You’ve seen an increased use of heritage and then inspiration in, you know, in communications, in product design, has that kind of increased.

Will Dunn 15:55

I think it’s changed absolutely everything for us and having it there, it’s like a physical place where you could go stand in the shadow of some of this too, and actually, like, see and touch it. I also think it has been totally transformational with the teams that engage with it. So that’s just a big, a big step forward before this. You know, as Halley mentioned, the program didn’t officially launch until 2022 but we kicked the program off in 2019 and we kind of hopped around a little bit. We moved most of the archive in my car a few times, which I’m sure is what is recommended by most archival institutions. But you know, we just kind of squat around different locations around the co-op. And we were when the program launched in 2022 we were given squatters rights for this one little corner in a workshopy space that would just kind of rain dust down and but it was, it was ours. It was our little corner. And instead of there being piles of boxes on the floor, we got real shelves that we could put everything up on top of and we were working with a delightful local, local archivist, Carrie Keel, and we were both just putting putting boxes on the shelves, both of us like kind of kind of Misty in the eyes, because it just felt like such big progress, and like we were actually stewarding the things that We were given with more care like they deserved, and it’s just progressed from there. And now that everything is in one spot, it allows us the opportunity to zoom all the way in on specific things, or zoom all the way out. And that allows for privileges like having self awareness as the co-op, and understanding who we’ve been over time. And it’s just it’s Yeah, seeing even just the lineage of a product or how we’ve been communicating through catalogs versus what we’ve been communicating through our website that we launched in 1996 is a really fun exercise, but it requires everything to be in one place.

Erin Narloch 17:55

That’s great, if you were to advise another organization on the creation of an archive, what would be some of your kind of words of wisdom?

Halley Knigge 18:08

A great question, mine will probably have more like technical advice about how to build the collection. Mine is more sort of building the business case for it. If you know, we were, we were working this as a side hustle for several years before we got program approval. And I was on our media relations team, like there was, there’s not a clear connection between media relations historical archive, and I just really wanted it to happen. And I kept trying to put it into my like, professional goals for the year. And my boss, at the time, kept saying, this has nothing to do with your job. Take this out of your goals. And I would say, Well, fine, but I will keep this will be my secret goal. Then this is not probably my official career advice to go against your boss, but we just really believe that this was the right thing to do. And so we spent a really long time putting together just a really clear pitch for how we thought this could actually strengthen the business and what we thought teams could get out of it, the the storytelling, for communications, the employee engagement, the marketing benefit, the sort of design archive for our, for our for our co-op, brands teams, and now that we have it, I don’t think anybody’s walked past the archive and thought, Well, that was a dumb idea, but building that business case and really making it clear, like, Sure, this seems like a fun and nice thing, but also it can make a whole lot of our work better. So just thinking about that, and as you put together the pitch for it, and then part find good partners, right? Like we are not archivists, but we’re not a museum. We are a corporate brand, and we knew that we needed help, and so really early on, we reached out to a local museum, which is the Museum of History and industry here in Seattle, to try and build a partnership. And one, just for some kind of thought partnership and idea sharing, they were able to recommend a really talented archivist who we contracted with for a number of years, who helped us build it there. You know, we’d like to help them sort of beef up their collection about the history of outdoor innovation. So there’s just a lot of benefit there too. And so maybe a shorter version of that advice would be, you don’t, you don’t have to have all the expertise, like there are people out there who can help you, and so think about partners that might make sense in your sphere, and get to know them.

Will Dunn 20:29

That was so well said, I really appreciate that, because so much of this has been about community, both in and outside of REI. So like finding the adults that we needed to help us learn what we didn’t know we needed to learn, inform us of the things that we needed to learn, that was absolutely monumental. And then the kind of, kind of, what Halley was nodding at is that, like, I think a lot of people get the misconception that archives are just boxes of documents, but there’s so much power and richness in them that like deeply impact people and people that I don’t think even expect to be impacted by one and that’s that’s been become a lot a large part of the mission that we have for our archive is making sure that employees specifically feel their part in writing our story, and just knowing that that’s something that is always co-written together. So we spend a lot of time making sure that people can feel seen and heard through our past and how we’re growing our story, so it’s not just looking backwards.

Erin Narloch 21:32

That’s great. Yeah, I think that the points you made about, how do you make the business case? How do you connect it to multiple parts of the business to ensure it’s really being utilized, how to engage with different partners in your your area, right finding the that expertise and Will,l to your point, like the importance of the employee seeing themselves reflected in the archive and that they’re part of its continual growth. I think that’s great. So I have to ask, you can choose a question, one favorite object or artifact in the archive, and why? And the other, if you want to answer both, I’m fine with that. And then the other is, do you have a Grail item? Do you have something you’re looking for that you want to add to the collection, and you haven’t been able to find it yet.

Halley Knigge 22:23

I have a new favorite item every time I visit. So whatever my favorite item is, it’s whatever has been out on Will’s table that he’s getting ready to bring into the collection the most recent time that I’ve been there. So right now, do you remember when we used actual film and cameras and we had, like, you know, this whole film canister, it always kind of smelled like the film smelled like the film, and you might put your quarters in them, or, you know, use them for all kinds of things. At some point, we figured out that campers and backpackers were using those to take, like, salt and pepper out with them. And so we sold a lid that could fit on the top of a film canister that would turn your film canister into, like a seasoning shaker. Like, amazing, right? That’s my current favorite item. It was very it was a surprise and delight when, when Will explained to me what it was.

Will Dunn 23:13

So, my answer is fairly similar, but I just don’t have a favorite item. It seems to change daily. We recently found a cookbook that we published in the 1970s called the outdoor Epicure, and it was all employee submitted camp recipes complete with these gorgeous illustrations, and it’s just such a vibe. So just kind of riffing off that and sharing with people is my absolute favorite thing. So I don’t necessarily have a favorite thing, but the one item that I’m always on the lookout for, and we just were notified there’s one at nearby at the Washington State History Museum, but I’m still looking for another one that we can add to our collection, and it is an Isaacs head that Lloyd Anderson, one of our co founders, had made by a blacksmith from his hometown of Roy Washington. And this was all because at the time, and then, this was during World War Two, we were seeing shipping lanes systematically closing because during the war, he took out a personal loan to buy as many ice access as he could from Europe to get him shipped over. But knew that wouldn’t be enough to get us through the war, so he contracted this blacksmith to make a crude round of ice axes, and that became our first rental fleet. And like we I don’t even think we knew at the time how innovative that was for our business, but that essentially kicked off rentals for Rei, and that was during World War Two, and it was just this perfect melding of business and community needs coming together. And so the Washington State History Museum has one of those ICEX heads stamped with that blacksmith’s name. And I’m really hoping that the rest of them aren’t on, like, in a Cracker Barrel somewhere.

Halley Knigge 24:52

That’s the kind of thing that, like, you know, it’s in someone’s garage in Roy, Washington, and they have no idea how cool it is and how much we want it, but someday someone’s going to clean it. Out that garage and be trying to figure out what to do with it.

Erin Narloch 24:53

We’re going to speak it into existence right now, right? Someone, after listening to this, will go and look at the AX heads they have. And do you know what this is? This, this, the stamp looks like. Are there any?

Will Dunn 25:18

I do, I could, I could send you a photo of it from the Archives collection.

Erin Narloch 25:24

Very cool. So, yeah, we’ll be on the lookout for that. Okay, almost closing here, where do you see the future of the co-ops Living Archive going like, what? What’s, what’s in the coming years?

Halley Knigge 25:40

These are more Halley’s philosophical thoughts, but we have not yet fully sort of opened up the floodgates of Bring us your artifacts. We have millions and millions of lifetime members. We have 10s of 1000s of current and former employees, and I just know that they all have cool things tucked away in their garages or their gear closets that we would love to have. And I imagine there’s a lot of it. And so I think figuring out how to take some of that, if we could put out the call for some of those really specialized items that we’re looking for. And then part two, I mentioned, kind of the museum partnership. My dream is, like, we get enough cool stuff and we can tell a really incredible story about the history of just design and innovation in the in the Pacific Northwest and within the outdoor community, that we can gift some of it, or we can help museums maybe beef up their collections as well, with help from REI, that’s, those are, those are much longer terms. So I’m curious, Will’s dreams.

Will Dunn 26:47

Mine? Yeah, my, I think I’m, I’m just going to be really biased with all of this where, like, I don’t think that there’s a single part of REI that doesn’t benefit from having an archive. And so, like my future dream state is that the little tendrils from the archive are touching every part of our business, and that can be like whether they actually needed to fulfill a function or to understand something, or to fact check or to just feel like they’re part of our story. I really just want this to infiltrate every single part of who we are, and for it to be really sorry for the bad pun, but for this to just be the campfire that we can all gather around and just just feel warm and good for a minute, any any more that that is just the magic that I want to bring, and I want to see the archive play a big role in that.

Erin Narloch 27:36

Well, sign me up for that vision, that campfire I’ll join. I’ll join. Well, I just want to thank both of you. Thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing this incredible story about the creation of, you know, the co-op’s Living Archive. I think it’s really exciting. And I encourage everyone you know to to search it, search it out, and look online and see what you can find. I know there’s been some great articles, so thank you for that

Halley Knigge 28:08

In your garage. Please call Will Dunn at REI Co-op.

Erin Narloch 28:18

Okay, you have to admit that was a really fun conversation. And I want to know how many of you are looking in your garages and sheds right now to see if you perhaps have one of those ice ax heads that Will mentioned. If you don’t think you have one, then maybe you should go on to Tiktok and try to find the video that Halley mentioned about all of the things that won’t let us touch in the archive. Just a big shout out to the REI crew. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Will, Halley, amazing conversation. I really appreciate all that you’re bringing to life at REI, and it sounds like so much fun, and I have to get out there and see it myself. I think it’s all right. Well, thank you, listeners, and until next time