Forbes
Jun 3, 2024
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Last year, Cotopaxi assisted (directly and indirectly) over 477,000 people living in poverty around the world.
Cotopaxi’s origins begin in a small cabin in the Utah mountains. I was living in Brazil when I had the idea to build an outdoor brand with a DO GOOD focus. I pulled together a small team of five that I believed could help me build the brand (several of whom I simply found on LinkedIn and called on Skype with the vision of building this brand together). We all met in Utah for the first time in a cabin where I laid out my vision for the Cotopaxi brand and introduced them to our llama logo. I explained that we couldn’t “win” by competing with the incumbent outdoor brands on technical features. Creating great product was a must, but we would only have success if we had a people-focused mission: External, with a mission to eradicate poverty in our lifetimes, and internal, with a relentless focus on caring for the people on our team. “People” become one of our company’s three core values and is at the heart of everything we do at Cotopaxi.