Columbia Sportwear opens this morning on the Mag Mile. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Tribune)

By Sandra M. Jones | Columbia
Sportswear Co., the family-run outdoor apparel maker from Portland, Ore., arrives in Chicago for the first time Friday with a Mag Mile showcase store aimed at bolstering its brand name in a market brimming with athletic clothing.

The company known for pioneering the Bugaboo jacket, a parka with a weatherproof shell, is in the midst of rolling out a handful of its own branded stores nationwide to gain more control over how its merchandise is sold and displayed.

Columbia wants consumers to know that it is more than winter coats and
fishing vests, said Kerry Barnes, vice president of retail, in town for
the store’s Friday debut.

It has been expanding its line of footwear for hiking and winter
sports. It just launched a lightweight backpack called the Mobex for
$100 that collapses like a tent when not in use. And it is working on a
lightweight insulating fabric called Omni-Heat, due out this fall, that
will make winter coats super thin.

“We’re really trying to get market share,” Barnes said. “We want to see
how the stores perform and what information we can gather.”

Columbia, founded in 1938 as a hat distributor, has had trouble
creating a clear-cut identity, in part because its wide range of
products are sold in thousands of diverse stores, from Kohl’s to
Nordstrom to Bass Pro Shops.

It has made its biggest marketing advances with its “tough mother” ad
campaign featuring company Chairwoman Gertrude Boyle in the role of the
cantankerous Mother Boyle and her son, CEO Timothy Boyle, as the
ultimate test subject. Gertrude Boyle took over the company from her
husband in 1970, and the Boyles own the majority of the stock.

While retail was a small portion of the company’s $1.24 billion in 2009 sales, it is taking on a critical role.

Already, Columbia has picked up information that was hard to come by
through the 14,000 specialty retailers and department stores that carry
its lines. One example: Sales clerks at company-owned stores discovered
women were not buying pants and leaving them behind in the fitting
rooms because they were cut too straight and made them feel dowdy.
Columbia designers responded by improving the fit in the waist and
introducing more feminine details throughout the line.

Columbia’s retail expansion is also helping make up for a downturn in
the wholesale business, particularly as retailers consolidate, go out
of business or cut costs by selling more in-house brands.

“From a historical perspective, our biggest competitor, frankly, has
been private label on an ongoing basis, and still is a very serious
competitor in virtually every channel that we do business with in
companies of any scale,” Tim Boyle said at a Goldman Sachs retail
conference last fall.

The Chicago store at 830 N. Michigan Ave. is Columbia’s fifth branded,
or full-priced, store. It takes over an 11,000-square-foot store
vacated by Victoria’s Secret. Instead of push-up bras and pink
sweatpants, the two-level store is stocked with sun hats, hiking shoes
and fishing vests. The winding staircase at the back of the store
remains intact but has been redone with wooden steps and a flagstone
wall.

Barnes said Columbia looked at locations in Lincoln Park, on State
Street and in Bucktown, but ultimately decided on North Michigan Avenue
because of the traffic that goes through Water Tower Place and the
American Girl store across the street.

Columbia has been testing merchandising and marketing techniques at its
Portland flagship since it opened in 1996. But rivals Patagonia, North
Face, Nike and Adidas have been quicker to roll out their own shops.
(Nike and North Face already are on Michigan Avenue, and Adidas is
inside Water Tower Place.)

It wasn’t until 2008 that Columbia began expanding, with stores in
Seattle, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., and at the Portland
airport. A sixth U.S. store is slated to open in Minneapolis in April.
Columbia also moved into Europe with branded stores in Frankfurt and
London in 2009 and Munich this year.

Meanwhile, Columbia nearly tripled the number of outlet stores in the
past two years, to 39 from 14. The outlet format for retailers in
general, from Nordstrom Rack to Coach, was one of the few retail models
to flourish during the recession as shoppers hunted for bargains.

Brand expert Laura Ries said Columbia is in the “mushy middle” of
outdoor brands, and while showcase stores are effective marketing
vehicles, they don’t work if the goods aren’t already desired.

“Having a store isn’t going to make your brand hot,” Ries said. “Having a store is going to make your hot brand hotter.”