The Fascinating Story of Filson: The Klondike Outfitter That Dressed a Century of Woodsmen

Subscribe — every week I dig into the stories behind the brands they tried to erase. The Filson Mackinaw Wool Cruiser has been in continuous production since 1914. Over a hundred years without a single meaningful design change. The U.S. Forest Service still wears it as standard field clothing today. Then the family sold it. In this video I cover the full story of Filson — from a railroad conductor arriving in Seattle in the early 1890s with nothing but an instinct for what working men needed, to the Klondike Gold Rush that gave him his first wave of desperate customers, to the 26-ounce wool jacket that became the unofficial uniform of the American wilderness, to Winifred Filson quietly running the company through the Depression and two World Wars for four decades, to the slow drift through private equity hands until Tom Kartsotis picked it up in 2012. The jacket is still made. The family has been gone for decades.