What’s in a Brand?

A Patagonia grant to the Virginia Rivers Defense Fund triggered this post on the VRDF blog.

This week, I received a call from the enviro point person at the Patagonia retail store in the Wash DC area.  He notified me that he was holding a sizeable check for the VRDF.  This check arrived about six weeks after an employee in that same store contacted me, asking how Patagonia could help our cause.  One of their good customers asked the store manager to help arrange a fly fishing trip to the Jackson River, the research for which led them to VRDF site and their outreach to me.

This strong sign of support caused me to ruminate on this question “what’s in a brand?”  I wondered what made the response of this retail store (where I’ve never shopped before), so different from many of the other outdoor brands where I’ve spent considerable money over the years.

Read the rest of the post here.

If you're not familiar with VRDF and their fight to protect the public's access to Virginia's Jackson River you should be.

Comments

[Chris S]

The Jackson is one of the great, under rated fisheries in the country. I spent many hours fishing that river in college, I hope they are successful in maintaining public access to that water, because its one of the best on the east coast in my opinion.

[TakeTheFly]

Thanks so much for bringing awareness to our fight. If we fail, this type of civil tactic could be used by other riparian land owners to deprive more anglers of using Virginia's public rivers. In addition to awarenss, what we really need is donations to our defense fund. Hiring lawyers and professionals to do title exams and survey's etc., is very costly. If the angling community doesn't come around us with financial support, then more and more of these law suits will occur, allowing more deveolopers and surgeons to buy their private sections of our public rivers. Please go to www.virginiariversdefensefund.org and donate. cheers,