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Steamboat Living: SmartWool turns 20

Aaron H. Bible/Steamboat Living
Sock staff: Employees at SmartWool celebrating 20 years.
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Thanks to SmartWool, which is celebrating 20 years in the ’Boat, Steamboat Springs has become synonymous with socks.

Since 1994, SmartWool has brought more than 80 million pairs of merino wool socks and apparel products to market around the globe, and it credits its success largely to its Steamboat roots.

“I firmly believe that SmartWool’s growth over the last two decades has been fueled by the quality of life Steamboat provides,” President Mark Satkiewicz says. “We attract people who know what it means to live in Steamboat. Our new office space reflects an investment in this culture.”



SmartWool, which has made Outside magazine’s Best Places to Work list for the past six years, was founded on a passion for an active mountain lifestyle by introducing a relatively unknown fiber to the performance outdoor marketplace. “We’ve grown from a slopeside idea to a brand recognized globally for quality, innovation and leadership,” Satkiewicz adds.

To industry experts and longtime Steamboat locals alike, the company represents more than just a sock company. “They changed the sock world forever,” says Honey Stinger and Big Agnes co-founder Bill Gamber, whose BAP! store was one of SmartWool’s first retailers. “They created an entirely new category in the outdoor industry and have stayed true to their roots.”



Using New Zealand merino wool, SmartWool has won a sock drawer full of design and magazine awards in the outdoor industry. Employing 75 people in Steamboat and 120 worldwide, the company manufactures 95 percent of its socks at knitting mills in the U.S. Its success in socks has been followed by award-winning merino-based offerings in hike/outdoor, snowboard, lifestyle and performance run categories. Its PhD SmartLoft series uses wool fleece instead of down, and proprietary fabrics such as HyFi maximize merino’s benefits — including warmth when wet, anti-microbial properties, vapor state breathability and moisture management.

And it all comes back to SmartWool’s Steamboat testing grounds. “Steamboat provides a compass for our brand and a standard for our product,” Satkiewicz says. “Being able to trail run or hit a powder day before work is incredibly inspiring, and its effect on how we design product is immense. If the product doesn’t work here, it doesn’t get out the door.”


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