The North Face Denali - An Expose

One day when business in the store was slow, the shelves stocked, the shoes aligned and the magazine rack in need of support, a few of us gathered toward the front of the store. We watched the shoppers passing by and bet on whether or not those that did enter were here to buy The North Face Denali.

The Denali, as it is more commonly know, is a "Polartec® 300-weight fleece with nylon overlays to reduce wind effects". It retails for $165.00. It's an decent fleece jacket, but more than that, it's a trendy status symbol of today's youth. Male and female alike, those people most drawn to fashion, and least likely to ascend the 20,320 ft mountain for which it is named, insist on owning one. They're not ACO's usual customer, and they rarely, nalgene bottles aside, buy anything else, so its interesting to watch them stand just inside the front door and scan the racks for the required jacket.

Advice to those folks is to buy yours now! Especially if you want the black one, and especially if you want it for Christmas. For Santa's sake don't wait for it to go on sale. It won't. Think of it this way, it's the cabbage patch, elmo doll of the trend-setting-faux-outdoors fashion world. Well, actually we've never had people line up to buy them, we did get to witness some interesting scenes. Last year two women did get into a serious fight over who would get the last small black one, a teenager daughter resorted to tears in front of her sticker shocked mother, and a 5:00, December 24th shopper, informed us that ACO was doomed to failure since we were completely sold out (and had been for a week). Ah the joys of Christmas retail. The wonder of the consumer culture.