Field Journal

Stories Behind the Gear: KAVU
Written by Daniel Neilson // Photography by John Summerton
Produced in partnership with KAVU

In the Pacific Northwest, where no-one wastes a good day, we visit KAVU’s Seattle HQ and talk to founder Barry Barr about fishing, freedom, and keeping things fun.

I pulled through a quintessentially Pacific Northwest scene. The mirror-flat lake reflected the setting sun and the pine trees lining the lagoon. Each paddle stroke sent capillary waves towards the shore, a slight wake trailing behind my kayak. We were enjoying an evening paddle around Drayton Harbour on the US-Canada border. A bald eagle, a little ruffled, perched on a protruding tree branch; a couple of cormorants stood on the dock, wings out like preachers, presiding over the seals. The sky was clear. It was a CAVU day. Or, as I’d come to learn, a KAVU day.

‘Like today, if it’s sunny outside… my dad, who was a private pilot, would say, “It’s a CAVU day, we’ve got to get out and do it”.’ That’s Barry Barr, founder of KAVU.

Before we get any further, let’s clear up the FLAs, the four-letter acronyms. For meteorologists and pilots, CAVU means: Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited. KAVU, the name Barry gave to his outdoor-wear company, is clearer. Why a K? It just looks better.

‘It was ingrained in me: just waking up, looking out the window and saying: “Oh my god, it’s a KAVU day. We better get my buddies and go biking, take a boat out or go fishing or do whatever”.’

No-one says: ‘Let’s see how the day goes.’ The day has already told you what to do: be outside. And up at Drayton Harbour, with only wisps of cirrus and cirrocumulus, we were doing that, before the sun fell below the horizon.

We didn’t take much persuading. Partly because it was a beautiful Washington evening and partly because we’d just visited KAVU’s unassuming HQ in Ballard, just north of Seattle, to meet the team. We were feeling KAVU. We weren’t wasting the day.

Barry Barr didn’t set out to build a brand; he set out to stop losing hats. Barry grew up not far from where we were kayaking, in the San Juan Islands – an archipelago just west of and in sight of Victoria on Vancouver Island. Kids here grew up fishing. Then, as a preteen, he started as a commercial fisherman with his dad in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, chasing sockeye salmon. He did it on and off until he turned 26. By then, the wind had blown off one too many hats. So with his spoils each summer, he went back to his home on the islands and started developing a cap that wouldn’t frustrate the hell out of him. ‘All these types of normal hats come off your head in the wind… It’s blowing 30 miles an hour, you’re in industrial rain gear, and you’re always grabbing it with your bloody, gurry, stinky gloves.’ (‘Gurry’, I later learnt, is the entrails of fish.)
‘So I decided to try to figure out how to make a hat that wouldn’t come off your head in the wind. And that’s the strap cap. I was in Alaska, and we had some webbing, and I sewed it on with fishing line… it did work pretty well, the first rudimentary one.’

Pretty well, I get the impression, is doing some heavy lifting, but back in Seattle, he spent time refining it, and then realised he needed help. ‘I went through the Yellow Pages looking for people who could sew… found one guy and just went there with my little sketches and we worked on it for months to try to get it perfect.’

And once that happened, he just went knocking on doors to sell it. To local outdoor shops, to fishing stores, and on market stalls from the back of his pick-up. And people, well, bought it (I also get the hunch they bought into him as well). The buyers wanted more products.

‘Most of the stores were like, “Well, Barry, we love what you’re doing. It’s so different. We’d like some more products”.’

That was back in the mid-1990s, and is probably why I ended up standing on a beach in Washington pulling out a beer from a KAVU Beer Buddy Can Belt, a product named with impeccable logic. In the same photo, I’m also wearing a top that has become a regular, and for KAVU, a classic: Long Sleeve Half Zip Throwshirt. First designed in 1995, the Throwshirt is one of KAVU’s oldest designs. US-made from 100 per cent organic cotton, this canvas cross between an overshirt and a jacket has proven durable and versatile for beach days, climbing days and, well, any days. In true KAVU style, they describe it as ‘the rugby shirt’s rock climbing cousin’. On my head, of course, is the classic Strapcap.

There’s a version of this story where KAVU scales, optimises, and becomes, well, polished. That looks unlikely to ever happen. ‘I do this to sell the philosophy and have fun,’ Barry tells me. ‘If it’s not fun, I wouldn’t do it. I have no aspiration to be a hundred-million-dollar company. That’s just a pain, and you lose your freedom.’

The bellwether, it seems, is: can you still go out when it’s a KAVU day? Testimonials directly from the team we met suggest the answer is a resounding yes. There’s a boat with fishing gear in the garage below the office. It looks like it gets used a lot.

From the office, we walk to KAVU’s flagship store in Ballard. It’s a cool strip: a farmers’ market, artisanal ice cream, a tea room, and a bar called Good Grief where we could have quite happily lost the day. On the side of the store is a painted sign on wooden clapper boards: ‘Homegrown in Ballard since 1993’. Inside, there are shirts with mushrooms on them (one of which I now own), a basketball hoop, and Polaroids of staff and customers. On the counter is painted ‘Have a KAVU day’. Some brands spend thousands on rebrands for this kind of authenticity. KAVU is just what it is.

‘We like to sprinkle some fairy dust out there,’ Barry says, only half joking. ‘You can walk into an outdoor store and a lot of it looks the same… we want to do something someone else isn’t doing.’
He pauses for a while. ‘We’re trying to be the product of my mentality when I was 18 to 25. Friday at 4.00pm, you’re going out with your friends, you’re going camping, you’re going to be a dirtbag for three days.’

Frankly, it’s a refreshing break from the earnestness. The good-times vibe is not a marketing strategy, not from what we saw anyway. That evening, after our kayak, we cracked open another beer from my beer belt and sat and watched the sunset – dressed practically, colourfully, slightly scruffy, happy. A KAVU day.