It’s time for another Feel Good Friday: our weekly column where we profile a company that not only makes awesome products, but also does awesome things for the world. This week: Cotopaxi — a freshly-launched company that designs and produces a unique line of sharp-looking outdoor gear.
There are dozens of companies out there that do humanitarian stuff and contriubute to charities, but only a handful put that kind of social entrepreneurship at the top of their priority list. Cotopaxi is one of those companies.
Launched just a few short weeks ago by CEO Davis Smith (who, oddly enough, is a former classmate of one of the guys who founded Warby Parker), the company has one of the most socially-conscious business models we’ve ever seen. For each item they sell, a large portion of the profit goes directly towards educating a child in impoverished region of the world, or providing access to clean drinking water.
The company doesn’t have a particularly robust product lineup at this point, but what they do have is pretty sweet. Browse through their backpack line, and you’ll notice a very clear distinction between their lifestyle designs and their more technical products. The Cusco and Kilimanjaro packs, for example, are made from simple nylon-canvas fabric and feature leather lash points that have become fairly ubiquitous in today’s walking-around packs. For each one of these packs Cotopaxi sells, they’ll provide a child in Cusco, Peru with a week of tutoring.
