Twenty-three years ago, Paul Fishs girlfriend gave him an ultimatum: Make a go of his backpack-making businessa one-person, home-based sewing shop he called Mountain Gearor get a real job.


Fish didnt know what he would do for a real jobstill doesntso with $3,000 in insurance money he received after his bicycle was stolen, he leased some space near the northwest corner of Sprague Avenue and Division Street in downtown Spokane and opened an outdoor equipment store. He then arranged to buy an old hippie van for $350 in Santa Cruz, Calif., a short drive south of Palo Alto, Calif., where he grew up.


Fish flew to Santa Cruz, and on the drive back to Spokane, made stops at each specialty climbing equipment manufacturer and outdoor clothing maker he knew of, making each the same proposition: Give me what you can afford to risk. Ill pay you in full within 90 days, or Ill close up shop and pay you what I can.


Some manufacturers threw him out; others gave him a handful of products. After a few weeks, he arrived back in Spokane with a van filled with outdoor gear and opened the Mountain Gear store.


He was able to pay his suppliers, order more products, and fulfill one of the options his girlfriend, now his wife, Karn, gave him: He made a go of Mountain Gear.


I think she regrets that ultimatum now, he jokes, alluding to the 50-plus hours a week he logs at the growing business.


Mountain Gear has evolved into a high-end outdoor gear and clothing retailer that employs 85 people. The company still has just the one retail store, now located at 2002 N. Division, but has developed a mail-order and Internet business that has a 3 million person mailing list and now accounts for almost 85 percent of the companys sales. Fish declines to disclose the companys revenues, but the mail-order and Internet sales portion of the business has had annual growth in the low double digits each year for the past eight years. Overall, Fish says, the company has had only three years in which it didnt have sales growth rate greater than 10 percent.


Last December, another company that Fish formed bought the former American Sign & Indicator Corp. complex at 2310 N. Fancher, near Felts Field. Fish currently is remodeling about half of the 160,000-square-foot complex and plans to move Mountain Gears headquarters and warehouse operations there this fall from smaller quarters near Gonzaga University. The retail store will remain at its current location.


Fish says Mountain Gear initially stemmed from his affinity for outdoor activities, and its products are used in many of his past and present interests, including rock climbing, hiking, mountaineering, and paddle sports. The notable exception is that the company doesnt carry bicycles or related equipment.


I have friends in that business, Fish says. Why compete with friends? Friends are more important than money.


Bicycling was one of the first outdoor activities he enjoyed. While attending a private high school near Mount Diablo in the Bay Area, he was introduced to rock climbing.


Climbing just clicked for me, he says. It wasnt a strength thing. It was a thought thing, and I loved the mental challenge.


He came to Washington in the late 1970s to attend Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Wash., but went back to California after one year. A little later, he went on an extended road trip and ended up back in Walla Walla, kayaking on the Grande Ronde River with some friends from Whitman. Fish met Karn on the river on that trip, and theyve been together ever since.


In 1979, the couple moved to Bellingham, Wash., so that Karn could attend Western Washington University. While they were there, Fish supported them by making custom backpacks and by cutting scrap wood into kindling and selling packaged bundles to supermarkets.


A few years later, the couple moved to Spokane so that Karn could attend the Washington State University Intercollegiate College of Nursing.


At that time, Fish was selling his custom backpacks for $250 apiece, operating as a sole proprietor and already using the Mountain Gear name. The price tag was high for a backpack in the early 80s, but he says he probably put 75 hours of labor and $60 of materials into each one.


Once Mountain Gear incorporated and was up and running as a retail store, the backpack making went by the wayside. Fish says his sewing tables and equipment made the move to the first store space from his home, but his pack making tapered off quickly. Still, he says, up until a couple of years ago, he used one of his own packs when hiking.


Janet Rodgers was Fishs first employee. Rodgers, now a bookkeeper for a small business in Monterey, Calif., says she grew up in Spokane but wasnt aware of the outdoors subculture in the town until she went to work at Mountain Gear. She says the store had a relaxed atmosphere, but it wasnt a party place. Paul worked pretty hard. I was impressed with his sense of business and his understanding of his product.


Rodgers says she hasnt seen Fish in nearly a decade. When informed of the number of people Mountain Gear employs and its mail-order business, she said, It does not surprise me one bit. He really was one of those guys who knew what he had to do. He had this niche, and he understood the business side of things.


Mountain Gear decided to get into the catalog business in the early 1990s, because it had some customers who had left the Spokane area and couldnt find in their new communities products that they knew Mountain Gear carried.


The company learned a hard lesson in its second year in the catalog business, Fish says. It bought a potential customer list and increased the number of catalogs it sent from 6,000 to 30,000. Fish says, however, that the companys projections for catalog sales during that second year were too high, and it lost $15,000 on that endeavor.


He says a Seattle retailer made the same mistake, but on a larger scale, that year, and it didnt survive.


Once Mountain Gear adjusted its projections, the mail-order businessand later, Internet salestook off.


The company issued 3 million catalogs this year and its planning to issue 3.2 million next year.


A direct-mail trade magazine, Catalog Success, ranked Mountain Gear 59th on a list of the top 200 fastest-growing companies that are circulating catalogs nationwide, putting it a few slots behind Neiman Marcus.


Mountain Gear has a strong online presence, but Fish insists that the catalog and the Web site work together, and neither would be as effective without the other. He says the catalog is the push, which compels customers to buy, and the Web site is the pull, which gives them a convenient way to buy.


He expects Mountain Gear to continue to grow, but becoming larger isnt his only aim.


I dont care about how big this company gets, Fish says. I care about how good this company gets.


Fish, whos 47, still climbs when he has the opportunity and puts on climbing clinics a few times a year. He no longer whitewater kayaks, but hes become an avid mountain biker.


In recent years, Fish has served on the board of the Lands Council, of Spokane, and has been involved in helping a couple of refugee-assistance efforts in different parts of the world.


After the devastating Asian tsunami that struck in late 2004, Fish and Spokane firefighter Darrin Coldiron helped found the Community Focused Disaster Response Team, which has raised money and provided services to assist the storm-ravaged Sri Lankan village of Komari.


Also, last year, he was an adult chaperone on a trip to El Salvador, in which a group of high school students, including his 18-year-old son, Whitney, raised money and helped establish a school for a group of Honduran refugees.


We write off todays youth as a bunch of computer game playing kids, says Fish, who also has a 15-year-old daughter named Laurel. We dont see the activism. I guess thats because were not looking.


Contact Linn Parish at (509) 344-1266 or via e-mail at linnp@spokanejournal.com.