In 1981, Tenson sponsored Naomi Uemura and the 1981 Japanese Mount Everest Expedition team, which saw two climbers reach the world’s highest peak. During the 1981 climb, Uemura was a Tenson ambassador and wore Tenson’s trademark yellow expedition jacket, which has since become an icon in Tenson’s pantheon of legendary outerwear. Tragically, in 1984, Uemura disappeared a day after his 43rd birthday as he descended from his successful winter solo ascent of Denali (formerly Mount McKinley) in Alaska.

In addition to Uemura’s legacy as a global explorer - the first man to reach the North Pole solo, the first man to raft the Amazon solo, and the first man to climb Denali solo - his legacy ran much deeper. According to the Naomi Uemura Adventure Museum, Naomi Uemura was born and raised in Toyooka, Japan, surrounded by abundant nature. The museum’s website thoughtfully conveys Uemura’s enduring legacy (lightly edited primarily for grammar from a Google Translate website translation):  

“Naomi Uemura Adventure Museum was opened in 1994 as a base for passing on Mr. Uemura's ‘wisdom and technical skills’ and his ‘personality and heart’ for posterity. Mr. Uemura's attitude, which was to always have a dream and to work hard toward that dream, continues to be loved by the people of the world and still teaches us how wonderful it is to challenge ourselves. And, in April 2021, Naomi Uemura Adventure Museum newly established the adventure experience facility, ‘Acorn Base’. Children learn the ‘Uemura Spirit’. It will be reborn as a place to support each person's ‘desire’ to try’. We hope that it will be a place to nurture children's ‘zest for life’ through adventure experiences.”

Globally, consumers are increasingly choosing to buy climate-friendly products. And, when we encourage our customers to “Look for the Label”, we are referring to the new CarbonZERO Product carbon-offset program.

Tenson, our manufacturing and strategic partners are keenly aware of our collective responsibility to address all matters concerning sustainability.

For more than a decade, the organizations, companies and people within our ecosystem have regularly collaborated to make deliberate, timely, measured progress on the critical, complex and challenging journey toward sustainability.

We are committed to continuous improvement in these important matters...in perpetuity. We invite all of our partners and customers to lock arms in our own ways to “do our part” and to the best of our ability. It’s no easy path. And, most things which are worthwhile, take time, require investment and perseverance.

By way of additional background, Sport Innovation is Tenson’s primary manufacturing partner and owns a stake in Tenson. In collaboration with Sport Innovation over the past decade, Tenson has made important strides along the way to care for both people and planet.

In addition to the work the work on fabrics and production methods, we also invested in and launched Tenon’s first CarbonZERO Product in September 2021. By April 2022, Tenson’s entire Himalaya Collection also will be certified CarbonZERO. The CarbonZero label, enables the consumer the option to buy a product which has been 100% compensated for its carbon footprint: this should by no means reduce our ambitious work with sustainability on a daily basis. Furthermore, we’ve set some clear goals for ourselves, including the entire company being 100% CarbonZERO by 2030.

We’re in this for the long haul. After all, “living in harmony with nature” was at the heart of founder Paul Rydholm’s vision for Tenson. He believed, as do we all here at Tenson, the only way to accomplish this was/is to make this #AWayofLiving and to pursue this together as a #CommunitywithPurpose. We invite you to join us on this shared journey.