MEC Brand Guidelines: A 1971 Vancouver Co-op, a Green Square & the Peaks’ 2021 Return

Four climbers, a snowstorm and a members’ co-op.

MEC began in Vancouver in 1971. English Wikipedia says four members of the University of British Columbia’s Varsity Outdoor Club came up with the idea of a climbing-equipment co-operative after a snowstorm stranded them on Mount Baker, across the border in Washington state; until then they had been buying their gear at REI in Seattle. Other club members joined the plan, and the organisation was incorporated under British Columbia’s co-operative associations law as Mountain Equipment Co-op, with a constitution written by co-founder Jim Byers, according to the same source.

The model was simple. Shoppers paid a small one-off fee to become members, which made each of them a part-owner with a vote. CBC News, writing in May 2025, described the founders as a group of mountain climbers looking to source gear and distribute it in the city, and said the membership eventually grew past five million. In June 2013 the magazine BCBusiness noted that a lifetime membership still cost only a few dollars.

The first shop opened in 1972 on West Hastings Street in Vancouver, English Wikipedia says. A Calgary store followed by 1981 and a Toronto store in 1985; later the co-op opened in Ottawa, Edmonton and other cities, and by 2017 it ran 22 retail stores, according to the same source. Its own-label products sat beside outside brands, and from November 2009 it sold bicycles, with a Taiwanese manufacturer building an MEC-branded line, according to English Wikipedia.

In 2012 the co-op shortened its marketing name to MEC, and over the following years it widened its range from back-country climbing and paddling gear to road running, cycling, yoga and downhill skiing, English Wikipedia says. When the co-op changed its logo in 2013, its chief marketing officer told BCBusiness the new design was meant to “communicate to Canadians the breadth and depth of what MEC has to offer.”

A green square, then the peaks again.

MEC’s visual history is the story of one mountain mark leaving and coming back. According to Daily Hive, mountain peaks were part of the logo from the co-op’s start in 1971 until 2013.

On 18 June 2013 the co-op revealed a new identity. BCBusiness reported at the time that the design dropped the silhouetted mountain crag and the long company name in favour of a white “MEC” set in Trade Gothic on a square green background. The Toronto studio Concrete Design developed it after more than a year of research, which the co-op said included reviewing public online discussion of outdoor recreation, gear and MEC itself; the designers summed up the result as “modern utility.” Member reaction was mixed, the magazine reported: some comments praised the change, others objected that members had not been asked, and one critic online said it could be a bank logo.

The square stayed in use for about eight years. On 19 October 2021, Daily Hive reported, the company — by then renamed Mountain Equipment Company — officially announced a new logo for its 50th anniversary that brought the peaks back. The mark had been revealed a few days earlier on the outside of the Vancouver flagship on West 2nd Avenue, in the Olympic Village. The company said the square had been “divisive” and that its community had asked for the peaks to return, and it described the redrawn peaks as modernised but familiar.

English Wikipedia says the twin-peaks logo had been mostly retired by the co-op in 2013 and that the October 2021 rebrand restored it. The 2013 mark was a compact wordmark in a plain grotesque; the 2021 mark returned to a pictorial mountain outline, the kind of symbol the co-op had used from 1971, Daily Hive reported.

Design and documentation.

Outdoor, camping and ski retailers sell other companies’ boots, tents and jackets alongside ranges of their own, so much of their identity lives in the shop rather than the product. Trade press coverage of the British chains returns to the same few things: the size and setting of a store, the specialist departments inside it, and the services offered at the counter, such as boot and rucksack fitting or a cycle workshop.

Store format is the clearest divide. In its 2017 review of a merger in the sector, the Competition and Markets Authority described one group of chains trading from smaller, typically high-street shops and another from larger stores, typically out of town, able to carry a broader range. Newer openings mix the two ideas: shops that put two or three of a group’s fascias under one roof, smaller “express” formats with in-store kiosks for the full range, and concessions run by specialist cycling, fishing or equestrian businesses inside a larger store.

Names carry much of the work. Several chains in this guide are named after a place or an activity rather than a founder, and several sit inside larger groups owned by listed retailers or private-equity firms, while the shopfront name stays the same. Campaigns can be timed to the season: one chain’s 2026 autumn and winter campaign came with a floor refresh across all its stores, trade press reported.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — where it began, who has owned it and when, and how its stores are laid out — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From members’ co-op to a privately owned chain.

The co-operative did not survive in its original form. In September 2020, English Wikipedia says, after mounting losses, the board agreed to sell the business’s assets to the American private equity firm Kingswood Capital Management through a court process under Canada’s Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, and the sale was completed in late October 2020. Members had not been consulted, and thousands campaigned against the deal; CBC News later recalled that some members described the sale as a “betrayal.” The co-operative itself, renamed 1077 Holdings Co-operative, remains only to deal with creditors’ claims, according to English Wikipedia.

Kingswood ran the chain as a for-profit retailer. English Wikipedia says it took over 21 stores through a new subsidiary, kept the MEC brand and also took ownership of the “Mountain Equipment Co-op” name, although the business could no longer call itself a co-op. By mid-2021 the corporate name was MEC Mountain Equipment Company Ltd., and the October 2021 rebrand made Mountain Equipment Company the public name, with MEC kept as the short form.

On 17 May 2025 CBC News reported that MEC was back under Canadian ownership. The new owners were described in a company news release as a group of Canadian investors led by Tim Gu, who, CBC said, also has stakes in the Canadian brands Tilley and Roots. English Wikipedia adds that Kingswood kept a minority stake. CBC described MEC as a British Columbia-based brand specialising in outdoor equipment.

Today MEC is a privately owned company rather than a co-operative, but it still trades under the initials and the mountain peaks that the co-op made familiar across Canada.

For a design guide, MEC shows how a retailer can return to an older symbol after a cleaner rebrand proves divisive with its own community. Compare REI, the Seattle co-op where MEC’s founders once bought their gear, and Anaconda, an Australian outdoor chain built by a family retail group. For this guide we use a forest green, a granite grey and a snowfield white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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