Outdoor retailer The North Face closes its last Berkeley location
A North Face Inc. store in Berkeley, California, US, on Tuesday, May 28, 2024. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
BERKELEY, Calif. - Outdoor retail giant The North Face has closed its Berkeley location, the company’s last brick-and-mortar outlet in the city that once served as the company’s headquarters. The news was first reported by Berkeleyside.
The outlet at 1238 Fifth St, which opened its doors in 1975, closed on July 12.
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The company had, in March 2024, closed its San Francisco location. With the shuttering of its Berkeley store, the company’s only presence in the greater Bay Area is its locations in Livermore and Pleasanton.
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The North Face was founded in San Francisco in 1966 as a mail-order business by Doug and Susie Tompkins, who sold camping and rock climbing equipment.
Kenneth "Hap" Klopp in 1968 acquired the business and relocated to Berkeley, where the company began designing and manufacturing camping and climbing gear.
The company’s headquarters remained in Berkeley until 1995, when they relocated to San Leandro. The North Face was acquired by VF Corporation in 2000 and relocated to Denver in 2019.
The Source: Berkeleyside, The North Face, previous KTVU reporting