Montbell Founder Isamu Tatsuno’s Love of Mountain Climbing Driving Force Behind Outdoor Gear Company’s Success 50 Years On

The Yomiuri Shimbun

12:30 JST, January 20, 2026

Isamu Tatsuno, chairman of Montbell Co., said the past 50 years has been a period in which “I converted my favorite things into business,” during an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun.

He began his business of developing and selling products for outdoor activities on his own in a small room with only 23 square meters of floor space in a multi-tenant building, on Aug. 1, 1975.

Since then, he has utilized his experiences of enthusiastically climbing mountains when he was young, increased the number of people who work with him and produced goods that he and his peers want.

Now, the company based in Nishi Ward, Osaka, is a major outdoor goods maker that represents the business sphere in Japan.

Tatsuno was born in 1947 in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. He began mountain climbing when he was a junior high school student. Every weekend, he went to Mt. Kongo, which is 1,125 meters high, stretching across the border between Osaka and Nara prefectures.

This was during Japan’s first mountain trekking boom. Noticing that he felt comfortable in the mountains, he aspired to be a mountaineer who lived using his own expertise in nature.

When he was a first-year senior high school student, he encountered something that decided his fate.

It was a book of mountain climbing records of Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountaineer. He read part of the book during a class.

The book depicted Harrer having climbed to the summit of the north face of Eiger, a mountain in Switzerland that is seen as the most difficult to climb in Europe. Tatsuno was impressed and thought, “I want to do the same sometime in the future.”

After graduating from high school, he climbed rock walls that are famous nationwide, while working in a sporting goods shop.

He challenged the north face of Eiger in 1969, when he was 21. He and his partner reached the summit though the pair was nearly hit by an avalanche and falling rocks. Tatsuno became the world’s youngest climber to succeed in reaching the summit.

Six years later, he took a step forward toward another dream. After returning to Japan, he quit his job in a trading company and established Montbell.

However, he was initially unable to get orders. In the first year, he narrowly made ends meet by undertaking production of shopping bags thanks to one of his friends who worked in a supermarket.

The following year, he developed sleeping bags made of chemical fibers that are light, warm and quick-drying. The chemical fiber was a new material developed by DuPont, a major U.S. chemical maker. Tatsuno’s former boss at the trading company had told him about it, which is how he obtained the material.

Products for climbers in those years were heavy, bulky and hard to dry. The sleeping bags made of the revolutionary material sold rapidly.

That experience made him feel certain that “if we make the kind of products we ourselves want, they will be accepted [by consumers].”

Since then, that success has served as the driving power for his company to develop many new products in which highly functional new materials are used.

The range of goods that Tatsuno “wants to have” has widened to such things as canoes, bicycles, camping goods, ski gear and various other outdoor activity products.

Now, his company produces more than 6,000 products. It directed 133 shops in Japan and overseas and has more than 3,000 employees. Annual sales amount to ¥160 billion.

“The situation came about as a result of having fun. I never imagined this,” Tatsuno said.

He resigned from the post of company president and is now chairman of the board. Even after turning 78, he aims to utilize outdoor activities to revitalize local communities, and thus he tours provincial regions and calls for collaboration with local government heads.

Currently, he also serves in other posts, including editor-in-chief of Gakujin, a magazine for climbers; specially appointed professor at Kyoto University; and visiting professor at Tenri University.

When the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake occurred, he organized aid groups of volunteers who liked outdoor activities and assisted surviving victims in the damaged areas.

“Life is a journey to find a place you feel comfortable to live in. For me, Montbell is the place where I can do what I want to do as a job,” Tatsuno said, expressing his intention to be active for the rest of his life.