Cover Photo Credit: Jordan Campbell; Featured: Paula Cotro-Manes Quenemoen, Erik Dalton
Nestled under the peaks of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, Telluride is a transient seasonal destination for many, but Jagged Edge Mountain Gear has withstood 30 years on Colorado Avenue.
Jagged Edge is the only locally owned outdoor gear and apparel store in Telluride. However, to Erik Dalton, the current owner, it’s not just hiking boots and skis. It’s history, family, community, and those jagged peaks that loom over the Box Canyon.
Dalton sits down to reflect on what the shop, brand, and western Colorado mountain town mean to him:
How did you and your family come to be in Telluride?
In 1986, my folks bought an apartment that wasn't even built, above where There Bar is now. I was five years old.
My dad came through here in the late seventies or something like that. And he made this mental note that this is a cool place. They came back in the summer and bought this place that was being built, and we grew up coming out ever since.
I grew up in New York. When I went to college, my mom moved my little brother here to Telluride. He graduated from Telluride High School. We spent every summer, and a month or two of winter out here. We grew up being out here a lot.
When did you move to Telluride full-time?
I moved to Telluride about a week after I graduated college in 2003.
Photo Credit: Erik Dalton; Featured: Erik Dalton, Siele
What keeps you in Telluride?
20-something years later, it's still my absolute favorite place on Earth.
I travel a lot and I’ve seen amazing spots, but there is nowhere else that checks all of the boxes for me like Telluride and western Colorado - I fell in love with the whole area.
Photo Credit: Jordan Campbell; Featured: Margaret Quenemoen Gillie, Paula Cotro-Manes Quenemoen
Can you talk a little bit about who conceptualized the Jagged Edge brand?
The twin sisters, Paula and Margaret Quenemoen. They were big travelers. They spent a bunch of time in Asia - China and Tibet. That's how they got a lot of their inspiration for some of their original designs.
They would buy decorative tape over there that had different Chinese characters on it and different patterns, and they would incorporate that into the headbands and vests and hats that they were sewing.
And they were big alpinists. They were mountaineers, skiers, and ice climbers, and it was this passion project for them to blend this Asian style that they have soaked up through their travels with functional apparel for the mountains.
When did Jagged Edge originally open?
Like '91 or something like that.
I want to say that they [Paula and Margaret Quenemoen] started with a cart on Main Street selling fleece. They were making fleece headbands and hats. That got such a great response, so they decided to make some of the Journey vests.
What is the importance of the Dao symbol to that era of Jagged Edge?
Our Dao symbol is a Chinese symbol. It means the journey, the path, or the way. The longer translation is that the journey is the destination.
But it was something they put on a lot of the clothing. It was a message that I think a lot of people really liked. I like the fact that it ties back to our heritage...It's not about your results, it's about what you did to get there. Applicable to many things in life.
So then you moved here in 2003.
I moved here in 2003. Unfortunately, the twins were going out of business at that point. There was a big financial market meltdown after 9/11.
This is the sad part of the story, but 9/11 in 2001 triggered a bunch of crazy stuff. At that point, Jagged Edge was pretty leveraged. They were trying to grow a lot. They had a store in Mountain Village. A store in Telluride, Ouray, Breckenridge, and Crested Butte. They had like eight different stores. And they were renting these stores. You can imagine, just like now, rent was very expensive in all of these mountain towns.
I think the aftermath of 2001 and the financial market screwed them over. By 2003, they had liquidated most of their other stores and were barely holding on here in Telluride. The writing was on the wall.
And, they wanted to do something else. Their lives were chained to it for a decade plus and my family was super close with them and the opportunity came up, like "Hey do you guys wanna take over the store?"
We bought the inventory they had. We took over their lease in the old building and whatever inventory they had left, which was a mishmash of Jagged Edge inventory. They made a lot of their own stuff. They made ski coats, jackets, and fleece. That store was 80 percent Jagged Edge product.
We were only in that shop for not even a year, and sold what we had left. Then my family built this building because my mom has been in the retail game for a long, long time. So, when I took over Jagged Edge, I moved it to the second floor. It was totally different. It was much smaller, and it was mostly clothing. We barely did any hard goods.
How has Jagged Edge changed since you and your family took it over?
Well, we've gone through all kinds of waves of stuff.
For the first 10 years, the Jagged Edge brand didn't even exist. They [Paula and Margaret Quenemoen] sold the trademark to Russell Athletic, which is a huge company. Russell had originally hired Margaret and Paula and Jordan, and some of these main guys from Jagged Edge. Because they said, "We're going to hire you guys. We want to take Jagged Edge national." Russell wanted an outdoor company in their portfolio.
Within six months of those guys moving to Atlanta, they scrapped the whole thing and let all those guys go. And they [Russell] just put the Jagged Edge brand on the shelf.
As far as the Jagged Edge brand went, it took me about 10 years. I had to wait them out. Once you own a trademark, if you don't use it for a certain amount of time, then someone else can file for it if they can prove you haven't used it.
Photo Credit: Jordan Campbell; Featured: Rick Leonidas
You waited ten years for the Jagged Edge trademark?
I was waiting the whole time, and we even had a backup plan. We came up with different names that we could call the shop and stuff like that. It was a big evolution trying to get the brand back.
In the meantime, what niche could we fill in Telluride? Horny Toad had a shop here at that point. Patagonia wasn't here. The town was different in a lot of ways. Hard goods were not something I used to do at all. We never had skis or Nordic or any of that stuff. So we slowly toed into that category. It was just like constantly trying to find our niche. And as that changed, well, what can we do that would be unique to us and serve the community?
It has been an evolution. We are constantly looking for ways to be different. Aside from real estate offices, this is the most competitive business in town.
How do you want to see Jagged Edge change?
A long-term goal has always been to be a community place.
Be a resource for the community. Be a business that is attached to our local culture and our local people.
I have always taken a lot of pride in giving people good jobs, a fun place to work. Being able to employ 20-something people between the two shops is something I'm really proud of.
It's never been some huge money maker, and we invest any kind of money we have right back into the shop.
What are your goals for the shop?
In the long term, I hope it stays around. After I age out of this, I hope I can pass the baton to someone who wants to keep it local and community-oriented.
Photo Credit: Kurt Grey
What is your goal for the Jagged Edge brand?
My passion there is to keep manufacturing as close to our chest as possible. Keeping it all in the state as much as I can. That's been a huge thing. USA materials.
I've been working on the brand now for like 10 years. Everything was coming out of Asia before, so I thought it was super unique to try to build something outdoors that was centered on made in the USA and close to home.
That limits us because we do not have the technology to make a Houdini ski shell or some nice higher-end technical garments. I call it the height of the 1980s technology is kind of what we're dealing with. I think just a sustainable, unique product that serves a purpose. I do not have dreams of becoming the next North Face or anything like that, but it's fun just to pave the way for doing stuff closer to home.
It's been a learning experience.
People seem to identify with the brand whenever they come to the shop.
Yeah, I think it's super unique. What a cool thing to bring home to someone because you can't find it anywhere else. And it's all tied right back to here, and it's all got a story connected to Telluride. That's what matters to me.
It does matter!
It does matter. You see a lot of people spending a lot of money on buying organic food. I think the bigger step you can take is everything you wear and where does that come from? What are you doing with that?
If we care about our food, then the next step is caring about what we put on our bodies, what we buy, and what we support with our money. And some people can't. This is just the truth. It's just more expensive to make stuff here than it is to make it across the seas. So, you have to be willing to pay a little bit more for it.
Photo Credit: Madeleine Balestrier
What does Jagged Edge mean to you?
It's become my life. It's my family. It's a passion project. It's something that most people know me for in town. It's interwoven with my whole personality, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I feel really lucky that I have it and I have a part in building it and hopefully passing it on to the next person who can run with that ball, but I would say the community is the most important to me and the staff and just having this family that work here and just getting to play in this community.
I love Telluride so much. That's what matters most to me.
What is your favorite product in the shop right now?
That's a tough one. The Katadyn water bottles that you can just fill in a stream. I use that every single day - spring, summer, and fall. Walking with my dogs or hiking with my dogs. That's one of my favorite things we sell because I use it all the freaking time.
Shop at Jagged Edge Mountain Gear, the only locally owned mountain gear store in Telluride, Colorado, and check out the brand's locally sewn and USA-made products online or in-store.
