Where is Bamboo Clothing (BAM) from?
It’s a UK brand. BAM’s founder, David Gordon, began selling T-shirts whilst a P.E student at Loughborough University in 1988 to finance his ‘world tour’. It only half worked but he went anyway.
In 1993, after a lot of backpacking, he set up TSF Clothing, as a means to pay for his pole vaulting career (he was too rubbish to earn money from it). TSF would become a leading corporate clothing company, enjoying a reputation as an innovator with the highest levels of customer service.
After finally getting better at pole vaulting David was now too old to be any good. Over the hill. So he changed tack and joined a team of Gurkhas (as a DIY film maker) in a successful manhaul expedition across Greenland, one of the great untouched wildernesses left on earth. This experience, as well as a long held interest in the future of the planet, brought about a year long search for viable and environmentally sustainable business ideas. Something that might actually make a difference.
The old business was sold in 2004 and the search continued for the holy grail of business: where everyone wins – socially and environmentally. It wasn’t enough being just ‘less negative’. It’s much better fun to do something good. Throwing himself out of the comfort zone of a nice cushy business to find something more inspiring was….uncomfortable. Bamboo Clothing (BAM) finally launched in June 2006. It was all well worth it with everything that BAM is becoming. From packing orders alone with a head torch at Christmas 2006, we now have a lovely team of 35 at BAM.
When he’s not doing this, David now enjoys a wide range of outdoor activities, going through ‘phases’ – specifically kayaking, hill walking, Trailwalker, The Haute Route, extreme tiddlywinks etc. A great passion has been snowboarding. He’s a real airdog, even managing to leave the ground, once, on the last trip. After falling in love with pole vaulting again, this is now the focus. Astonished to find he could still actually run and vault, after a summer of competition in the UK he won a silver medal for Great Britain at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Brazil in October 2013, which surprised everyone..and in 2014 became the European Masters Pole Vault Champion. In 2017 he finally became World Masters Games Champion, the Olympics for older people!!
