By Dan Kidder
Managing Editor
It all started with a pair of rock climbing pants. Named for a degree of climbing difficulty, 5.11 pants were designed by rock climber Royal Robbins and became hugely popular in rock climbing circles. But it didn’t end there.
The wife of an FBI agent was a sales representative for Royal Robbins, and provided her husband the rugged pants to train in at the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA. The head of the FBI National Academy, a training center for law enforcement officers from around the world, liked the pants and requested a pair. Soon, the decision was made to issue two pairs of the pants to every attendee of the FBI NA.
While Robbins was a great pant designer and rock climber, he admits he wasn’t much of a businessman. His desire to spend more time on the rock face than behind his desk kept the company from growing like it should. Orders were made but supply couldn’t keep up with demand.
That is where Dan Costa enters the picture.
Costa was not a clothier; he was a restaurant guy. He started as a dishwasher in a small sandwich shop and worked his way up. Soon he had expanded his small sandwich shop into a major food company making sauces for the Safeway supermarket chain.
After selling his successful food company to Tyson’s for a hefty profit, Costa met with Robbins to advise him on how to make the Royal Robbins brand a success. Costa’s advice was to sell the company as it was in serious trouble. Robbins agreed on one condition; that Costa buy it. Flush with cash from his Tyson’s deal, Costa agreed and then the fun began. “I didn’t know anything about clothing, and I didn’t know who our customers were,” Costa told Sportsman’s News. Looking at their customer base, Costa saw that the main seller was the 5.11 pants. And they weren’t just selling to rock climbing shops, but one of their largest customers was something called the FBI NA. Costa hopped on a plane and flew to Quantico to meet his customer and was shocked it was on a Marine Corps base in the rural countryside of Northern Virginia. After a fingerprinting and background check, he was allowed to meet with his customer at the FBI Academy. The head instructor at the academy told Costa that the product was good, the price was fine, but that his biggest beef was that he couldn’t buy enough of the pants to keep up with demand. The students were taking their issued pants, and buying more for the guys back in their home departments. To make matters worse, Costa discovered that police agencies were calling customer service and having the phone hung up on them when they told the service reps they didn’t have a retail store.
“Our customer service rep. sold 1,100 pairs of pants to the Georgia Highway Patrol and was worried that she was going to get fired because she wasn’t supposed to sell to anyone without a store,” Costa said.
It was then that that Costa discovered that the predominant 5.11 customer was in law enforcement.
To meet this new customer demand, Costa stepped up production and opened sales to the law enforcement community. The main user of the pants was the special purpose units such as K-9 and Special Operations like SWAT. As the cache of the brand expanded, it became the de rigueur uniform of special operators and private contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq.
At the request of the FBI Academy, Royal Robbins designed a tactical vest and a shirt.
“Then we had to decide what to call these. Royal Robbins already made a vest for the Audubon Society for bird watchers, so now we had a vest for the guys who wanted to watch the birds, and another for the guys who wanted to shoot the birds,” Costa said. “So we couldn’t call them Royal Robbins.”
Since the pants were already called 5.11, which according to the Yosemite Decimal System means “after thorough inspection you conclude this move is obviously impossible; however, occasionally someone actually accomplishes it;” Costa decided to call all the tactical products 5.11 Tactical.
Although the products were designed for the general consumer and outdoorsman, the brand was quick to gain acceptance by military, paramilitary, and law enforcement and slow to grow in the general consumer market. Since those early days, 5.11 Tactical has expanded their product line to include range bags, holsters, tactical watches with ballistic calculators, uniforms, tactical boots, knives, and flashlights that don’t use batteries and that charge in 90 seconds. The brand specializes in products used by people whose lives depend on their reliability.
But that is starting to change and more and more of the general public is adopting the brand because of the acceptance of the law enforcement community.
“Today the question is whether it is tactical or practical,” Costa said. “You look at the weave and the double knee and plumbers love these pants. You look at our shirts for travel, these pockets are tactical, but you can put your keys and your passport and your money in there. They don’t all look like uniforms, I could wear all this stuff to dinner. It is just basic clothing.”
Costa tells of watching a home remodeling show on television and all of the workers in the show were dressed in his product. A recent call from the Los Angeles Dodgers resulted in all of the stadium workers being attired in 5.11 clothing. “There are crossovers,” he said. “Each product has multiple functions. Sure, one of them is tactical, but there are other functions. A lot of times, the tactical guys use those functions more than they use the tactical ones. For example, our shirts have a pocket, and you guys are going to put a gun in there, but it makes it great for traveling. The side vents let you draw a gun, but it also lets you be more comfortable sitting on a plane.”
Whatever the use, the 5.11 brand has built a reputation of the highest quality and a loyal following of customers from all walks of life.
Their products have already begun appearing in Sportsman’s Warehouse stores and more will be coming in the near future. Be sure to check them out in the footwear, clothing, hunting, and gift bar departments and check back here as we will be introducing you to specific 5.11 products in the months to come.
