Alpine Parrot, PBC
Founded in 2019, Alpine Parrot is a plus-sized outdoor apparel company committed to creating clothing that encourages and celebrates underrepresented people in the outdoors, specifically people of size and people of color. By doing this, the company hopes to give everyone access to the outdoors so they, too, can experience the joy of nature. Alpine Parrot’s first product, the Ponderosa Pants, are technical hiking pants designed specifically for women’s sizes 14-24 to start.
Raquel Vélez is the founder and CEO of Alpine Parrot. As a plus sized Latina who discovered her love of the outdoors later in life, she carefully considers the design and construction of each product, ensuring great fit along with comfort and usability. Raquel brings with her almost two decades of engineering experience, having received her degree in mechanical engineering from Caltech, worked and studied as a robotics engineer, and eventually shifting over to software engineering and engineering management. Now, as an apparel engineer, she's creatively tackling one of the oldest (and most polluting) industries by creating sustainable, inclusive clothing for a market of people who have so often been neglected in the outdoor space.
We have a number of initiatives that we've either created or are building. One initiative, for example, is a community pricing structure, wherein groups get a volume discount and for every person in the group that pays full price, another member of the group can get an even bigger discount. Another initiative that we're working on is identifying long-term, sustainable ways in which we can pay rent for the land on which we recreate to honor the stewards who have come before us and protect the lands to this day.
We're working on getting our B-corp certification; we've already completed the first step by converting our LLC to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC).
We are members of the Plastic Impact Alliance (reducing the amount of plastic in our supply chain). Our products also use Bluesign® approved dyes and our factory is WRAP certified. As much as possible, we bake sustainability into everything we make from the very beginning. We also recognize, however, that there is always more that we can do!
The Ponderosa Pants are made for women's sizes 14-24. We word that very carefully - just because the size is attributed to women, we believe that the gender binary is inadequate. We do our best to be as inclusive as possible in our messaging, especially since we have many customers who identify across the gender spectrum.
We currently make clothing for sizes 14-24, and have plans to expand to at least size 30 as soon as we can. That said, we acknowledge that size charts are often bogus, and kindly request that folks refer to our size chart to ensure their best fit!
