Episode Guest
Matt Moreau – Partner and Creative Director
The Landmark Project
What made you love the parks?
I would say a couple really amazing subsets on some of those first backpacking trips and realizing we have the one mile in rule, where if you don’t feel like you’re loving a park, just get a mile into any trail. 95% of the tourists drop off. You don’t see the parking lot anymore.
I think that’s, yeah, that’s what made me love the parks.
What is your favorite thing about our parks and public lands?
I think the even playing field that it brings. I love seeing the diversity of people that enjoy these parks. I like that they’re accessible and that the same kind of thing being in nature. It just shows you that is something that is a universal value, whoever you are.
What is your favorite thing to do in our parks and public lands?
My first experience with backpacking, I think, if I were to have any choice of a sport to continue doing for the rest of my life, that would have to be it.
What park have you yet to visit but is on your bucket list and why?
Believe it or not, I haven’t been to the Grand Canyon, so it is on my bucket list because it is one of the most important parks in the US and I’m intimidated by it because I’m not a day hiker. I wanna do an epic hike and the rim to rim trail is pretty epic.
So I don’t wanna visit the Grand Canyon until I have the time and stamina to do that trail.
What are three must-haves you pack for a park visit?
I have a water bottle filter that I take with me everywhere. I don’t like carrying more than like a liter of water at a time. So I like to filter as I go.
I bring my National Park Pass, of course sometimes I totally forget it and just have to pay the entry again, but you know how that is.
My camera. I’ve gotta document these things. I travel with my wife and we joke about the amount of time that I tell her like, wait, go do that again. Go hike up that quarter again. And so it’s, I’m there capturing the moments and I don’t think you’d be able to see me without my camera in hand at any given point.
What is your favorite campfire activity?
Favorite campfire activity. I really like to cook around the campfire. You put me in a group of friends who are enjoying a campsite. I want a job to do. I don’t want the social pressure of keeping the conversation going, so I will frequently put a lot of thought and effort and prep into a somewhat elaborate, like a deceptively simple but secretly elaborate campfire meal. Yeah that, that would be, that would have to be it.
Tent, camper, or cabin?
Neither actually I sleep in the back of our vintage, 1988 Land Cruiser. When we’re camping, if it’s car camping like a campground or dispersed like forest service roads, that kind of thing we’ll put the backseat down, roll out the air pads, hang up a couple string lights, it’s perfectly flat in the back.
They don’t make cars like that anymore and it’s enough room to sit up in and just long enough to where I don’t have to curl up into fetal position when I’m sleeping, so I could actually stretch out. But I hate putting away a wet tent. So when backpacking, of course, that’s fine. It’s necessary evil, but given the choice, we’re sleeping in the back of the lay cruiser,
Hiking with or without trekking poles?
With every time. Yep. I need to make those knees last.
And what is your favorite trail snack?
That depends on what decade you ask me. Early on, it was just a Snickers bar, king size, Snickers. I would have that every morning on a backpacking trip just loaded with peanuts and sugar. And I don’t do that so much anymore. My my trail snack now, actually, can I give you a I, I think I’ve replaced snacking with the, hydration packs, like the, yeah, a lot of times I think I’ve developed a dependency on the electrolyte packs that you add to your water bottle. That’s I’ve noticed that those are as important as calories for me. Especially in the southeast when it gets like you’re dealing with a hundred degrees, a hundred percent humidity, so easy to get dehydrated.
Yeah, those have been a lifesaver.
What is the favorite animal sighting that you’ve had?
Seen a lot of bears on the trails and it’s always cool. The one that stands out to me is what I thought was a bear that was like five feet off the trail, just emerged as we were hiking by, freaked us out. But it was a moose. It was in Glacier National Park and we just saw this brown. Like back this hump come out of the blueberry bushes and we totally thought it was a grizzly bear.
Still scary still dangerous, but it was a moose just checking us out.
What is your favorite sound in the parks?
I think the white noise machine of camping near a creek. I don’t like crickets. ’cause they’ll stop at some point and it gets really quiet and scary. But, the creek doesn’t stop and it just creates this like constant low a level of noise that you can fall asleep to really easily, it’s comforting.
What is the greatest gift the parks give to us?
For me, the greatest gift that it gives me is the ability to refill the well. I think that life and work tend to just drain it so that if you go back to keep drawing from that, you eventually will pull up a bucket with nothing in it. And you’re like, all right, I just need to escape to nature.
So that, to me that’s what it is. And I think a lot of people probably resonate with that. You don’t have to be a business owner, you don’t have to be creative. Every now and then, you just need to walk in the woods to restore. A little something about you that you’ve been missing.
So I think that’s the best gift they give us.
Episode Transcript
When hustle and bustle become part of our daily vocabulary and we’re making lists and checking them twice, how can we make sure our spending is working a little harder for the places we love? Join me as we talk about shopping values. I’m your host, Missy Rentz, and this is the Parks podcast.
Missy Rentz:
Today we have Matt Moreau who is the partner and creative director at the Landmark Project. Matt, welcome to the Parks podcast.
Matt Moreau:
Thanks Missy. I am so excited to be here.
Missy Rentz:
I am so excited to speak with you. Full disclosure, a couple of weeks ago I got to come into your facility and do a tour, and I loved the Landmark project before and I really love it now when I see the tender loving care that you guys put into every product and piece of art that you create. So I’m really grateful to you, for being here.
Matt Moreau:
Yeah, it was fun to have you. We always like to lift the curtain and let other people see the magic behind the scenes. For somebody who’s not familiarwith screen printing and how we put a graphic on a t-shirt, it kinda looks like a magic trick every time and I don’t get tired of it. I’ve been doing it for 20 years so I don’t get tired of seeing it. But at, the artwork lives on my computer screen for such a long time before it actually makes its way onto a t-shirt. So I understand how it’s fun and you get to meet the crew and yeah, it was great to have you.
Missy Rentz:
And I think that I think people, sometimes I, for one take for granted that, t-shirts are just, they just happen. But when you watch the process and you realize that human beings are integral in every part, they touch your shirt like it is done with love and care and precision, and it just makes anything I see or wear feel more special when I get to experience what I did with you guys and to meet your team and see how, they adjust the shirts to make sure they’re on right and they play with the colors and it’s just really a fascinating process.
Matt Moreau:
Yeah. I love that. I’m so glad you got to experience it.
Missy Rentz:
me too. So the Landmark Project, you’re an apparel company founded in 2007, so you’re almost having a big birthday here, coming soon. And big capital A N D. You’re a company that is committed to sustainability and conservation. How and when did this whole vision begin for you?
Matt Moreau:
We started the company because we were already screen printing shirts for other people and. Imagine like a real small company, five or six people at the most working and run mostly by outdoor enthusiasts and creatives who all knew each other in college. So we got to a point about 10 years ago, like you said, that milestone coming up, that we just got burned down on other people’s products that we didn’t care about. It kept the lights on but creative fulfillment was lacking. So because we were all into the outdoors, spent our weekends outside, we just decided let’s make something that we wanna wear. And the idea was not to start a brand, it was to start a creatively fulfilling side project, which is how we got the name, The Landmark Project, and it stuck. Our friends loved the shirts. We started like selling’em at cost to people we knew just to, it was like a inside secret. And eventually we had somebody come by our shop and offer to take samples on the road, show them to their retail accounts. We’re like, you know what? Sure let’s see what you do with it. And that person came back a few weeks later with purchase orders from local retailers. So we’re like, oh, I guess we’re doing this. And. The Landmark project was born. We never expected it to scale the way that it has in the last 10 years. So early on in, in our brand story, we started selling to key REI stores, which then became all REI stores. We started selling to National Park stores, concessionaries across the us and we’re now in about 1500 independent retailers, a couple of key retailers as well. in those early stages of growth, when we were scrambling to learn about how to make t-shirts at scale, we realized that how great the negative impact was of the textile industry on the environment. And we were at a bit of a crossroads because we knew if we wanted to do this, we had to do it in a way that we were okay with. And as, as a small developing brand, you don’t have a lot of control over that, yet. You don’t have a lot of power. You don’t have a lot of muscle to flex. So the, I think the thing that really just stood out to us was like let’s do this in a way that we could be proud of the way we make our garments, the materials that we use, the way that we screen print the factories that we partner with. Then also if we’re going to be telling the story of the national parks or just outdoors in general, conservation, our charitable partners, et cetera, we need to actually have a give back component to these products so that when consumers who are buying these shirts, because they resonate with the message on them, we need to make sure that there’s a full circle supporting give back that goes back to those charitable partners or to something that the the consumer, and ourselves, that we care about. So that’s how we got started there. The early days since we didn’t set out to build a brand. The first thought was like, let’s make cool stuff we wanna wear. Then again, as soon as we started seeing the sales pick up and we realized what we had the potential that this whole brand had, we realized that we need to do a little bit of good along the way. And I’m grateful that we had that foresight because even though we never expected to reach a point, like I think we just hit a million and a half dollars given back. That doesn’t include in- kind donations, volunteer work. All the intangible benefits of working with our charitable partners. If somebody were to go back 10 years ago and say, Hey just by giving small amounts of money for every T-shirt you sell, you could reach a million and a half dollars. That would’ve blown my mind as a young 30-year-old, that would’ve absolutely blown my mind.
Missy Rentz:
It’s, that’s a lot of money. Was it always about parks and public land? Was that always your focus?
Matt Moreau:
Yeah, it was, it started out specifically national parks and then we realized, oh, there’s so much more than just the national parks.’cause everybody would be riding us and saying Hey, I love that Yosemite shirt, but also you should do something for this, like really small, really special national forest in my backyard because, lot of people go to Yosemite, if they’re lucky, once, maybe twice in their life, and yet every weekend they’re spending time in Pisco National Forest, which is what we do. So we realize some of these other public lands have more visitor pressure than some of the smallest national parks. And you started thinking about we need to be telling that story as well, but also. What about just like cool shirts with some leave no trace messaging. There’s so much that is adjacent to and related to the idea of park specific that, everybody has their own personal landmark. Like our first hashtag was My Landmark. We encourage people to use that, tag us and wherever they’re going and let us know this is the place that you call home. And that, that just really opened our eyes to the idea that everybody recreates outside in a different way. Whether you’re an urban you stroll the streets of your neighborhood and your city, or you go completely off grid and you backpack through a wilderness area out west there, or anything in between. There’s gravel bikes, there’s rock climbing. There’s ATVs, there’s fishing. It’s a huge industry and a really big tent. So we decided not to limit ourselves to national parks and just really try to be wherever people are enjoying the outdoors and try to really like, create products that resonate with a huge variety of different types of outdoor enthusiasts.
Missy Rentz:
And as you’re building the company, it’s clear that the give back was part of the mission from the beginning. And oftentimes when I’m talking to organizations, they’re like,”oh, that, but that’s too hard or that’s too expensive.” How did you overcome that challenge in order to stay true to this mission?
Matt Moreau:
Yeah, it’s a. It certainly is an administrative burden and the idea of if you’re not giving back, the idea of suddenly starting to take margin from your product and give it to something is a little bit scary. Having done it since the beginning is helpful for us because we know, like that’s just revenue that we plan for as we’re designing products. There’s a, anywhere between one and 10% of that is getting skimmed off. Sometimes even 20% is getting skimmed off and set directly to a charitable partner. I’d like to think about it as if, a copywriter who we work with told me this and so I can’t take credit for it, but we were talking about being 1% for the planet, and I love the 1% for the Planet organization. We’ve been a member for many years now, and they have a network of brands and companies that give to a network of recipient charitable partners that are all vetted and in some kind of conservation or charitable work in the outdoors, and it allows us to choose from a list of predetermined options to give back to. And while we were building this 1% for the Planet strategy, I was struggling with the idea that 1% doesn’t sound like much, it sounds like very little. And I’m like, are we doing. Are we doing enough here? And how do we tell our customers that like, Hey, guess what, we give back 1%. That’s there’s nothing smaller than 1%. Like it’s, so that’s like saying we’re doing the bare minimum. Please. Like us. And my copywriter had a really insightful comment and she said, she’s if you go out. You set your compass towards a way point, but you are one degree off. You’re gonna end up at a completely different place. And I thought that was so interesting because at the beginning, 1% feels really small. But like looking back from where we started and where we are now, if we weren’t doing this. We set our compass, right where we wanted to be, instead of 1% to, to the side. We’d be in a completely different place. We’d be completely lost. And that is, that’s just a good reminder that like there, there’s no such thing as not giving enough give, give back, I feel, what you’re comfortable doing, what you can do, and have the goal to grow that over time if you want to, or invest in very specific local needs, if you can. Start maybe by just doing in kind donations or doing some volunteer work, there’s a lot of other ways instead of just big chunks at a time, 10, 20%. I wouldn’t ever encourage. I’m a business owner, so I know how important it is to have revenue and margin, like we’re in business to make money. We’re not a charity, but I would always encourage people to like, start with whatever you’re comfortable with and if you could do better next season, great. Do better. But don’t do nothing. I think that’s where especially if you’re building your business around something that really could be so helpful, especially in this current climate. The parks are understaffed, they’re under-resourced, and it’s getting worse. So being able to provide some kind of small financial aid where it counts, makes such a difference to the right person.
Missy Rentz:
I also think it’s interesting in the outdoor industry there’s a lot of businesses that do give back and it’s, to me, it’s one of those things where you’re giving back to what makes your business viable. Without those parks, we don’t have gear, we don’t have the need for this stuff. So I do think it’s important. How does giving back work for your organization? You’ve mentioned the$1.5 million, but you do other things as well for giving back and for conservation and whatnot. What other things do you all do?
Matt Moreau:
One of my favorite, like I, I guess you could call it a hack, but maybe it’s a strategy, but we choose, since we’re an art forward, an art themed brand, we choose to partner with some really interesting heritage artwork providers, or I guess licensers. So I think Smokey Bear, Woodsy Owl, Leave No Trace. These companies have IP that goes back up to 80 years. If you’re Smokey Bear, it’s one of the original trademarks of the US Forest Service and it’s still in use, but we pay a royalty on that up to 10%, on these products and we choose to partner with companies whose royalty goes directly towards some kind of conservation. So in the case, the easiest example is in the case of Smokey Bear, we chose to, and we actually had wildfires six, seven years ago in the Smoky Mountains here in the east. They’re not as common here as out west, and it was a wake up call for us to see friends and family displaced, to see retailers lose everything, to see some of our favorite trails be closed because of damage. It was a wake up call of the devastating impact of wildfires and we thought, Hey look we’re a brand. We can help raise awareness around this. We don’t want this to become a more common thing in our neck of the woods. So we started working with the Forest Service to put Smokey’s messaging on products that we carry. And it’s with that, through that we’ve been paying a royalty over the years, and that goes directly towards more education about wildfire prevention. So if you see Smokey Billboards, if you see Smokey Bear in the parade visiting a school. That’s all funded in part by companies like us who do quite a bit of licensing work on, keep putting smoking on products and keeping his message out there. So we try to find more like things like that. If it’s not artwork that we do in house, it’s artwork that has some kind of charitable connection and or a conservation connection. Besides that, we also do quite a bit of trail work service oriented projects. So imagine last year we did, we helped build a wheelchair accessible trail through one of our local national forests. We’ve done some just clean up projects in our local river. Also in Yosemite National Park. So it’s like everything from a local level to which engages a lot of our not just our community, but like our employees and their families and their friends, but going out to a beautiful place like Yosemite or Rocky Mountain and doing meaningful work there so that we can inject our brand right into the center of what the park’s doing and getting to stay familiar and stay engaged with the park services priorities. So we try to try to find opportunities like that. And there’s usually some in kind donations, there’s usually some rallying of community and, a bar tab afterwards. But that all is just a ways of okay, so if it’s not just. It’s not just writing the check, but it’s like demonstrating the benefit of rolling up your sleeves, inviting the community to come together on a service project that’s just gonna benefit them.
Missy Rentz:
Are really soul filling experiences and to connect with the parks in that unique way is so special.
Matt Moreau:
yeah, it is. And I don’t personally sign the checks, you know that, so it’s really easy to get lost in the business operations over here and forget why we got into this in the first place. No, we were coming in late, leave it early, back in the day when it was just screen printing t-shirts in the house. And those were really fun. But like the draw of the outdoors was so big that it just kept us going back to it. And now that we’re a business with 40 employees, we run a much tighter ship. We have schedules and our employees have families, and it’s like we don’t go outside nearly as much as we used to. And it’s so important to just build in those opportunities to remind ourselves like, no, this is why we started doing this. This is why we exist. This hasn’t changed for people, this hasn’t changed for us. We have to have moments where we can actually get outside and just reconnect with nature. Refill the like the work week is long, so being able to have that creative fulfillment. Find rest and come back next week. Refresh is really important. So it provides opportunity for our team. It provides opportunity for other people. And if, and even if you somebody can’t make it to one of these activations, we love that. Maybe it’s showing them that they’re not super hard to do and hopefully they take the initiative to find whatever is in their area.
Missy Rentz:
So your, those activations are open to other people to participate with you.
Matt Moreau:
Yeah, for the most part they are. We there are of course all different sizes and scales and sometimes we’re limited on what our usually we partner with a ranger. Or a friend’s group, they might only have 30 shovels or 30 pairs of gloves or insurance might cap a group size. So we’re always limited on how many people could participate. But then there are other organizations that can handle that very large group sizes and are set up to do bigger multi-day. Projects like Yosemite Facelift is one of them that every year in September, thousands of people come to Yosemite National Park to take to take part in a massive park wide, community wide strategic cleanup of the park. After, after the summer season comes to an end, they pick up thousands of pounds of trash. They do, they remove graffiti. They fix trail erosion. Last time we were there, we were collecting seeds from native species of plants so that they can then be germinated and planted in areas of the park that need restoration. Then that the following season, it’s really
Missy Rentz:
so cool. Yeah.
Matt Moreau:
cool and it’s because of our partnerships with companies that actually know what they’re doing. Like we could show up ready to take marching orders and we’re willing to spend the day in service. And we’re relying on ecologists rangers to help lead those projects. So as many as many people as can come, we are happy to have them.
Missy Rentz:
And Matt has an incredible marketing team that, that works there. And they do a great job on their website and social media. So I encourage you to follow them on social so that you can learn about the projects that they have done in the past and what’s coming up.’cause it’s really spectacular to see the work that, that you are doing and have done. How. Would some, how would you recommend someone figure out what are those sorts of organizations to work with, and who are you working with right now?
Matt Moreau:
That’s a great question. I usually like to tell people start with the place that you already love. Don’t, if you’re somewhere in Ohio maybe don’t be like, I wanna go do a service project in Yellowstone in a couple weeks. I would, I’m sure you can do that. I’m not trying to say don’t, or that it would be that hard, but if you wanna try something, there’s always an opportunity on a local level. For us, I’m just gonna tell you. How it works in my hometown, which is a fairly small town, but I’m in Greenville, South Carolina, it’s one of the bigger cities in South Carolina. We’re on the mountain side and we are close to the Blue Ridge Mountains, close to Appalachia and the Smokies just a couple hours away. And then in our town, like we literally have. A river that goes through downtown. It used to be, it used to be the dumping place for all the textile mills that they would just have all this waste and not know what to do with it back in the thirties and forties and. As they would be producing textiles they would dump the wastewater in the river. Literally the trash, everything would go in this river. It’s a beautiful river, but it needs a lot of restorative work, not just removing all of that all of the waste from decades of misuse, but also removing native species. Re like fixing the pathway of the river that was modified to flow between these mill buildings. Shoring up the riparian zones and making sure they’re healthy for native insects and animals and birds. Seeing how this river is. PA is such a big part of our community. We started working with the friends group that was formed to to over the years bring this river, restore this river back to good health. And the friends group is a nonprofit. It’s very small. So when we write a check for. Like$5,000. That actually helps in so many ways to them by paying for water testing, lab testing, supplies for the way they, they may have huge community workdays that where people in Greenville come out. So gloves, ropes, shovels, all the things that you might need to outfit a crew of volunteers. But beyond that, the the friends group also does like. Planting. So we’ll donate our spent cardboard to be used to smother old invasive grasses and plant new ones on top of it. So I, it’s called air layering and you could just. Instead of digging up and removing old plants, you could just kill’em off by layering biodegradable cardboard on top. So it’s neat. It’s a neat way of us taking, like some of our products that we, or not products, but materials that would normally just go to recycling or go to a landfill and putting’em to work as part of a solution there. And our whole team comes out. We get in the river, we yank out old tires. This is only possible because like we care about our local river and there is a friends group that is set up to help put us to work. So find, I’d say find like what’s your local state park? What’s your local you might have a national park in your local area or a national forest. There’s almost guaranteed to be some kind of. Nonprofit friends group that’s associated with that place. And that’s the perfect place to start because they are in constant communication with the rangers. Constant communication with city officials. They know what projects need to be done. They know what projects need to be funded. Maybe they need, maybe they have a volunteer day coming up. And a lot of time, a lot of times these small friends or conservancy groups. They just don’t have a really loud voice. They don’t have a lot of social media following. They don’t have a lot of people on their email list, they might have really good opportunities for the community, but they’re just not getting heard or they’re not getting seen. Take it might take just a little bit of research in your local area and a couple phone calls or emails to get connected with the right person. But that’s where I like to tell people to start. And then if you find that you love volunteer work, get a couple friends and maybe reach out and say, Hey, we got a group of. Eight, 12 of us, we all would love to do a service project together. What do you have and what’s a date that works for you? And our local state park, we would absolutely love that. We would totally put together a small group of we would totally put to work a small group of friends on a, something we’ve done in the past. It’s just like a great, we have. We have trees that need to be re blazed because the paint’s s worn off, or it’s been, it’s faded. And the trees, as the trees have grown. So here’s the blade blaze stencil. Here’s a can of spray paint. This is the pips wall trail. And just go for it. Go find the old blazes and blaze over up. That’s such a benefit.
Missy Rentz:
fun.
Matt Moreau:
It would be really fun. And you’re out, you’re outside.
Missy Rentz:
Exactly. You’re walking that trail anyway. Yeah.
Matt Moreau:
the trail, you’ve got your friends with you. Yeah. And once you do one of these, you really are breaking the ice. It’s just, they’re so fun to do and they’re fulfilling. And and you look, every time you’re on that trail, later you look back and see the work that you did
Missy Rentz:
Yes,
Matt Moreau:
and.
Missy Rentz:
And I’m hearing I’m hearing as you’re talking, like my brain’s going crazy on two sides. First, the individual, how you can get involved, but then also from a corporation or business standpoint, it’s more than just money. You’ve talked about, the, certainly the dollars, but you guys give with time. And then even taking a look at the resources you have, whether it be you have a big following on social media and you could help promote them, or you have a ton of cardboard boxes and they need it for something. So it’s just amazing. The idea is you’re, you are already shared with us on how we can support these organizations and incorporate the give back into our missions.
Matt Moreau:
Yeah, it’s there’s, it’s so much more than just writing a check.
Missy Rentz:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so speaking of the, so much more, let’s talk about shopping for good. We are entering the holiday season and I think we are at a time, you mentioned the funding and the resources of our national parks, it also goes with our forests and other things. And we’ve had several episodes about how do you get involved and advocate. But one thing, and one reason I wanted to talk to you, is a really good way to advocate is to spend where your values are and make decisions based off of that. And so as we’re entering the big shopping season how does someone find out what their organization is doing? Okay, if I wanna buy a T-shirt, how do I find out that, oh, The Landmark Project Look at what they’re giving back.
Matt Moreau:
That’s a good question. I, every brand’s gonna tell their story differently. We know that our customer just like really cares about these things that the same as we do, and we just decide we don’t wanna just shove it in their faces and make sure that we’re not trying to virtue signal here and be a little over the top. We’re just, we want people to know, if you do buy from us. Which we’d be extremely grateful. Every sale means something to us, but we really want people to know, like we are doing our best over here to do a little good with we take that responsibility seriously, like y’all are keeping us in business. Our wholesale partners are keeping us in business, our customers who are engaging with us on so many different ways, either by communicating through social media. Leading reviews on the site, coming to our events, seeing us at festivals. Like we listen and we know what our customers are doing with their lives and with their values and we try to meet them where they are. So our approach is to just make sure that messaging is accessible on our website. If you wanna know more, like what specifically does this product benefit then it’s there on the product page. For Smokey Bear products, it goes directly to wildfire prevention. So if you’re somebody who lives in a wildfire prone area, if you’ve been personally affected by wildfires in the past, that’s an easy one. And the, I’d say if you like Smokey Bear products, you probably see a lot of them on the internet and. A good thing to do is just make sure it’s a licensed product. There’s a lot.
Missy Rentz:
I wanna tell, talk a little bit about that, just to educate people on the difference you mentioned earlier, licensed you pay a fee to be able to print Smokey Bear. A non-licensed would mean they’re just stealing the artwork or like what, basically no money is going back to support the forest service, correct.
Matt Moreau:
That’s correct. Yeah. And the Forest Service does their best to help police this, but you can’t catch’em. All Smoky Bears been around for 80 years and there’s a lot of print on demand and Etsy stores and Timo and Sheen and you can find a lot of Smokey Bear products out there that aren’t licensed or Woodsy Owl or any other official trademarks. And it’s damaging on a few different levels. So number one, the Forest Service doesn’t get any benefit from. A non-licensed Smokey Bear product. Number two, a lot of the non-licensed Smokey Bear products have messaging that is not aligned with Smokey’s messaging. So Smokey is all about preventing wildfires. It’s been that way since day one in 1944. That’s why he was created, and they’ve done an amazing job protecting that intellectual property and that messaging over the last 81 years. So when you see a Smokey Bear product that says something good, but not preventing wildfires it dilutes the messaging and it makes smokey a symbol for other things. If you see Smokey saying, something. A lot of times people will do the Resist Smokey or National Parks themed, smokey, or even a a parody smokey, like for the cannabis industry. Those are actually really harmful. Like we don’t wanna see products out there like that because again, the, there’s a heritage of, intellectual property that we’re trying to protect. And when you buy the right ones, the ones that actually do good goes to the Forest Service. And it, in turn, it helps get more educational materials, more educational opportunities out there about wildfire prevention, which is the whole point of Smokey Bear. So there’s, the Internet’s full of parody art. It’s always gonna be that way for not just these intellectual properties, but all, there’s fan art for everything you can imagine. It’s just it’s a little bit of a headwind for us who are trying to do it the right way. And you can imagine that like we, we’ve come to terms with having to live in the, in a world where there’s plenty of competition that has a little bit of unfair advantage because it’s not going through the proper channels. But when we do license our products, everything has to be approved. The physical samples have to be approved as well, like the quality of the product. Is like everything is a, is top notch, above board and the forest services, we don’t wanna make anything that they’re not excited
Missy Rentz:
No and I think as a shopper, if you are looking to have that feel good moment knowing that what you’re buying is also giving back, then the. It can take a little bit of homework to go and dive in to that company’s website to make sure that they’re aligned properly.
Matt Moreau:
Yeah, and a lot of companies, so like you can shop directly with some, nonprofits or charitable companies that have their own really cool merchandise. So I’m thinking of like the National Forest Foundation thinking of Leave No Trace. These are partners of ours. If you go to their website, you could buy directly from them, which is also a really cool way to support something you can get. You can get a really cool piece of Landmark or other brands, merch. Directly support one of those nonprofits. They’ll sometimes make their own gift guides that feature. So the National Parks Conservation Association does this. They’ll have a gift guide that is all gifts that they know support the parks. So there is some, there I would always caution people to if somebody says they support the parks there, that may be true. But it also, if there’s not like some, at least some real beneficiaries listed or if they don’t show other evidence on their site of the charitable work, maybe question that a little bit.
Missy Rentz:
Yeah.
Matt Moreau:
Yeah, just not everything you see out there is true, unfortunately. And I’m not even thinking about any brand in particular. There are great brands out there, many of whom are, I would consider competitors to us, but we’re all in it for the same reason. So I’ve never felt animosity towards other people who make National Park shirts or Smokey Bear shirts if they’re doing the right thing. If they’re doing good along the way, that’s great. There’s room for us. There’s plenty of shelf space, there’s plenty of closet space. Pick the product that really speaks to you. Pick a product that you’re gonna wear. That’s, don’t pick a product just to have it and keep it in your drawer. Wear it out. Get cherished use out of that product until it’s thread bear. That’s what we wanna see. And if that’s one of ours, if that’s somebody else’s product, that’s totally fine. The most good you’re gonna do is to give that product a long and cherish life. That’s what I like to tell people, is the most sustainable product they have. It’s the one that you keep wearing and never throw away.
Missy Rentz:
I love that. So we wrap up every episode with a speed round of questions and just answer with what first comes to mind.
Matt Moreau:
Okay.
Missy Rentz:
What is your earliest park memory?
Matt Moreau:
Backpacking in Yosemite?
Missy Rentz:
What made you love the parks?
Matt Moreau:
I would say a couple really amazing subsets on some of those first backpacking trips and realizing we have the one mile in rule where if you don’t feel like you’re loving a park, just get a mile in. To any trail. 95% of the tourists drop off. You start to you don’t see the parking lot anymore. I think that’s, yeah, that’s what made me love the parks.
Missy Rentz:
What is your favorite thing about our parks and public lands?
Matt Moreau:
I think the even playing field that it brings, it’s, I’ve, I love seeing the diversity of people that enjoy these parks. I like. I like that they’re accessible and that the same kind of thing being in nature. It just shows you that is something that is a universal value, whoever you are.
Missy Rentz:
What is your favorite thing to do in our parks and public? Lands
Matt Moreau:
my first experience with backpacking, I think my, if I were to have. Any choice of a sport to continue doing for the rest of my life, that would have to be it.
Missy Rentz:
what park have you yet to visit, but it’s on your bucket list and why?
Matt Moreau:
Believe it or not, I haven’t been to the Grand Canyon, so it is on my bucket list because it is one of the most important parks in the US and I’m intimidated by it because. The I’m not a day hiker as much as I am. Like I wanna do an epic hike and the rim to rim trail is pretty epic. So I don’t wanna visit the Grand Canyon until I have the time and stamina to do that trail.
Missy Rentz:
Love that. What are three must haves you pack for a park visit?
Matt Moreau:
I have a water bottle filter. That I take with me everywhere. I don’t like carrying more than like a liter of water at a time. So I like to filter as I go. I bring my national park pass, of course sometimes I totally forget it and just have to pay the entry again, but you know how that is. And I can’t, my camera I’ve gotta document these things. I travel with my wife and we joke about the amount of time that I tell her like, wait, go do that again. Go hike up that quarter again. And so it’s, I’m there capturing the moments and I don’t think you’d be able to see me without my camera in hand at any given point.
Missy Rentz:
What is your favorite campfire activity?
Matt Moreau:
Favorite campfire activity. I like, I really like to cook around the campfire. You put me in a group of friends who are enjoying a campsite. I want a job to do. I don’t want the social pressure of keeping the conversation going, so I will frequently put a lot of thought and effort and prep into. Somewhat elaborate, like a deceptively simple but secretly elaborate campfire meal. Yeah that, that would be, that would have to be it.
Missy Rentz:
Tent, camper, or cabin.
Matt Moreau:
Neither actually I sleep in the back of our. Vintage 1988 Land Cruiser. When we’re camping, if it’s car camping like a campground or dispersed like forest service roads, that kind of thing we’ll put the backseat down, roll out the air pads, hang up a couple string lights, it’s perfectly flat in the back. I don’t make cars like that anymore and it’s enough him to sit up in and just long enough. To where I don’t have to curl up into fetal position when I’m sleeping, so I could actually stretch out. But I hate putting away a wet tent. So when backpacking, of course, that’s fine. It’s necessary evil, but given the choice, we’re sleeping in the back of the lay cruiser,
Missy Rentz:
And are you hiking with or without trekking poles?
Matt Moreau:
Width every time. Yep. I need to make those knees last.
Missy Rentz:
What is your favorite trail snack?
Matt Moreau:
That depends on what decade. You ask me. Early on, it was just a Snickers bar, king size, Snickers. I would have that every morning on a backpacking trip just loaded with peanuts and sugar. And I don’t do that so much anymore. My my trail snack now, actually, can I give you a I, I think I’ve replaced snacking with the, hydration packs, like the, yeah, a lot of times I think I’ve developed a dependency on the electrolyte packs that you add to your water bottle. That’s I’ve noticed that those are as important as calories for me. Especially in the southeast when it gets like you’re dealing with a hundred degrees, a hundred percent humidity, so easy to get dehydrated. Yeah, those have been a lifesaver.
Missy Rentz:
What is your favorite animal sighting?
Matt Moreau:
Seen a lot of bears on the trails and it’s always cool. The one that stands out to me is what I thought was a bear that was like five feet off the trail just emerged as we were hiking by, freaked us out. But it was a moose. It was in Glacier National Park and we just saw this brown. Like back this hump come out of the blueberry bushes and we totally thought it was a grizzly bear. Still scary still dangerous, but it was a moose just checking us out.
Missy Rentz:
What is your favorite sound in the park?
Matt Moreau:
I think the white noise machine of camping near a creek. I don’t like crickets.’cause they’ll stop at some point and it it gets really quiet and scary, but it, the, their creek doesn’t stop and it just creates this like constant low a level of noise that you can fall asleep to really easily, it’s comforting. It’s there. So I think I’d have to go with that.
Missy Rentz:
And what is the greatest gift that the parks give to us?
Matt Moreau:
For me, the greatest gift that it gives me is the ability to refill the well. I think that life and work. Tend to just drain it so that if you go back to keep drawing from that, you eventually will pull up a bucket with nothing in it and you’re like, all right, I just need to escape to nature. So that, to me that’s what it is. And I think a lot of people probably resonate with that. You don’t have to be a business owner, you don’t have to be creative. Every now and then, you just need to walk in the woods to restore. A little something about you that you’ve been missing. So I think that’s the best gift they give us.
Missy Rentz:
Matt, thank you for your art and your creativity and your cozy t-shirts and for being with us today on the Parks podcast to teach us about. Out, giving back when we’re doing our shopping, and when we’re choosing the companies we work with. Thank you.
Matt Moreau:
Of course it is. Absolutely. My pleasure to be here, and thank you Missy for telling our story and for also you’re such a great way of amplifying things like this that are important.
Missy Rentz:
Thank you! That’s it for this episode. Until next time, we’ll see you in the parks.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please be sure to like and share on your favorite podcast platform. Music for the parks podcast is performed and produced by Porter Hardy. For more information, please follow us on Instagram at the parks podcast. Or visit our website@theparkspodcast.com.