Why Timpanogos Is Resonating with Gen Z

Timpanogos Hiking Co., an outdoor brand based in Provo, Utah, went viral in 2024 for offering its most popular product for free.

The product: summit badges for hiking peaks along Utah's majestic Wasatch Front.

The "badges" are technically embroidered patches, which some customers heat-transfer on to backpacks and hats, and others display on shelves or cases. Timpanogos founder Joe Vogel estimates they have handed out around 5,000 badges in 2024, from Mount Olympus to Pfeifferhorn to Mount Timpanogos.  

Among the biggest fans of the tradition (and the brand more generally) are an unlikely demographic for a business that touts "analog experiences" and "escaping the noise."

Gen Z.

Why the popularity with the coveted 16-25 cohort?

It doesn’t hurt that the business is headquartered within minutes of two major universities—Brigham Young University (BYU) and Utah Valley University (UVU)—with a combined 70,000 plus students.

Still, many other local lifestyle brands have launched and failed. Timpanogos, meanwhile, is flourishing not just in Utah but around the country.

"We don't pander," says founder Joe Vogel. "That's the first thing. We don't try to use the latest slang or trends. We're not pushing a new app. In some ways, we're doing the exact opposite of what people would assume would work with young people."

Established in 2022, Timpanogos Hiking Co. has grown rapidly, surpassing 10,000 orders and over a half-million in revenue in its first two years. Its retro designs are organized in themed collections— Escape the Noise, Goat, and Wasatch — a decision, Vogel says, that has allowed it to reach customers both locally and nationally.

"The Goat collection really took off this past summer," he says. While it's clearly playing on the GOAT acronym, the logo and collection was actually inspired by the mountain goats on Timpanogos, Vogel says.

But what besides its goat designs and summit badges accounts for its Gen Z appeal?

"I think the deeper nerve we're hitting is that young people want something authentic," Vogel says. "People think all the new generation want is screens and things that are easy. But what I'm seeing is that they crave these real physical experiences. They want to be challenged. And we're challenging them."

That's what the Summit Badge Challenge represented, Vogel says. "It was a way for us to push our bigger mission of improving mental health, escaping the noise by getting away from screens, out in the mountains. But it was also a way to say, hey, do something hard. Push yourself. Summiting a mountain requires something of you." 

That message seems to be working. Timpanogos may be the hottest outdoor brand to emerge out of Utah since Cotopaxi.

But while they are growing fast (plans are underway for a second store in Salt Lake City), they are working hard to stay true to their founding principals. "We want to feel local," Vogel says. "We want to feel human and grounded in the community and the landscape. It's obvious which way society is going. We're taking a different path. And we love to see how many people, young and old, are making a similar choice."