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Color is so important to everyone at Bivo. When it’s time to pick new seasonal colors, it is a whole team activity. We all do research, look back at what you all have requested, and everyone weighs in with their opinion on what all of you will like best. 

Next week, we are launching our brand new seasonal colors, and it has been so hard not to talk about it up until now. We carefully picked three new colors that really make us smile and complement one another. 

In the spirit of color, for today’s Quench’d post, we brought on our friend, Aleisha Reynolds, a professional colorist and someone who loves color in her everyday life. Aleisha has been working in color in the outdoors industry for her whole career and she shares her perspective on color choice in outdoor products. 

To me, color is a considered part of everything I own. It is what draws me to a product. I want it to make me feel balanced and focused while I am using it. It helps me feel put together, even when I know I’m not. My appreciation for color is both the impetus and the result of my job. I have spent my career researching and applying color to outdoors and active products. 

Long ago and far away, when I started working on color for women’s hiking product, the general advice was to ‘Pink It and Shrink It’. As a woman who participates in many activities and does not particularly prefer pink, this annoyed me. My career long mission has been to migrate the perception that women crave pink and teal to the idea that women contain multitudes and would like color choice. I personally still really want red everything and anything, so I still have work to do.

Each activity has its own color palette, like a language of its own. Some lean towards tradition, but some of them break all the rules. Three of my favorite rule breakers I found at around the same time. I started working on skateboard product professionally and I also started really snowboarding and road biking personally. As I got more familiar with these activities, I found that they each had very strong thoughts on color, each had a web of unwritten, but strongly felt, color rules.

In my foray into west coast biking and hanging around bike shops, it seemed like second nature that there were colors that bar tape, bottles and even socks could be in relation to the bike. As I started biking 40–80 mile treks I had nothing but time for long conversations with other bikers. I often talked about color. I heard many preferences and thoughts. Some old heads laughed at my curiosity and told me whatever I wanted was fine, but some of the younger set had very detailed opinions. To be fair to them, if you are going to be spending hours on a bike, it should look the way you want it to.

I found myself taking the latter view in my personal preferences when riding, either bike or snowboard. I absolutely love my bright bold red snowboarding pants as they flash going down the mountain. I still think about my amazing red and black BMC, with red bar tape and black and red bottles.  It made me feel like I could climb anything. Admittedly I never was the fastest, but the enthusiasm to start a climb definitely was very important to getting it done. When that bike was stolen it was a bit of a blow.

Right now I have a blue green gravel bike that is bold and fun and has come with me over centuries and goofing around town. I also have a more serious, all matte black road bike that looks amazingly badass. A well-made, good looking bike is hard to beat, it makes me excited to do the necessary work of hours and miles of training needed to keep my bike legs.

Color is a very personal choice and one person’s yuck is another person’s yum. Both the women I have interacted with and friends I hike and bike with tend to veer away from pink. However, I found out early in biking, and to a slightly lesser degree in skateboarding, that product in pink is a draw for men. The guys who wear pink get a little impish smile when I ask them why they chose that color, their grin implies they know that they are being a little rebellious and challenging convention. I love it for them, whatever motivates them to be a little more is the best way to be.

I salute everybody who chooses a color that makes them a little more. You’re doing great.