Built to Last

Noah Robertson and Ned Hutchinson have been developing clothes together since the early 2000s. Iteration after iteration, they've aimed to answer: What does it mean to make something that lasts?

Not just a shirt that holds up through a season, but one you sling on before a bike ride, reach for before a dinner date and still want to wear a decade later.

They've never felt closer to the answer given the launch of the Spring/Summer Collection of their everyday men's lifestyle brand 3BIRD. Rooted in land, water and travel, they strive to build each product around two words: durable and versatile.

"Durable in look and feel, but also durable in construction and fabrication," Robertson said. "And versatile — comfortable clothes that can be used outdoors and also look good in any kind of social situation."

3BIRD isn't trying to build a hundred styles. It's trying to build thirty — and then keep getting better at them.

That's the philosophy. Not chasing trends, but refining a tight collection of timeless pieces that belong in a Wyomingite's closet for years.

Wild Cargo shares that ethos, which is why 3BIRD is a core brand in the shop.

"I think the Wild Cargo concept is something that Jackson has really not had and has needed for a long time," Noah said.

Noah and Ned have been in this industry long enough to have talked plenty of people out of it. The supply chain is volatile, the margins are unforgiving, and the road from idea to finished product is longer and stranger than it looks from the outside. They know all of this. They've lived it.

Still, they're doing it again — because this is what they do.

The partnership that would become 3BIRD started in the Tetons in the early 2000s. Ned and Noah were both working with Mountain Khakis — a men's brand with an outdoor premise and a serious following.

While launching a tops collection for the pants brand, Noah was focused on sales, Ned was focused on product development, and each learned a great deal about what "branding" really takes.

In the end, they built something neither of them had planned on loving quite so much.

"Those were really, really fun times for Noah and me," Ned said. "It was like our child."

They helped grow Mountain Khakis from a single-category men's label into a full lifestyle brand with enough momentum to attract outside investment.

"We liked to joke back then that we spent more time with each other than we did with our wives," Ned said.

But after an unexpected exit from Mountain Khakis, things changed. COVID arrived and the world went quiet for about three years. They found ways to keep working — sourcing and designing for other people's visions. Somewhere in all of it, they realized something that felt obvious: they had the skills to tell their own story.

Noah and Ned started building 3BIRD in 2023 and launched in spring 2025.

It was quick and Noah said the launch day itself was almost anticlimactic. You rehearse a moment that many times in your mind, and when it arrives, you've already lived it a hundred times over. But the strategy behind it was anything but incidental.

A year in, they have worked out operational kinks and earned customers' trust. Part of that strategy was picking a handful of retailers — including Wild Cargo — to carry their products.

"Building a business for the long haul," Noah said.

That slow process can feel like exactly that — slow. Wild Cargo’s youth has felt similar.

But when Ned and Noah move through airports — through TSA lines in Jackson, Boston, San Francisco — they pay attention to what people are wearing. Travelers, they've noticed, tend to pack their most reliable clothes: what fits best, looks best and holds up best. So when Ned and Noah spot someone wearing a 3BIRD piece, it makes it all feel worth it.