He turned to his mother, Mary, 79, a former grammar school teacher, for help. "I said, 'I want to create something like your cookies, but it has to be healthy. It can't have oil or butter,' " recalls Erickson, 44. For the next six months they mixed, baked and tossed out dozens of batches of oat and rice syrup. The result: the Clif Bar, launched in 1992 and today the second top-selling sports bar in the nation, with annual sales approaching $100 million. (PowerBar, with sales of more than $120 million last year, is No. 1.) The success of the Clif Bar—named for Erickson's father, Clifford, 76, an avid hiker and skier who worked for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—has led to a decidedly unconventional company. Headquartered in Berkeley, Clif Bar has about 100 employees, many of them active in triathlons and other competitive sports. They often stroll into work wearing flip-flops and bike shorts. And they have at their disposal a huge gym with a treadmill, rowing machine, stationary bikes, a 22-ft. rock climbing wall, three personal trainers and a Ping-Pong table. Each year the company sponsors 1,000 sports and charity events, and a percentage of its profits goes to the Breast Cancer Fund in San Francisco. (Erickson's mother is a breast cancer survivor.) "For him it's the perfect job," says Erickson's brother Randy, 50, who heads research and development for Clif Bar. "It gives him time to dream."
Born in Fresno, Calif., Erickson was both an athlete (on the varsity tennis and baseball teams) and a musician, playing trumpet in the high school jazz band. He graduated from California Polytechnic State University in 1980 with a degree in business. He was also an überjock: He played soccer and ran cross-country, skied and hiked in Yosemite and Squaw Valley and climbed mountains. Once he scaled a 2,200-ft. sheer-face rock wall in Yosemite, sleeping on a 12-in. ledge for two days before he reached the top.
At his first job, as a designer for Avocet, an outdoor-sports-products company, he designed a gel-filled bike seat that is still sold. In 1986 Erickson and a friend, Lisa Thomas, opened Kali's, a Greek-style bakery and distributor, in Emeryville, Calif., near San Francisco, where they sold gourmet cookies and calzones based on recipes handed down from his grandmother.
The bakery served as the first home of the Clif Bar. They started in 1992 with three flavors (apricot, date oatmeal and chocolate) and an order for 30,000. Although the bars are much healthier than, say, sugar-coated donuts, they still have their critics. "There's nothing special about an energy bar that you can't get through regular food," says Nancy Clark, a nutritionist who advises the Boston Celtics and the Boston Red Sox. "I see them as great emergency foods rather than as a fundamental part of your daily diet."
At about the time he was launching Clif Bar, Erickson began dating Kit Crawford, 43, a newly divorced painter he had met a dozen years before on a rock-climbing trip. They wed in 1994, and her two children, Kate, 17, and Clayton, 12, moved in with them at their four-bedroom Italian-stucco home in the Oakland hills. That same year their daughter Lydia was born. The responsibilities of fatherhood led Erickson to give up the more dangerous mountain climbing he once did, but he still bikes 100 miles a week. "That's my way to be free and meditate," he says. "There's a certain clarity I get when I'm doing that."
Clif Bar was successful from the start, and now the company has added two more sports bars to its line: the Ice Series, which contains caffeine, and Luna, designed for women. Luna fans include Venus Williams and Cheryl Tiegs. And cyclist Lance Armstrong, three-time winner of the Tour de France, has endorsed the Clif Bar.
Last year Erickson almost sold the company but backed out at the last minute. "Business, as in climbing, is an adventure," he says. "Climbing was never about getting to the top. I loved the whole process." The same philosophy applies to his company. "We're not finish-line oriented here, we're more day-to-day journey," he says. "This is an adventure."
Veronica Byrd
Melissa Schorr in Berkeley
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- Melissa Schorr.
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