Disclaimer: All opinions on this site are solely mine and do not represent those of any company, entity, or person other than myself.

Mark Pimentel is an Apparel Designer from Portland, Oregon. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest has given him a unique perspective and intimate experiences with Technical Outerwear, Performance, and Active Sportswear.

In January of 2010, he was selected as one of five designers from across the country to participate in a 48-hour prototype design competition at the nation’s premiere outdoor trade show, Outdoor Retailer. Within 48-hours, Mark brainstormed, designed, presented, and prototyped an insulated Women’s Performance Technical Outerwear garment using some of the textile industry’s most advanced technologies.

Professional experiences include a position in Columbia Sportswear’s Men’s Design Department as the Men’s Sportswear and Outerwear Apparel Design Intern in 2009. Mark provided support for the entire Men’s design department and joined the Men’s Water Category design team for the S11 design cycle. He worked closely with Senior Designers and the Men’s Design Director for initial line planning and end-use-specific performance sportswear concept design.

Mark is a graduate of Oregon State University’s Apparel Design program, where he was mentored by Apparel Magazine’s Apparel Educator of The Year, Kathy Mullet. He graduated with Bachelor’s of Science degrees in both Apparel Design and Retail Merchandising Management. Though a very little known program, Oregon State University’s Apparel Design program provided him with a traditional fashion design background, as well as a highly specialized sportswear perspective.

Currently, Mark is part of the Nike Sportswear global design team, designing good level to pinnacle level apparel for NSW.

FAQ:

WHAT KIND OF CAMERA DO I USE?

I use a combination of the iPhone 4 and Canon G12 for all my blog posts images. I do post-processing in Adobe Lightroom with custom filters.

HOW CAN I WORK AT NIKE?

Take this as my tips for you to get to your dream job. Hard work. Dedication. For many people, it’s not as easy as just having all the right skills. For me, I was blessed and fortunate enough to have the opportunity to step up so early on in my career. I used to work on my portfolio from 5pm to 5am while I was going through school and immediately after I graduated. I also worked on my website, learning PHP, HTML, CSS on my own and coding from 5pm to 5am.

Long story short, if this is your goal, set it in your mind that you will not have anything else but to work at Nike – and you will get there. Simply, put you will not accept anything else except the best work you can do, and you can show. You should do anything and everything that will allow you to build a skill-set that is unique, strong, and well rounded. For me, I learned photography, graphic design, web design – along with having both an apparel design AND retail merchandising 4-year degree. For me – that’s my route of how I was able to become a part of a very small and select group of Nike Sportswear global apparel designers.

I’ll end this how I started: Hard Work. Dedication.

WHAT SCHOOL/COURSES DID YOU ATTEND?

I went to a traditional university in Corvallis, OR. Oregon State University is actually known for it’s engineering – not so much for apparel design. What’s great is that if you are into sportswear/performance apparel design – the resources are abundant here in the NW. I took Apparel Design and Merchandising Management as a double major at OSU. Corvallis and Portland both have an incredible source of fabric for technical/performance design which made it easy to create projects in school that align with my aspirations of working at Nike. Two stores you should Google are “Rose City Textiles” and “The Rain Shed”. Both supply technical/performance fabrics to many other stores and apparel programs looking for hard to find performance fabrics. Rose City Textiles also includes a co-op work studio that includes things like a seam taping machine, Gerber digital cutting table, and more. This is a resource unique to this area, which you can use to your advantage.

I’D LIKE TO HAVE AN INFORMATIONAL MEETING WITH YOU, CAN I DO THAT?

This depends on my schedule, which should be flexible but can really vary from day to day with the amount of projects I am working on. I am always open to meet with people or answer any questions you may have via email. For the sake of any spam bots getting a hold of my email here, I have a form on the “contact” page that will allow you to get in touch with me.