About
Nancy Beal, Author
Nancy Beal has worked in journalism and corporate communications for more than 25 years, writing about a broad range of topics for diverse clients.
Her heart lies in the intrigue of a good story. She has learned that some of the most captivating stories are about entrepreneurs as they follow their dreams and create unique products, risking everything to bring those items to the marketplace. In her latest work, The Endurable Alex Tilley, she tells the fascinating true story of an entrepreneur who is obsessed with excellence.
While pondering the next great storyline, Nancy is always working on new projects across different genres. She is currently working on an historical fiction based on a true family story set in Scotland.
Nancy Beal lives in Muskoka, Ontario, Canada and gains inspiration from nature, the beauty of her surroundings, and the depth of community spirit in small-town living.
Alex Tilley, Entrepreneur
Alex Tilley is a Canadian business icon whose self-proclaimed “persnicketiness” for quality earned him a loyal following in the highly competitive world of outdoor and travel clothing. He founded Tilley Endurables and became internationally famous for the crown of his creations: a Canadian-made cotton hat sold with a lifetime guarantee.
The Endurable Alex Tilley is the story of one man’s headstrong pursuit of excellence.
It wasn’t always easy. Alex struggled in school, hindered by a brain injury and a learning disability. He was fired from several jobs and had no particular passion to drive him forward. His first business venture went bankrupt. Yet he persisted and, in his thirties, finally enjoyed moderate success in the art rental business. He invented the Tilley hat as a hobby in his forties, never thinking that it would turn him into a successful entrepreneur and manufacturer. He was known for his quirky advertising and captivating use of customer testimonials, eventually becoming known as a marketing genius. Yet before his Hat graduated beyond “Not-Yet-Famous,” Alex struggled with managing the company finances and handling its exponential growth. His most significant challenge was a vicious legal battle over the ownership of his company.
By the late 1980s, Tilley hats became world famous in the fiercely competitive outdoor fashion industry and graced the heads of Prince Phillip, Sir Edmund Hillary and of Canadian soldiers during the Gulf War. His most famous advertisement told the tale of how a Tilley hat had survived being digested by an elephant three times only to be worn again. By the time Alex retired and sold the company in 2015, Tilley hats were sold by more than 3,800 associated retailers in 18 countries including 2,300 retailers in the United States.
Pat & Rosemarie Keough are photographers, authors, explorers, and lecturers – and dear friends to Alex. Here’s a story they wrote about him.
Alex Tilley, ruggedly good-looking, stepped from the helicopter impeccably dressed for adventure. Notably, his signature Hat stayed in place despite the whirlwind wash from the aircraft's rotating blades. Our good friend had joined us in the Canadian subarctic where we were producing a documentary about the Nahanni wilderness as seen through the eyes of a young family—ourselves and our two-year-old daughter. Together we canoed swift waters, hiked precipitous trails, and erected our tents in numerous sublime sites over several sweaty weeks. Through it all, Alex always looked stylish and even clean in his head-to-toe complement of Tilley Endurables. One morning, as we set about filming in Scimitar Canyon, Alex chose to remain in camp along the Ram River. He had been admiring the smooth, round rocks, the size of soccer balls, along the river bank. He had an idea and set about creating an objet d'art, one that would appear to defy gravity. Skillfully balancing several of these granitic spheres and ovoids, one atop the other, his sculpture rose to a height as tall as his own. We were duly impressed!
With the benefit of hindsight, we realized that our friend's talent in maintaining near-improbable balance is actually an analogy for Alex's life and career. Alex created the Tilley hat, the finest and most famous of its kind—one that floats, does not shrink, can pass through an elephant three times and still be stylish—as well as a whole line of practical adventure and travel clothing. At the outset, his fixation on creating the ideal sailing hat was but a hobby, one that grew into the well-recognized Canadian company with annual sales in the seven figures. The journey, though, was fraught with multiple crises, which Alex's bravado, determination, and innate ability to sustain equilibrium led to triumph.
Compiling years of research and thousands of source materials, Nancy Beal presents the engaging story of the Tilley Hat and its inventor, from Alex's youth to his retirement. With a sense of humour that would appeal to Alex, the master wordsmith himself, Nancy conveys the duality of Alex's character: the witty genius who became a Canadian icon and the entrepreneur whose loyalty and misplaced generosity nearly bankrupted his company twice. We tip our Tilley Hats to you, Nancy, for your tenacity in ferreting out myriad, complex details, and for your complementary skills as a biographer and storyteller.
Returning to Alex and our Nahanni adventures… Which image would you guess became the cover of the October 1989 Tilley Endurables catalogue? No, not his ephemeral masterpiece of balanced rocks. Alex selected a photo of himself with our little girl, flying a kite along the cobbled shore of the Ram River with the canyons rising beyond. That's our friend Alex—a kindly man who made space in his trekker's backpack, already brimming with Tilley clothing and gear, for a kite and a ball of string to amuse a child.