Can you give us any key insights that guide your products? What do you know that most others haven’t realized?

Jason: To be honest, I don’t know. We’re just doing our own things and leveraging heavily off the military gear that I had when I was in Special Forces and how to sort of transition that to a broader base. That goes to the roots of GORUCK which are I was a Green Beret and Jack was in fashion in New York. You put those two together and what you end up with is GORUCK.

Jack: (Laughs) That’s for sure.

Are there any common mistakes you see in other brands that are driving you crazy? Things that are missing the mark?

Jason: To say that I and we never look at other peoples’ stuff would be incorrect – of course we do – but other brands’ stuff doesn’t guide us at all. It’s more that what I see with other people’s brands is “too much”. I see them telling people what to do with the gear and what we like to do is give people options that are very simple. Let them make it theirs and let them use the gear as they see fit. Really the struggle we have is – and Jack can really attest to it – is that my tendency is always to slash and burn everything that’s not completely necessary. What guides our design process is our collaboration between me and Jack. His background is more aesthetic and mine is more functional but both of us are into simplicity.

Jack: I’ll also talk about – in terms of how we do what we want, we don’t tell our consumer what to do. I mean initially – essentially, we just wanted to make a simple black backpack. We wanted to make a simple black backpack that met certain criteria that we had in mind that we wanted. We kinda let that stay at the core of what we do, and obviously over time that will shift as you see other opportunities. You at one time said in an interview: Less is more, and more is lazy…

Jason: Oh yeah! I’ll say it again for your interview. Less is more, and more is lazy. It still holds true, it will always hold true!

Jack: When we were designing the GR1, we got it about 95% there, and it would have been a good product, but it was getting that last 5%. I’ll never forget Jason came up with that, remember? The last 5%. That’s where all the real focus and attention to detail really came out. We were able to get through the first 95% without too much trouble.

Jason: That was the first year…

Jack: The second year, year and a half was getting it the last 5%. Really sticking to our guns about where we saw it going and getting to that.

Tell us about the GORUCK Challenge. It seems like a big part of your brand. How does that change things, and is it shaping things for the brand because of its success?

Jason: The Challenge and the gear, it’s both GORUCK to me. I think ultimately what GORUCK succeeds at is we’re passionate people. We’re passionate about our gear and we’re passionate about people. That comes through with everything we make – the way we tell the story, the way we give people the “behind the scenes” whenever possible. The greatest extension of that passion and love for people comes through with the Challenge. I can promise you that if I were sitting, and not doing Challenges, GORUCK would not be what it is to me. The reason GORUCK means so much to me is the reaction people have to the message. It’s not just a message of gear because – gear is great, and good gear is great, and you need it. I’ve depended on good gear to save my life, so I understand it. On a personal level, the outreach that the Challenge gives us in such a positive way, it keeps me going and allows us to answer this call for a larger vision of GORUCK, which is to be one of the most respected brands in the world. To do that you have to have people who support you, who believe in you and who want to support the larger message. Part of that larger message is showing people what they can do, bridging the military and the civilian world, and inspiring people.

“We’re just doing our own things and leveraging heavily off the military gear that I had when I was in Special Forces…”

The Challenge does all of that, and it does it everywhere. It’s a really neat event where people learn about themselves, they learn about the military, they learn about why camaraderie in the military is so high. People have taken it, have driven and built the brand of GORUCK. We’ve given them a platform, our message and our values but they have built the brand of GORUCK with their own passion. So, that’s what happened and we are really trying to keep up at this point. That’s been really neat and it’s really encouraging.

Jack: I would say to add to what Jason is saying, the Challenge is more his brainchild. I’m out here in Bozeman but I get back and forth and get to spend some time with the Challenge cadre – hundreds and hundreds of people who have done the challenges. For me, when I started to see the engagement of the Challenge-takers with our brand, it almost raised the stakes and the responsibility of this message Jason’s speaking to – how hard we have to work now to continually maintain and earn their willingness to share themselves with us. That’s a huge responsibility that inspires me every day to stay on point for these people because we’ve earned that from them and we have to keep it and maintain that.

All of your bags are based on the GR1, how many versions did you go through before you settled on its current incarnation?

Jack: A couple. One or two. (laughs)

Jason: 143. (both laugh) It’s tough to answer that question. A series of line sketches became refined sketches, became Illustrator line drawings, became patterns, became prototypes – and this is months and months already at this point. It was back and forth and back and forth. We had a design team lined up, and we ran through our contract with them, and had to get it made to scale. Then we started altering the patterns further when it was made to scale because it wasn’t done. The design team was done, and had fulfilled their obligation to us, and was already working on new business. The place where we scaled it up was also making tinkerings, it was probably 10 prototypes. It’s not like a prototype where you get it and you look at it and it’s like “this needs to look prettier”. It was going through things like the Challenge, it was going through massive stress testing, it was being scrutinized by Green Berets, and all of the above.

“Less is more, and more is lazy.”

Jack: I gave him a strap rip test when he first got here, where you stand on the bag and pull with all your might.

Jason: Yeah. That’s a good one. He does that to brag about his muscle weight currently residing on his arms. He definitely made sure the biceps were in view of the camera!

Okay, so you are focusing heavily on durability. What is the Achilles heel?

Jason: The Achilles heel is that they are not made out of steel. At a certain point, Cordura – we use the best everything but it’s still something that is made by hand. It’s the best, but it’s not steel.

Do you have relationships with other local brands, like Mystery Ranch? You are in the same town, what are your interactions with them?

Jack: We know who Mystery Ranch is and we respect the brand tremendously. I mean it’s really an incredible story, it’s a Montana story – it’s an American story what Dana Gleason has done. I’ll be honest – from my civilian side, I didn’t really know much about them until I got involved with our company and I moved here. Everybody knows Mystery Ranch in Bozeman. We did reach out to him at a certain point because we are making bags. Our brands are very, very different but just to introduce ourselves and listen to him, and listen to his story. He was incredibly gracious and spent time with us and it was really inspiring.

“I can promise you that if I were sitting, and not doing Challenges, GORUCK would not be what it is to me. The reason GORUCK means so much to me is the reaction people have to the message.”

It seems that brands that want to deliver the next level of quality are going directly to consumers to afford it. Any thoughts on this?

Jason: It was born of necessity, really. In 2010, I drove to 48 states trying to visit every retail shop in the country that I thought could support our price point. Keeping in mind, of course, that a single black bag made by a company with a not-established brand gets lost in a sea of other bags. It wasn’t viable in a big box. To be honest, we didn’t have the manufacturing to support that. We didn’t have infrastructure to that scale. Sure, we could have figured it out if we got a large order, but we went around to a lot of smaller shops and the price point was something that people always defaulted to and they just didn’t understand it.

They didn’t understand why something cost so much. Around the time the Challenge was born, “GR1 Explained” happened as well. Those were two important things in the history of GORUCK. The Challenge happened organically the same way the GR1 was built organically and was refined further beyond that. I’m sure the day will come where we go to more retail stores, but right now we don’t need to and, to be honest, we can’t make enough bags to fill our online stuff right now via Challenge growth. We don’t need to focus on retail yet.

Where is most of your learning happening these days? On the business side? Development of new products? Marketing?

Jason: We’re like Socrates, man, we learn every single day. (laughs) We are getting a lot smarter at operations and all those things because think about it – Jack didn’t know how to sew, he barely does and I don’t know how to sew at all except a ripped uniform or something. We came into this with a vision for a brand, not knowing how to sew. It’s easy for me to communicate the brand, to get out there and talk to people about the bags, my time in the Service and about why GORUCK does the things that it does from a branding perspective to try to bring people together, try to unite the military and the civilian worlds. We had at the time zero experience in operations or in any of those kinds of things so I am sure Robert there, he’s been an enormous asset on that front. On the marketing front, it is about being more than just promoters and becoming actual marketers. That’s happening as we speak. The Challenge started out as a marketing arm for GORUCK and it became its own thing. The marketing arm, in essence, separated from the bag company, at least from an operations standpoint. Putting on an event and making a piece of gear is completely different. That’s where the knowledge comes in; you have to figure out how to sew gear, how to sell events and communicate each of them.

John Franklin (Chief Marketing Officer): From a marketing perspective, a lot of what we are learning on how to get the word out there is, as the audience grows, we are starting to see trends in how our gear is used and why it’s unlike other bags they’ve had and that is kind of like a snowball. We take that and incorporate messages that people have latched onto and have taught us and use that in our own marketing. An example is with our GR2, which is our largest ruck. People love taking it on international trips, taking pictures of it like a travel companion, so that’s guided us a little bit in how we approach marketing that specific bag.

Jack: J (John), remember we bumped into that gentleman on the beach, we bumped into a guy wearing a GORUCK Challenge t-shirt. An incredible guy who is a manager at a Target in Austin, Texas. I’ll never forget, we asked him how he’s doing and he’s like “I am a manager at Target, and I am so blessed to have my job and have my family”. He was chatting with Jason and his wife leaned in to me and said “He thinks when he wears his GR1, he has superpowers”. This is the quality of character who are blessing us with their interest in what we do; it’s pretty neat.

Jason: The other interesting thing with that conversation is, we rolled up and he had our reverse flag zip-hoodie on. John said “Hey man, nice sweatshirt”. He looked back and said “Yeah, did you do it?” Then he saw we had GORUCK (written) on the truck, and he’s like “Oh, I see now”, but think about that man – to him GORUCK is synonymous with the Challenge. People want to talk about things that bring them together, and the Challenge is such a personal experience that people still call (the event) “the GORUCK”.

What’s next? Duffle bags? Messengers? Outerwear? New Colors?

Jack: To quote Jason, “More, better, faster, gooder”. We are busy doing all kinds of things. But the process where we conceptualize a future product through the design process to the testing, prototyping, using it in the Challenge, etc. etc., that’s given us a platform where using those guidelines the sky’s the limit for what we are able to make. We feel we can do anything we decide to do; it’s just a question of timing.

Jason: The other thing I always tell Jack is “Hey dude, it’s cool if you just want to rest on your laurels and say GR1’s a great bag; that’s cool with me”. (both laugh)

Jack: It is pretty cool, Jason.

“He thinks when he wears his GR1, he has superpowers”.

One last question, and we’re quoting Jason here: “We have the highest attention to detail in the world, and have the highest quality in the world”. As newcomers in the bag-making world, how have you attained such a high level of production?

Jason: Unrelenting standards and a highly-tuned case of OCD trained by the US Military. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us! I’m usually the one doing the traveling to other people’s places, so it’s really cool you came to our place in Bozeman.

The post Carry Conversations :: GORUCK appeared first on Carryology - Exploring better ways to carry.

I am having the best time these past few years that I’ve had since 1975.

People call you the Carryologist in Chief.

(Laughs) I haven’t been accused of that in person yet, but cool.

The Mystery Ranch brand really seems to be growing; business is going well?

Yeah. Between the avalanche pack and the ski pack we’ve been getting more awareness in the skiing and outdoor worlds, and we may have had some real effect on how military loads are carried here and in Australia, Canada and a few other places. It’s pretty darned exciting! Having launched Kletterwerks this spring in Japan and Korea, and now launching across the U.S. and into Europe, I hardly know what to think! It’s like we’re a real company!

You are in so many markets and are aggressively becoming a global brand. What motivates you to keep doing new things?

Really interesting problems, really interesting people – and the people we have here which have led me to continue to look at new things. Between doing stuff on the fire line and now edging over to military and a few other places. We’ve had more going on with Levi (Buckingham) right now with some international projects, and D3 (Dana Gleason III), who has really taken on the Kletterwerks line – and has basically done some really nice reworks of my old original classic packs plus a few new pieces. He’s getting back from a few more days in Berlin this evening.

It’s just exciting! We are able to have some real effect and we are able to build better packs for a few people and it’s a gas!

That’s incredible. Along the lines of Kletterwerks, I’ve read you designed the whole line in two weeks…

Well back in 1975 I had been repairing equipment for about 2.5 to 3 years before that and had done a number of individual designs – only one of which came with me here to Bozeman which was a simple hip sack, and in the first two weeks here in Bozeman I didn’t really know anybody and we had the machines and we had most of the materials and I had some uninterrupted time… I can’t tell you we designed every single part of the Kletterwerks but the original Terraplane was designed, a daypack we called the Summit Pack – which was kind of a classic panel loader daypack, a piece called the Day Pack, which was a unique design that had a zip around the top. One of the earliest packs to have compression straps, the Rock Pack, which is something we are going to be reintroducing in about another month at the Capsule Show in New York. There were about a half dozen packs that fell out in that period of time and they all had similar visual vocabulary but I reached a critical mass and that was still the closest I’ve ever come to what I’ve heard called the “Flow” State – where things just kept on happening and it ruled my life for those two weeks.

D3 (one of Dana’s sons) you mentioned took the design lead with the Kletterwerks bags; you’re not thinking about retiring again, are you?!

I try and make most mistakes once, if possible, then go on to more interesting mistakes and I don’t think I’ll ever retire. I am becoming a little more accustomed to being able to work with multiple other designers who are really good in their own right, and they are able to work on their own to a great degree and I am able to help direct by figuring out the problems we need to solve and it works great. Although I am about to put everything else aside and drop into about ten days of hardcore design by pretending I’m not here – pretty much within an hour after you’re gone.

Along the lines of design, how do you design new products? Do you use CAD programs like Rhino?

The real core of it is thinking about the need of the user of the bag and what their expectations are going to be. When we are building something for the outdoor market or the lifestyle market, that’s quite a bit more difficult than when we are building for the military or the firefighters because in the lifestyle market or outdoor market we are picking from a much broader base of visual design cues. The look of the pack becomes quite important, and how you interact with people and their self-image while using the gear, it’s always a crap shoot, I don’t know how other companies do it, except it seems to involve an awful lot of sketching, some collages and other things… We tend to do that work “in the head”, then try and turn out pieces that are really performance-based, then the look comes after that.

“Gear not art” (Mystery Ranch slogan)

Basically. In some ways it means that we will never have a collection of 15 new book bags per season, we just don’t operate that way. Other companies that do, serve that market much better. A lot of what we do spins off functional designs… Doesn’t mean it can’t be pretty, we love to make it pretty or handsome, but form is following function.

With such a phenomenal career in carry, what are pieces, features, achievements that stand out most for you? What are you most proud of?

Most proud of!? It’s like which child is your favorite! (Laughs) The stuff I did at Kletterwerks really came the closest to coming out of a vacuum, and helped create a visual vocabulary for us – that was pretty cool, yet it passed by for me in just a few years because of business differences with partners. I went on and was precluded from building backpacks for five years, and was coming up with a lot of the basis for modern camera bags. We started out Mojo Systems the same year that Lowepro started out, we were neck and neck for the first two years there before they went overseas and we did not. We kept building for professionals.

We built some of the early computer bags and bags for video gear and a lot of protective equipment. That is where we came up with most of the materials we use in modern framing now: Fiberglass, high density polyethelene plastic (HDPE) and a number of other materials we co-opted much more for shaping camera bags and dealing with impact resistance that turned out to be excellent for building internal frames.

The Dana Design stuff ultimately turned out some of the best internal frames in the world. (Dana Design) was our first unambiguous, market-leading, huge success. It worked out great! Amongst all of these things was building the business, which means building the social system. We built these packs within and tried to build (the company) so that acknowledgment was given, in more than just “Here, here’s your wage” to the people who actually build this stuff. Building the stuff and getting it done right each time is an absolutely essential cornerstone to all of this. It’s simply regarded as a throw-away detail in most companies, they are just going to get it done cheaply and that’s that. It’s an art form. Finding an entire group of customers who truly needed what we do, on a day to day.When we got into Mystery Ranch, that was huge because that gave us another range of fascinating problems to work around, where we’ve been able to have a substantial effect for hudreds of thousands to millions of people. To improve their lives and that is really addictive!

Seeing people who use the stuff after 10 or 15 years, and love it, and it’s part of their life, and in some ways a small part of their self identity, that’s really addictive. That’s cool.

We’ve gotten a few awards on packs through the years… Awards mean nothing.

That is very cool. You have a reputation for building durable products; how is that achieved in design and manufacturing?

Well, it’s achieved in both places. When you set out to build something, there are a number of expectations because we started out doing repairs, we started out with a real vision of what failure is like. We want to be able to avoid that kind of failure. That’s one reason we have not gone that far in ultra-light gear because that gear is engineered with one purpose above all – to be lightweight. In a lot of cases, that means you have a definite lifetime built in. We’ve done things I would call semi-light but in those cases we tend to build in a fair amount of frame because we’ve just seen way too many cases where if things go according to plan and you are going with a 15 lb or 18 lb load and sometimes when they don’t you have to go with 30 lbs (meaning taking others’ weight while in the field). The comfort of the pack on the back we’ve always regarded as a result of the machine, the pack, the device for transferring load as opposed to an outgrowth of “the load is almost nothing so it’s not hard to carry”.When you are designing something to be durable, you can design it a couple of ways: You can design it with heavy duty materials throughout and then layer on more and more levels of protection or, the way we try to approach it is start with a reasonable strength of material, which is why we tend to use an awful lot of 500 denier, not exclusively, we’ve played with dyneema and several variants, earlier than that spectra and spectra rip stops.

“A lot of what we do spins off functional designs… Doesn’t mean it can’t be pretty, we love to make it pretty or handsome, but form is following function.”

But we find that durable design is part and parcel of building something that is a relatively efficient design. We try and use seams to channel force, and that is one reason you see some of the shapes on our packs.We try to, instead of using double bottoms that are thousand denier or truck tarp material on the outside which we see in some things, we use the same weight of material on the inside as the out, but we do some tailoring tricks to shrink the inner layer so it takes all the tension of the load and the outer layer is left loose which makes it much more effective than a chafing layer or a layer that avoids abrasion and does not allow moisture to penetrate it as quickly.It’s paying attention to an awful lot of details and it is building the packs so that you are not inducing stress points that can be avoided. Things like running compression straps over zippers instead of sewing them in next to them (to avoid) concentrating force on zippers. Taking a hard look at how materials are actually produced, what the content is and then using it properly, we get into little tiny tricks like our zipper pulls are basically out of the same catalog as everybody else’s, but we tend to get them with a mid-metal plating on them, which produces a much harder surface that doesn’t wear away on the inside of the zipper channels, and so our zippers, even though it is the same coil zip and out of the same catalog, we are able to get roughly 5-6 times better lifetime out of it than the pretty painted zippers.Repair controlled a lot of it, and experience does too. So does a wish to make new and interesting mistakes instead of repeating boring old ones.

Packs are what we quite often call the answers, but the questions actually in a lot of cases are the most interesting parts.

What bags do you carry daily?

I carry one or two variations of our 3Zip designs. Our 3Zips are something I’m hugely proud of. In the civilian market we build it for skiing and it’s built so you can just grab the top of the pack at the vertex of the two zippers that come down from the top and just rip it open. That is something, because of the angle of zippers, we’ve minimized the wear on the zips and they will last for many years being absolutely abused. The ability to open the whole main bag without everything else spilling out is great.That is something we’ve had pretty good success with in the ski world; in the military world it turned out to be a perfect combination of access and toughness. There, we do tens of thousands into the US military. The Australian military is issuing it to every one of their guys – called diggers, and basically they love it. It’s been very heartening, that it started out as a ski pack in what we would call a gay selection of colors and it migrated into some of the hardest to work with environments on earth. You can’t imagine what the first supply sergeant said when I said “Yeah, we’ll just build the camouflage version of our Sweet Pea pack.

It seems like a lot of people are into that tri-zip design; it was recently used in a CamelBak.

That was actually a licensed variation. We’ve had a relationship with CamelBak for a number of years, and it’s not a matter of “they own us or we own them”, I can assure you neither is true, but we came up with some things that we cooperated on for a number of years and they had done us some favors so we licensed that design to them. So it’s not only the 3Zip, but our stretch adjustment system, sometimes called the Futura Adjustment System as well.  It has helped improve carry for a lot of people who take hydration seriously.

Are you likely to try more cross-company integration in the future?

We’ve done one or two collaborations in the fashion world and we are probably going to be looking to do some more down the line. In the outdoor world, probably not so much because this stuff is starting to become a little more available with the Kletterwerks line, which is the first stuff we have sold into stores in almost a decade, as opposed to selling ourselves directly which is how we’ve done business most of this century.

One final question. With a global community of carry nuts reading these words, what should we have asked you?

(Laughs) There are a lot of different things, I suppose. I have to tell you…especially when we start dealing with what people in Korea or in Japan or Australia or Germany look at as local differences that matter to them. Being able to travel around some and plumb those differences, and build things that work for each group is fascinating. It’s not that our backs are so entirely different although there are minor differences here or there, it’s a matter of not just the backs but the expectations can be different… Being able to build things to a bit more of a local environment as opposed to building what we build in the US because we are purely in the US is a fascinating venture. The collaborations that can come out of it are going to be extremely entertaining over the next few years.

—

This post was pulled together with a lot of help from John Canfield – JC was instrumental in organising the interview with Dana and helped source the imagery. Thanks, John.

The post Carry Conversations :: Dana Gleason appeared first on Carryology - Exploring better ways to carry.

Patrick, the owner of Kifaru, has a long history in hunting & camping packs. What drove you to connect with him and add a military/tactical facet to Kifaru’s offerings?

In the early 2000s all the technical advances with suspension designs and internal frames were happening in mountaineering. The people making military packs were just general military manufacturers making simple packs with no frills, no suspension design, and very little attention to ergonomics or comfort. As an ex-military guy myself, I’d always wanted to see mountaineering-grade packs in the military market. Patrick Smith is one of the pioneers of the internal frame mountaineering pack, along with Dana Gleason, Wayne Gregory, Dick Kelty, the Lowe Brothers, and a few others; however, it was Kifaru’s suspension philosophy (thinner, more flexible, and more contoured suspension straps), their USA-only manufacturing and materials, and their pride in customer service that drove me to try to connect with Patrick. I contacted him in November of 2001, and we immediately understood each other’s goals and ideas.

By June 2002 we’d gone live on the website with two tactical packs and a few pockets, on the way to becoming the first mountaineering company with a full line of military packs.

There must be a major sense of responsibility making packs that go into life-threatening situations; what’s that like?

Of course I want to make sure I deliver the best possible product when people’s lives might rely on them, but when I started working on the tactical line I already had faith in Kifaru’s quality. The hunting and camping guys are way out in the backcountry and carry game out on their back in conditions that can be dangerous or deadly; when it’s -20°F and your shelter goes down, things can get bad. So no, even when I started working on the tactical line I never had to worry about something failing and putting someone in danger. Our military packs have done multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and they still hold up. We’ve heard of a guy’s bag surviving being dragged three miles in the sand with a big gun strapped to it, a guy whose fully loaded bag fell 500 feet out of a helicopter and didn’t burst a single seam, and tons of other stories that confirm our faith in our products.

Do you try out other brands’ packs to benchmark your stuff? Who else is nailing it these days? Are there any designs or features you wish you’d thought of out there?

Absolutely we test everyone else’s stuff. It allows us to see what problems they’re addressing and how, gets our minds working, et cetera. Competition is great, and for us it’s usually friendly as well. Dana Gleason’s Mystery Ranch is our biggest competitor, but we respect what they’re doing a lot and send people to them for certain things, and vice versa.

Conversely, what kinds of mistakes do you see being made in carry these days? Are there things that you see other manufacturers doing that drive you nuts?

I won’t name names but there are a whole host of mistakes displayed on the wall at REI. I don’t understand why so many packs use stiff, thick waist-belts; they’re terrible for mobility, don’t allow for even distribution of weight, and cause hot spots around your iliac crest [the outer point of your hip bone]. I also don’t like seeing shoulder straps sewn straight to the top of any bag large enough to need a waist belt. Without torso-length adjustment to actually get the waist belt on your waist, those waist belts are just decoration.

“We’ve heard of a guy’s bag surviving being dragged three miles in the sand with a big gun strapped to it, a guy whose fully loaded bag fell 500 feet out of a helicopter and didn’t burst a single seam, and tons of other stories that confirm our faith in our products.”

Tons of tactical bags are being bought by college kids and city hipsters these days; do you think they’d be better served by other products or is the fact that they’re buying quality stuff the most important thing?

A lot of people buy tactical bags for aesthetics, but others do use the modularity and appreciate toughness, and I don’t know how to tell them apart so I don’t judge really… I’m always happy to see people using quality gear. That being said, tactical bags do not always signal high quality. There are a ton of offshore manufacturers that take quality tactical gear and reverse engineer cheap knockoffs to look similar, but make them poorly out of low quality materials so they can be sold for $59.99. These are just landfill waiting to happen, and God forbid someone actually rely on them in a dangerous situation. Obviously not everyone can afford a $380 Kifaru X-Ray, and there are lots of good cheaper options out there, but the folks who buy high-end tactical stuff do appreciate quality and I’m happy about that.

None of Kifaru’s offerings are particularly work-oriented, have you thought about making something in that direction? What do Kifaru employees carry to work?

We use a ton of different bags. We adapt lots of our tactical bags for EDC, and we like some tactical crossover products like TAD gear. We’re considering adding an urban line, but we’re taking our time researching. Who is the market? Will they pay for our quality? Colors? Fabric weights? Any work-oriented products we’d consider launching would have a Kifaru twist: lots of mountaineering and tactical features in an urban disguise.

We see a lot of direct-to-customer sales models when it comes to more expensive, made-in-America offerings. Are you happy with that model? Have you ever considered moving to a more traditional dealer-based model, or do the added costs outweigh the benefits?

Patrick’s first company, Mountainsmith, was based on the dealer model. I think after that he was just tired of the experience. Dealer networks mean you’re in the business of collecting debt, there’s another middleman taking his cut – our bags are expensive as it is – and there’s way less connection to customers. I have a toll-free line directly to my home, and all our customers can contact me 24/7 with any questions they might have. Also, there’s a certain level of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ when you work with dealers. Instead of relying on solid design principles and true innovation, companies have to scramble to make sure they have more doodads than their competitors. I’m not saying it doesn’t work for some companies, but it’s not something we’d consider doing right now.

“There are a ton of offshore manufacturers that take quality tactical gear and reverse engineer cheap knockoffs to look similar, but make them poorly out of low quality materials so they can be sold for $59.99…God forbid someone actually rely on them in a dangerous situation.”

Who gives you the best feedback? Forums? Military personnel? Or do you just trust yourself to get things right as a test subject and understand the market?

Forums and blogs are huge, I can see what people love or hate, where they’re having problems with currently available gear, et cetera. Obviously you have to read between the lines a lot, but they inspire us to come up with ideas and solutions. I’ve also got great military and law enforcement contacts, who keep up with how combat is changing and how their carrying needs are changing. So yeah, we test our own stuff and I have strong visions for the products I work on, but we do work with people we trust for feedback and as beta testers.

So, Carryology readers, what do you think? Should dedicated mountaineering and tactical manufacturers like Kifaru look at working on urban EDC bags? Or would that be like turning an original Hummer into a hybrid electric vehicle?

The post Carry Conversations :: Kifaru appeared first on Carryology - Exploring better ways to carry.

What’s your current bag choice?

Right now I’m using a mix of a KILLSPENCER Original Wax Black Filter Twill Utility Backpack, KILLSPENCER Black Leather Weekender 2.0 with a KILLSPENCER Parachute Shoe Bag and a KILLSPENCER DOPP Kit to round it out.

Three people/brands you’d love to work with and on what type of project?

Marmol Radziner. *Build a Complex.

Astronauts & Indians. *Have a custom collection of clothing made for me.

OVM.  *Anything creative.

When you’re not working, what takes most of your time?

Music. Sketching. Tours.

Where do you find inspiration?

Museums. Workshops. Studios. Nature…

Other hobbies include?

Hand weaving. Classical instrument lessons. Swimming.

Three non-work related places you frequent the most?

Handsome Coffee Roasters, James Jean’s studio and the Natural History Museum.

I am?

Focused.

Tell us something you dig and disrespect in the world of carry?

I dig new processes and methods. I disrespect volume and people in the business who aren’t pushing themselves to make better products.

“There’s so much competition, but most companies aren’t trying to make the best products they can. They’re trying to make products good enough to make money.”

What wallet is in your pocket?

A prototype.

One tip about carrying better?

Less. But better.

A website like you?

OVM Love.

What are you most proud of?

I’m most proud of the upcoming products and relationships I’ve built with the members of our SPECIAL PROJECTS INNOVATION TEAM.

What percentage of your time are you on a computer?

10%

When and where are you most creative?

I’m most creative after midnight. That’s when I’m away from the office and the machines and ideas flow.

Who do you bounce ideas off and/or get inspired by?

I have a small group of mentors. These people are amazing at what they do. I give them products and they use them, and give me feedback on how to improve the designs, construction, etc. I’m so lucky to have such amazing people interested in supporting the vision.

Do you work from an open, closed or home office?

I work in our workshop in downtown Los Angeles. It’s got a lot of natural light, tons of tools and machines, and a powerful creative spirit.

What’s the process and time of going from initial concept to finished sample for a product?

I set up our factory or workshop so I can design, develop, manufacture, photograph, launch, sell, and ship a new product all in one day. What’s cool is that I can do that, but the reality is that designing a perfect product in one day isn’t smart. So typically I spend a few weeks or months on a product. Make a prototype, test it out. Make changes. Make a revision of that prototype, test it out. Make another revision etc. Some products take 6 months of testing and revising and others take about a month. Once I feel that we’ve reached perfection and there’s nothing I can do to make this product better, then we launch it.

Do you work best alone or in teams? Day/night?

I work best alone, but in order to keep up with the demand of the business I have a very strong team I depend on to execute daily tasks. I work best at night when coming up with new ideas or developments, and work best during the day executing the ideas I come up with at night.

What fascinates you?

I’m utterly fascinated by and still don’t understand how commercial air travel exists. Flight in general is so amazing and mind-boggling. Also I’m fascinated with how big the world is and how many people, cultures, ideas, and ways of life there are.

Explain what makes good carry sense to you?

Simplicity. Ease of use.

What challenges have you become aware of when designing products?

Longevity. Endurance. Consistency.

Access to materials, quality of finished product?

Putting together all the pieces to the puzzle, then assembling that puzzle, photographing and launching it, then selling it and shipping it is SO COMPLEX. There are so many parts + pieces that it’s overwhelming.

Organization, better carry related materials and actually helping us carry better?

I don’t want to carry anything. Ever. But we have so much shit to lug around with us. If I can get to a point where I don’t have to carry anything with me, then I can stop designing bags.

Selling against established brands, online versus offline?

I guess the challenges of selling anything is getting the word out there. There’s so much competition, but most companies aren’t trying to make the best products they can. They’re trying to make products good enough to make money. So there’s a ton of room to win in the marketplace if you focus on making truly remarkable products.

We’ve read previously that you create all samples by hand yourself. Why?

With product development there are many parts of the process. I work with my team very, very closely to execute the vision I have for a product. So it’s like having 10 hands all working at once on one idea. The power of this allows us to perfect an idea much faster. I am there cutting patterns, sketching out designs, details, modifications, designing all the graphics, branding, and packaging; pretty much everything creative I’m in charge of that.

How important to you is the craft aspect of KILLSPENCER?

Craft to me is a method of execution. If you make something sloppy then you can’t say it was ‘crafted’. But if you take your time and make sure every detail and every stitch are perfect and thought out, then the craft of what you are doing gets taken to a whole other level. I am a big fan of sculpture. Sculpture that you can’t figure out how they did it… That’s craft. Or making anything that’s not easy to replicate. That’s craft.

How have you managed to merge together the two elements of aesthetics and utility?

I think every product starts with a set of problems you try and solve. For me it’s how can I organize all my shit and not look like a slob in the process. I think it’s all instinctual and done with the heart.

Is sourcing your materials hard? And are the materials limited in quantities, thus making pieces limited?

Sourcing may be one of the hardest parts of the process. You have to be fierce in the search for a consistency and quality. So we are, and the product shows. We are so proud of our work and everyone who owns one of our pieces responds. The use of reusable army materials is one of the most talked about elements of the KS story.

What in your mind is also helping create the KILLSPENCER brand and making it stand out from others in your market?

I think when you have all the pieces to the puzzle in order, people take you seriously. I think our work speaks for itself and that is the core of what carries our brand.

“Craft to me is a method of execution. If you make something sloppy then you can’t say it was ‘crafted’. But if you take your time and make sure every detail and every stitch are perfect and thought out, then the craft of what you are doing gets taken to a whole other level.”

Can you explain the idea behind the Gruber method and are you still able to practise it?

The Gruber method is a drum technique that was originally developed by Freddie Gruber, the original drum teacher of Buddy Rich. This method teaches you ‘limb independence’ so you can have control over each of your limbs at the same time. When practiced, you can be playing five different patterns at the same time.

Music/carry seem to be major loves in life. Are you thinking of ways to combine the two?

I’ve invented a bunch of products for the drums and made them. It’s my goal to make all the music for the films we make, but that hasn’t been fully realized yet. I’ll have a music studio in the next phase of our workshop expansion. Hopefully before 2013.

“I can design, develop, manufacture, photograph, launch, sell, and ship a new product all in one day…but the reality is that designing a perfect product in one day isn’t smart. So typically I spend a few weeks or months on a product.”

Is the military/utilitarian thing something that interests you outside of bags?

Oh yes. I appreciate that level of performance, function, and operation. I’m very detail-oriented and meticulous, and have always responded to all things technical.

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