00:00:13 Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Meeta's Gear Talk podcast with your hosts Janest Hotels and Jordan's budd Today we are joined by Cam. I'm gonna mess up his last name, rent Singer. Did I say it right? Cam? I got it? And then um, Cam is the founder owner of Nemo Equipment. And if you uh haven't heard an Emo equipment, you must have been living under a rock. If you go into any ri I these days, uh, you don't have to walk probably more than ten yards into that store and you're gonna see either a camp chair, sleeping bag, tent uh probably I don't know, a few other items made by Nemo Equipment. Um, they've been at it for a long time, make some super quality gear. Um. But we're not really here to talk about Nemo in particular. But Cam is just going to talk to us about some general gear stuff, which we'll jump into in a minute. But uh, cams or anything I miss that you'd like to add to. Uh, just like a general bio of yourself that you'd like to add in for our listeners. Yeah, that that's that was a good That was a good introduction, Yanna. So I just would say first, it's a super pleasure to to join you guys. This one's been a little while in the making, so thank you for for having me here today. We had to make a whole new podcast, you know, just to make a spot for you, right, That's right, that's right. The media, the regular Mediator podcast doesn't get technical enough for for for a guest like you that can dive into the technical like the super super technical aspect of gear that we're gonna do today. So anyways, go ahead. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm stoked to to be here to talk about here and talk about some of that technical stuff. I just add to my background, UM, I went to school for industrial design, so I'm I'm a maker in the in the first place. Though I quote run the business these days, I'm still very involved in the in the product design and development. Having said that, UM, I'm going to talk about some things today. I'm sure that I'm not the world's expert on uh you know, we have people on our team who are, um, you know, more qualified in materials and engineering things like that, but I still am very involved. So hopefully I can share some good knowledge with your with your listeners. And I should also say I didn't grow up hunting. I discovered hunting in no small part thanks to to Steve and Ronnella and his writings years ago, and and really have become a passionate sportsman myself. So for that reason also, I'm honored to be here. Great. Yeah, we're happy that there's a large group of you. I think they can that you find yourself in right, that people have have come to hunting, probably through uh, Stephen Ronnella's you know, multifaceted media, um journeys. That's right, all right, well let's jump right in. Camp sort of gave us some ideas of what we could talk about when he was on, and the list is long, we're not gonna be able to get to all of it. But what really caught Jordan's and my eyes was that, you know, being that you've been in this business for like twenty five years, you're you really had some points sort of just talking about like sort of what you've seen and like the changes and obviously there's been a lot of different changes, but specifically speaking about like what drives the products that our companies are making. Um, without explaining the whole thing, why don't you just jump right in Cam kind of kind of tell me your initial thoughts on that, and then Jordan, I can pick your brain a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right, honest. You know, UM, when I set out to do any amount in the first place, which was twenty years ago and in a few months, um, I was a senior in design school, it was actually my kind of senior thesis project to finish up design school. Incorporated the business that spring, and then moved into our our first office a few days after graduation. Um I was you know, I was young and idealistic. I didn't have a lot of bills to pay. Um, I hadn't run a business before. My business plan actually said I would be profitable in six months. It took about twelve years to to make that happen. So you know, I had a lot to learn. But um, but I had a few convictions to begin with, and and one of them was I wanted to make really great gear and really be part of improving the experience of of being outdoors. And I think that's that's true of really all the iconic brands, high end, especially brands we would think of the founders. I'm sure we're driven by a similar passion. Um. But what I found you know over these I just want to interrupt real quick. Was when you were thinking about making really good, great gear. Were you already in in that moment being like, man, there's space for more really great gear, or like I'm being let down by the current offerings. Is that where your head was at. I was, you know, and the industry and the consumer product world has changed a lot since then, so I think when we look around today this would be less obvious. But twenty years ago, there was still actually a lot of white space. I mean, I mean there were there were still a lot of products yet to be invented. Um, there was a lot of improving still to be done. Um. So I you know, I looked around. Actually, I got the mountain Gear catalog in the mail a couple of times a year, and that was kind of my basis for sort of seeing what was out there for mountaineering and backpacking gear. And I noticed, you know that it was pretty much the same stuff year after year, and uh and so yeah, I was, you know, and some of it was being years old and pretty idealistic and naive again. But um, but I I saw a lot of opportunity and at the time I was actually working for M I T, paid for by NASA to to work on space suit designs. UM. I had an office at M I T. So I was surrounded by you know, engineers on the one hand and product designers on the other. And then on the weekends, I was heading off to the mountains. So I had this picture in mind of kind of merging all those things together. But back to your previous question, Um, you know what I've noticed in a couple of decades since is I think as a result of this culture that we've been in of kind of measuring our success to some degree by the amount of stuff we surround ourselves with the world. Is you know, there's been such a proliferation of things and and such a drive to make those things less and less expensive. Um. The quality has largely has been a victim in many cases of that. And and I think when you're doing serious activities like backcountry hunting, where you're really especially in certain moments, depending on the gear um to perform or to keep you safe, even it's still worth it to too to buy the best stuff. And uh, and then the question becomes, how do you discern the difference between really high quality things and not so quality things, so you're not wasting your money. And I think that's what you're getting at is is maybe something explore a little bit today. Yeah, like I wanted to see, like you know or here you talk about like, you know, the change the changes that you just explained and have seen over twenty years of you know, probably in your competitors. But I guess can you give me some examples that you saw and you don't have to name any um of your competitors or you know, other outdoor brand companies names, but just give me an example of like how that would actually come to fruition totally. Yeah, let's make it concrete so you know, and and I won't disparage any brands, but I can give some positive examples of some things, um that really exhibit quality and have lasted. And I can also maybe I'll start up by just relaying one of the first lessons I learned about quality as I came into our industry was around coatings. So today NEMA makes variety products as you mentioned, but we started out just as a tent maker, and a really important part of of making a tent, of course, it is making it waterproof. And there's basically two different polymers that are typically used to make a tent waterproof, either polyorthans or silicones. And we can get now that is that is that the fabric you're talking about, or the coating on that, that's the coating. That's the coating on the fabric. And we could nerd out and kind of go deep on that. But but just holding that notion for a second, we decided in the early days of EMO that that your athens was the direction we were going to go. And uh and and so, you know, a couple of years into NEMO, we had been you know, making developing at that points tends, making a lot of samples. UM. Eventually I started the company two thousand and two. Eventually we started sales in two thousand six. By the time we really kind of squared away the designs and we're ready to go to the market and go to market UM. And by say two thousand seven, two thousand and eight, we had had samples now sitting in our storage and our archives for two three four years. And I remember, I can't remember the day in the year, but I remember the moment of going into the sample room and pulling out a relatively old sample and as soon as I opened the draw string on the storage bag, just being hit in the face with this gnarly smell and pulling the sample out and it's all like stuck together and like like sort of like toffee um. The coating had just dissolved and totally degraded. And you know, for me, young guy entrepreted our own emission to make a great brand and make the best product, this was like, holy crap, what's going on here? Like, I'm gonna have to There's a lot I'm gonna have to learning. I get to get to the bottom of this, and and so that kicked off, you know, kind of a journey for us that took years of really understanding your athane coatings and kind of getting to the bottom of what's going on in the supply chain and how to control that. And the short of the story of what happened there is your thing codings as I understand it. We're actually really pioneered by the U. S. Military many decades ago as a means of waterproofing that had really excellent cold weather resistance. You know, it's kind of stay pliable regardless of temperatures and quite durable, and in our own domestic coating manufacturers really lead that process developed great chemicals and so the early polyorthine coatings were ether based um chemistry and would last many, many years. And as the sporting goods industry's supply chain moved to Asia, a lot of that kind of know how was lost and the supply chain sort of sort of the whole supply chain behind the cut makes so factories, all the the yarns, the chemistries, everything went with that of course to Asia, and before too long, ether coating started to get replaced by ester coatings because esther coatings are much less expensive, but esther hydrolyzes or breaks down with water quite easily. And so in those early days of email, we're having no idea that that's what we were doing. We were buying into this supply chain where quality had eroded because no one was really paying attention to it, and we were putting lawsy qualities allows equality your thane on those early samples. Um So that's that's an example of you know, in that case, sort of due to a migration of of kind of the know how um as supply chains have moved around the world. But you know, at the same time, I think you know, the consumer. I'm in the sort of post Amazon, post Walmart world that we live in. There's so much cost competition. Um, it's always putting pressure on brands that want to grow, particularly want to grow, you know, in the in the sort of bottom half of the market, UM, to lower prices even as labor costs go up, materials costs go up, and something has to give when you do that, and uh, and so over the years, I've seen, you know, the market increasingly being flooded with stuff that really isn't built to last. And a sort of an opposite example, I was thinking about this this morning and anticipation of this discussion of just a couple of products in my own life that have been remarkably high quality and two that come to mind for me. Or I'm an avid motorcycle guy. I've been a Duala spore guy for a long time. And um, when I was a couple of years in an Emo, I'm still not really paying myself much of the salary. I made a stretch and bought a BMW six fifty two car and the BMW Rally jacket to go with that, which is really expensive jacket at the time, and it was just I forget exactly, but it was a lot of dollars I still have now. Now you bought that jacket for aesthetics to go with that fancy bike or or was it because yeah, I mean, you know, I was twenty something years old. I wanted, like, you know, the beam or Duala sport with the awesome beam or rally jacket to go with it. But also you know, I was playing in trips to Mexico and Canada, and you know, wanted the performance features that they can't like the rally Jacket's got a lot of cool ventilation and and has a waterproof liner and um some really smartly engineered armor components and stuff like that. So it's you know, to me, it was it was a value in both being cool but also being you know, really delivering on that performance set. But I still ride with that this morning, I was out of my my bike. I'm still ride with that same jack at eighteen years later. And because it's red, it has some red components on it, and red pigment tends to fade faster than other colors. It's a little faded, but otherwise the functionality of that jacket is exactly the same as it was eighteen years ago, and likewise, I still climb, although I don't ice climb nearly as much these days. In fact, pretty and frequently in the last few years. UM, I still have the same pair of last pertiv in the Paul top boots I bought when I was in college almost thirty years ago. And I just want to say it's it's you know, it's hard to We can get into the details a little bit, but the challenge of making products that will do that Actually, you know, a pair of boots that will last you for thirty years, or a jacket that will you ride through rain and sun for eighteen years. It's hard and and requires you know, real investment in design and engineering, UM and testing, UM and and a lot of things that are very hard to sell on the shelf. You know, the quality of stitching and coatings and yarns and things that the customer are not going to immediately be able to identify when they're kind of staying there looking at something on the rack is really essential to to to meeting that kind of longevity. Well, let's just go back to like the tent example, when you're talking about the different uh your A thane codings, you guys obviously learned and went to the did you the ether was the good one? Yes, the ether coding, So did you go back to that? And then were there other companies that just continue to produce the esther base coding and can like just made a lesser product. It took a little while or the industry to figure out what's going on. I think, you know, we live in the in the sort of subset if you were to look at kind of our industry as as a pyramid of you know, the top of the pyramid being kind of the most high performance, most expensive, and smallest market products, to the bottom of the pyramid being the opposite of that. You know, we live in the in the top third of that pyramid, say um, and all of the brands essentially in that space, you know, are committed to making great product. That's how you you earn and retain your spot. Um kind of in that stack, if you will. But um. But it took the industry while to figure that out. I mean, you know, we we swapped notes with other competitor brands and retailers in the space and and collectively sort of put our heads together and rained in that supply chain over a matter of years and today you know that issue of hydrolysis as well understood, and you know you shouldn't be buying a quality tent or rain jacket or anything else that's coated with your athan and seeing it it's become really stinky and toffee like anytime soon, I see, so that this isn't like a thing where the consumer has to be like, all right, next time I'm going tent shopping, I need to check which you're a thing it was made with, because it's been figured out. It has been figured out by the high end brands. But it is the difference between you know, going into a specialty store and spending a few hundred dollars on a reputable tent brand and say, you know, buying a very inexpensive tent from a box store. Can you give a high level on the silicone coatings versus like a polly that Paul, you're a thane. Yeah, yeah, So silicon is great actually, and you know we try to use it where we can um it actually will retain more of the strength of the fabric. Like you can make a an apples to apples compared us, and you can make a stronger silicone coated fabric than than you're a thing coated fabric, so that would you know, that's almost always going to be very appealing. It's generally lighter to which is great. The challenge of it, as we know about silicone from other places in our lives, we see it as nothing wants to stick to it, so you can't seem tape a silicon tent. And over the years, some brands like Hilleberg was really at the front end of this many years ago, have developed stitching techniques kind of combinations of threads and needles and and kind of folding techniques for seams that will for the most part block water from coming through stitches. And a lot of that that that theory is actually shared with like the canvas tent industry, where if you use a thread that will absorb some water, actually it'll swell up and kind of fill the stitch hole and stop water from moving through it. Um But we have not found that too to be as reliably waterproof as taping a tent, and so though we've we've dabbled with it over the years, we generally prefer to use your theme based coatings. Nice interesting, so what about instead of seam taping. You just take the what's that stuff like seem grip seems steal and just seal the whole thing. You can do that. It's it's a you know, it's a pretty it's a pretty big burden on the consumer. Is kind of our outlook on that. Like, if we can deliver to you a tent that right off the shelf is going to be waterproof, we'd rather without other significant downsides. We'd rather do that than give you a tent and a tube of seam grip and ask you to take your very expensive high intent and try to do a halfway decent shoy. You know, so like you've tried this before, Jordan's it's a it's it's it's tough to do well. Um, it's it has you know a lot of v O c is. It's pretty smelly stuff. I mean, if you're you know, doing it in the house or the apartment, Um, it's it's pretty noxious. So if you know, again, our our mission. We did actually make a mountaineering town in the early days where where you had to seem grip it, but as soon as we figured out how to not require that of the customer, we moved away from it. Well, and how come how come a company you just can't do the seam ceiling itself? Well, in a sense, that is what we do. I mean by taking it, by taking it, yeah, I mean, you know, and the truth is you honestly, I think someday we'll look back and think stitching a tent is a pretty silly thing. Stitching anything you want to be waterproof is kind of silly because we're you know, we're punching the zillion holes in it and then we're having to go back and figure out how to cover all the little holes. Um. So, you know, another thing brands like us have work done over the years is trying to just weld tense together. There are many welded products, as we all know, out there at this point, but the challenge we found there is is around weight by the time you have enough coating or lamination on the fabric to create a good weld, because it's not really it's not the yarns that fuse together. It's it's either the coating that gets knifed on or the lamination that gets bonded to the fabric that becomes the glue. You know, because like hut glue, you know, when you when you put that steam through heat and pressure, that coating or or film melts and becomes the glue that joins everything together. By the time you have enough of it on there, you become uncompetitive in weight, you know. And if you think about like we're making two person tense, we and other high end brands are making two person tense in the realm of two pounds. I mean, that's that is not a lot of material, you know, you spread that out over a whole floor and canopy and I and you're talking about gossamer thickness stuff and and just having to really optimize everything. What's that term? You just use gossamer thickness. Yeah, like you know, just like really really thin, airy kind of stuff at this point. Interesting. Yeah, that's a that's an interesting point that even though it can't really be done today, that in probably ten years, there might not be a rain jacket that has stitching it anymore. Huh. We'd all love to move that way. I mean, it would it would deliver more value to the customer in a couple of regards. I mean, there's a lot of labor time in the stitching and seam sailing of a tent. You know, so welding, it would skip at least one step there, so it presumably could reduce some cost for the consumer. And then at the end of the day again, you know, if you're not punching a zillion holes and you don't have to go back and patch holes, and we do find you know, over the very long term, the seam tape is still kind of the Achilles heel of the tent. You're you're basically taping over holes. It's it's not the mechanical connection of a stitched seam that tends to get it's usually the tape over that um that's the first victim. So we'd love to get rid of seam tape in them in the future. I'll be looking forward to it, Jordan. I have a lot of questions just about these techy questions, but I really want to do get to like a real concrete example of something that like the listener can take home or the next time they go, you know, shopping at ARII or Sportsman's or whatever, and they're just like trying to figure out if the quality is there and if they're like it's worth it to pay that extra money when they whether it's you know, a range jacket that's you know fo bock versus the rain jacket that's a hundred, or you know the same thing, intense and sleeping bags. Like, is there just some sort of like tips or like you know, red flags you can like give to for people to look out for when they're doing their shopping to to you know, when they're looking for better quality gear. Yeah, for sure, you know. And before I before I say that, I just want to say too that, um I I still you know, all these years into our industry, I've accumulated a pretty good gear closet because you know, within our industry, we tend to swap gear with each other and offer you know, deals to each other and things. So I'm not for want of gear, and it becomes easy, I think, to get a little spoiled and complacent about just how expensive gear is. And you know, when we when we've met new friends over the years and you know, introduced them to the outdoors and they've got excited about camping, is always a moment when I realized, like it's it's pretty darn expecting, like you know, setting up the family and a couple of kids to to really do camping and do it with good quality gears is a big investment. And um, so I want to say in the first place, I think really the way to think about it is is you know, finding value, you know, for yourself based on what your needs are. And you know, it's kind of like if if you're just commuting to work, Um, then an ordinary car does a great job. You want to raise F one you need you need a Formula one car, And there's a pretty big difference in price, and there's a very big difference in the materials and engineering and design and construction and both are a value, right. It depends on the performance you're looking for. So you know, I think if you know, if you're going way out into the back country on a regular basis as a back country hunter, and you're needing to be self sufficient and you're you know, you're going to face some pretty rugged conditions, Um, that's justification I think for investing as much as you can and and and really gear that not only will perform again, but will also last. I mean, when when I think about my moto jacket and the fact I've had it for eighteen years, let's say it was a thousand bucks in the first place, which it wasn't that much, but it was quite expensive. How many lousy jackets I'm hight of bots to replace one after the other in eighteen years, and how quickly it would be a lot more than a thousand bucks. So I think that's that to me, that's sort of the framework through which to look at look at it um back to sort of the cues. You know. One that I note is just having been in our industry a long time and looked at a lot of we calm bombs or bill of materials because we're developing a product. You know, we're formulating a list of every single component and every every labor hour that's associated with building that, and that you know ultimately drives what the retail price needs to be based on, you know, what margin we need as as a business to support our business, and then the margin that the retailer needs plus you know, potentially paying sales commissions and import duties and other factors. Um. So I've looked at a lot of bombs over the years, and I know where are the places that you spend money and if you were a brand looking to sort of cut costs and have that not be super apparent to the customer, where you would likely do that. And you know, of course the obvious place you would look is is the stuff that's not going to be real apparent on the shelf, you know. So a great example for me, and again I'm just going to highlight, you know, a couple of brands as we're talking that you know, or products. I think that it really have been exemplary over the years. I've always since their early days of Arterics, I've been a fan and appreciator of of Arterics stuff. And and one of the things I actually became good friends with with one of the early employees of arc Tereks who's in our industry now rent some ex sales agency that we do some work with, and he told me many years ago that about fifteen per cent or so of the cost of making Artek's clothing. Now this is, you know, called ten fifteen years ago, but I presume it's still true today, will never be appreciated by the customer. It's completely invisible to them, you know, is in seam tolerances and codings and specs of of materials and findings like the little zippers and chords and things like that that the customer is never gonna it's not it's not sold on the hang tag, it's not on the website as a bullet points, and most customers will have no idea and it's just their unprincipled you know about trying to make the best quality thing possible. Um, if you don't have those kind of values and you're looking to deliver a lower price point, um and sort of hide you know, maybe have a lot of bells and whistles and a product, but kind of hide that you've cut corners. An easy place to do that is in webbing. And it's very hard to convey the difference between nylon and polyester and poly pro polypropol and webb webbing over a podcast. Um, we'll tell I think the easiest way too though to explain it the webbing is um because to me too, I'm kind of like webbing. What's webbing? You know? And I can think of like a a strap that's made of webbing. But like, tell me where you would find where webbing in outdoor product? Yeah, yeah, good point. I sort of take for granted that term. But yeah, so webbing is like the exactly as you said, you honest, it's it's like a heavy strap and it comes in different forms from down to like a shoelace, you know, to ah to the seat belt in your car. And you know, there's a number of different ways to weave it. It can be flat, it can be tubularum. But it's it's a very ubiquitous detail in the outdoor gear right like it's it forms the handles on things. It forms the the tie down straps on say, like on a lid of a backpack. You know where you would clip that in and then pull a strap. You know, that's webbing. Every strap on a backpack, every stall in this category, every strap, so you really, with with very few exceptions, you want those straps to be nylon. Nylon is is the strongest of the the polymers from which webbing is typically made. There's exotic stuff, aramids and things like that, but generally speaking, um nyline is going to be the longest, lasting, strongest choice. Polypropylene floats, which you know in some boating applications is interesting like it. It can make great lines for like a painter on a dinghy. It can be useful for it because it floats on water. Um but it's much weaker than nylon. It's also a lot less expensive. So I've seen so many bags, you know, on the floor of retail that are meant to to look awesome. You know, they've got all the bells and whistles, tactical looking stuff, pockets everywhere, straps everywhere, and you get up close and because I know that the tactle and visual differences, I can see right away that is not nylon webbing. That's polypro webbing. So that's that's just one of many examples. So is that something though that if you're say, you're looking at backpacks and I guess you could call the company, you know that if they haven't good enough customer service where you know, someone real answers the phone, or if you're on the floor, let's say it Sportsman's warehouse, if you're like asking the sales associate, Hey, is that nylon or polly pro webbing? Are they even going to have an answer for you? You know, it's it's a good question and maybe not right, which is sort of part of the problem. Um, you know, I think it reminds me of home improvement, you know, and you and I were talking to this recently, but just the difficulty these days of finding really skilled, reasonably priced labor. You know, just the challenge today of um finding quality work. I think there's just and this sort of back to the point I was trying to make in the beginning. It's there's a lot of really high quality stuff still out there in the world. I mean, you know, there are many brands committed to making great stuff that will last, but there's there's a lot of noise around that. And I think it's it's, you know, if you want to to really get the right equipment for yourself, there's kind of no choice today but too to put a little time into becoming somewhat of an expert, to try and accumulate some of your own knowledge, because I think you're right, Um, you know, there's you're not necessarily going to find that on the sales floor. Um, you know. I mean I think of you know, just all the furniture out there in the world, and I won't name any brands in a disparaging way, but you know there's some some popular expensive furniture brands charging thousands of dollars for things that doesn't have joinery, that doesn't you know, that's not it's not built to last. The optics are nice, but that old world skill of making something that will last for generations is harder to come by. And with that, I think the customer is less trained to look for it. And uh, And that's I think what we're getting at here too, is a lot of times customers aren't asking those questions, so sales staff don't have to have that knowledge. It becomes sort of a negative feedback loop. Insert this podcast, why we wanted to do this whole thing, Try to throw knowledge out there right now? Yeah, I would. I would hope that if you called, say, out of the backpack companies that we've been messing with recently, like Stone, Glacier, Excel, Gear, Kfaru, Mystery Ranch, if you called them, I'd imagine that someone on the phone will be able to give you a solid answer to that question, right, I think without it, with the brands you just named, I'd be very surprised if they couldn't answer that question, you know. And I think that's sort of back to what I was saying before, where I think what I'm getting at is kind of wanting to justify for your listeners why we continue as consumers to to buy from brands like that, right because you can get on Amazon right now, and finds a backpack for a whole lot less money than the brands you just named. And I think it'd be a rational question to say, why would I spend three d bucks on on a mystery ranch bag as opposed to thirty bucks on you know, this thing on Amazon that's got five great reviews and you know, And I think that the most generalist way to answer that is nobody in today's world, no brands makes an outsized margin. I mean, if you tried to to come to market, I'm making an enormous margin on things. With how accessible supply chains are now and how easy it is to sell things online, someone's going to undercut that price tomorrow, you know, like we're We're all like it is more and more of the case for companies like Nemo and every other consumer brand out there. It's, um, it's a hyper competitive world. UM it's a very transparent and very flat world. UM So, no one's robbing you and making like some ridiculous margin, um and just pocketing that. UM So. I think my the thesis I'm trying to to to share with your listeners is um is sort of why generally speaking, it's still worth worth it too to buy the higher quality gear and support the higher and brands. It's because it is turning into I think, with very few exceptions, those dollars are going to the ingredients that you need to have a piece of equipment that will do the things that we all as backup traanders want to do. Yeah, Okay, I'm gonna throw this out there because I just can't like let you go without asking this. I know we'll have you on another time, but give me like the like, seriously the thirty second answer too, because right on the heels or there's probably people listening right now going like, yeah, right, that's why you guys make it in China or Thailand or wherever overseas, and you can't tell me that you can't. You're not making it for super cheap and making a bunch of money on it. So if possible, try to give me like the thirty second answer that and we'll leave the deep dive to another day. But go ahead. Yeah, I mean, great question. Um, And when we have faced and and and wrestled with many times over the years, it's gonna be slight and more than thirty seconds. I was expecting it when when I when I started an email I I really I was actually really determined to do the manufacturing in the US. UM in in part out of just sort of pure kind of patriotism, but but all so in in large part because I wanted to be able to easily travel to to the factories and kind of you know, do development, um closely with them and learn, you know, learn from being able to be there, you know, in the chemistry factory, you know, in the yarn factory. UM. And and we have done actually a fair amount of manufacturing in the States over the years. We've had a pretty strong business with special operations UM. Kind of peaked around the bin laden Mission era UM. You know, and for a lot of those contracts we we had to UM to so items in the US. Yeah that might not be known to everybody, but like basically, if you do gear for the US military, it has to be made in the US of a correct Yeah, it's enough quantity it does. UM. That's called the very amendment UM. Yeah. So we you know, we've got some real experience with that in the category of cut makes so and I think that's a really important distinction. So there there are many items, many types of manufacturing where America leads the way UM and and unequivocally you know, still makes the best stuff. And and there may be little reason to to to source those items anywhere else in the world, except perhaps to to cut costs. But the reality is what we found, UM and what other high end brands UM and our space have found, is there aren't any Americans that want to sit at a sewing machine anymore. UM. That kind of work that cut makes so work, the skill set, the talent, the investment, and it has just moved to other parts of the world, and frankly in many cases other parts of the world that haven't sort of developed past. Wanting to say, I mean, I'd like to think that if you look at our sort of global value chain, that the jobs that are American in our value chain are the ones in my office in southern Hampshire, which are design, engineering, development, testing, you know, I mean, where we're innovating, we're adding value. I mean, they're great, they're well paying jobs where you know, we're we're adding a tremendous amount of value in that process. UM. The parts sort of further upstream that involve I'm dealing with tough chemistries, you know, and doing manual work like at a sewing machine. UM. Those have moved off shore, and the reality is ecosystems have been built up around those skill sets and other parts of the world that even if we wanted to say, move some piece of that to somewhere else, including sort of restoring it back to the US, it would be difficult to do it without moving that whole supply chain with it. And so we don't. We don't do a lot of manufacturing in China that per se. We've actually UM in the past done more than we do today. We've we've migrated out of China for various reasons over recent years. Um Uh. But by and large, that Pacific RIM region is the best place in the world to make high end product like ours. In every high end brand, essentially, UM goes to those places, you know for the best quality sewing, the best quality fabrics coming out of you know, Korea, Japan and so on. UM. So it's really good right there. You just nailed that. That was your ten second answer right there. And I know that a lot of people are gonna still shake their heads and you know, call you lie or whatever. We're going to have enough people on this show that will corroborate your story that I hope that down the line we will sort of maybe change you know, move the needle a little bit and people will go, Okay, I understand why they make that gear over there. Now, well, can I throw one more thing at that? So some years ago we actually appealed to UM Armies, the Army's Mann Tech Division Manufacturing Techniques Division, for funding to try to develop an alternative to selling this kind of back to something we're talking about earlier, and how I think someday we'll move past punching a whole bunch of holes, you know, in our waterproof products and then patching over them. UM largely for the reason that that that we could restore that. Like I think if we could replace sewing with more like a CNC kind of process, UM, that's that's a higher paying, more technical, skill oriented, sitting at a computer kind of job, which I think could be very viable and very competitive in the States. So I don't think for the long run there's no future in making products like this in the US. But I think as they're made today, they're actually not the most that the spice inside, it's not the most desirable jobs in American sides. Thank you. For doing your best, the best, a good job explaining it, and for trying to keep it short, because I know we could talk for hours and hours of why people make stuff over there, all right, So Jordan I both landed on this topic is something that we wanted you just to talk about because it's interesting to us. And I think that a lot of listeners, whether you're back country hunter or maybe if not a bad country hunter, but if you're you know, a camper, backpacker or whatever. But the new thing in installation, it's not that new. It's probably five or six years old, I guess, and at least, but it's like water proved down right. Yes, I'm always I'm always I want to just talk in general about insulation. But let's start with with down and well let's let's compare waterproof down to regular down, and then we can compare down to synthetics. But I was always I was thinking, well, that's the best thing ever. It's gonna be like waterproof down right. It's like you don't even need synthetics anymore. But then it's sort of kind of came about. People started, there were some whispers and everybody's like, yeah, but what if the codings on that on the down are actually like limiting how well performs. So give me the breakdown of of the waterproof down thing and then and then compare waterproof down and regular down like in the environment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a classic um and and great question. Um So down just continues to be this totally amazing thing, Like if you get the chance to, and you can google searching and see it. But if you look at a down feather under a microscope, pretty amazing little structure. And we haven't yet been able to kind of replicate, um, the fractal nature of that structure in a manufacturing process. I mean, what makes the the down feather such an effective insulators? You know, it has this kind of relatively rigid little spine which holds some volume, like it pushes some things away, It declares a little bit of airspace for itself, and then it fills that airspace with all these little teeny microscopic tendrils which which restrict air flow. And it's that restriction of airflow that that produces that insulating effect, and synthetic insulations come a long way. It's it's closer than ever to to to replicating the insulating power of the down feather. But but it is not. It does not match it UM. And so for that reason, you know, as you said, you honest, I'm brands and their suppliers have wanted to figure out how to overcome the one weakness of down, which is when it gets wet, all of that goes away. That little structure takes on water and kind of all those little tendrils that would stick out there and stop air from moving, they kind of fold in on themselves and ball up. So and I lose track of time now, but it was probably something like ten, ten fifteen years ago we started to see the first available treated down and Nemo is an early customer that, and it's it's proven to be I'M quite effective. As you said, anything you do that sort of adds some mass or chemis street to that down feather is inherently going to have a trade off. So you do see some very marginal decline and the dry performance of a down feathers as you treat it with things. But original so I'd say, by and large it treated, and it's and I should say to there, they don't become water proof. It's really a water resistance UM. But treated down feathers have have performed well, and I think is is it is a good choice. There's also you know, a whole universe of synthetic materials and and you know, and I think what it really comes down to for the consumer when making this choice is is really the amount of water you're going to be exposed to? And I think the tricky part with hunting is we're out at the worst time of the year to be able to answer that question reliably, because it's like, do you do know for sure that this fall it's not going to rain ever when you're out, you know, or even when you get into November and December, right, I mean at least where we are. I mean it's it's very well, might you know rain in December here? Um? But the question is, you know, is your even if it rains, is your bag really likely to get soaked? You know? And I think if it is, you know whether in your pack it's going to get soaked or in your tent, then synthetic remains the This this sort of safer choice. I think if if you have can have some confidence that you'll be able to keep your bag relatively dry. Thin downs natural properties are still tough to beat. So it's it's a hard still answer of a hard question to answer in absolutes the synthetic installation. Why does it perform so well when it's wet. It's hydrophobic, so it doesn't it doesn't want water, It doesn't want to absorb water. Okay, So therefore you still, even if you soak your bag, you're still going to have some heat retention value with that, Whereas if you were even the treated down, if that was to get completely soaked, um, it would not retain any here. Yeah, correct, you know, and we've all experienced this, right, like been get caught out, you know, in the rain and a puff jacket, say, and a down puff jacket, and it just the puff is gone when it's wet, right, And you know, again what creates insulating value in clothing and sleeping bags is air is just trapped air. So you know, if you're if you're down, puff jacket just completely loses its loft. It's essentially lost its insulating power. And on the other hand, you know, we all have been out there in a synthetic jacket and had it got wet and still had you remained kind of remarkably lofty and and that ability to retain some loft when wet is where you're getting some warmth when wet from a from a synthetic insulation. Yeah, I certainly as far as my is like personal plan for that migrated and this is a while ago, but definitely away from synthetics, even when I was going to Alaska a lot and just being like, you know what, I can use a completely waterproof stuff stack. Then it can be in my backpack, which can have another waterproof lining or maybe a rain cover over it, and it just doesn't come out until it's inside of the tent, you know. And that's kind of been the way that I've I've handled that situation and mostly just doing it going that route because of the weight. But I think now, is it true? Can you almost get just as light in a synthet in some of the new synthetic materials as you can in the high end down? Yep? It gets closer all the time, you know, But I think a way maybe to look at it, as you know, if you sort of go out to the extreme, what what does a high altitude not in her carry today? And it's still a down bag. So if you're looking for you know, minus four d degree performance. In other words, you know, end you want the smallest packing, lightest weight bag at those kind of temperatures, down is still leading the way out in those extremes. But you know, again, just thinking about it in terms of value for the consumer, um down is expensive and uh and if you don't need minus forty degree performance and you know you want um, you know, want to hedge the bat a little bit around things getting wet, like you know you're not you know, you you're worried that maybe that you know you're gonna forget to seal the roll top on that on your stuff sack, you honest, or or or you know, water is gonna you're sleeping with a tarp, you know, or you're in a floorless tent and in a super ultra light kind of situation or something, and groundwater may get on your bag. Synthetic can be a great versatile and and a little bit less expensive alternative. Yeah, I just bought sleeping bags for my two kids and they were synthetic. Saved me a couple hundred dollars at least, you know, could could you give a quick run down of like Phil powers A lot of times you'll see like you whichever. I was looking at a UM sleeping bag the other day and it comes in different options of phil powers and I'm like, well, can you give a quick Yeah, that's a good question, because I like, just because I sold sleeping bags, I have a good understanding of it. But I think right on the heels of phil power too, you can roll into sort of like temperature ratings and uh, that would be a good way to finish this out. Yeah. So so philip power is is kind of back to what I was saying about that this. So, first of all, it applies to down although personally I would love to see the industry move to more of a universal standard there that included synthetic um and we're actually contemplating that a little bit and how we might go about that. But you know, phil power applies to down feathers and kind of comes back to that that stiff little spine that's in the down feather and kind of its ability to create some volume around itself. So the most desirable down feathers are the ones that occupy the most amount of airspace with the least amount of weight. You know, So if the airspace is what makes insulation UM that makes a lot of sense, right You You want the the lightest weight bag possible that has the most loft possible, so I'm you know, simultaneously a lot aloft very little weight. So and then the way the foot power numbers work is the higher the number, the higher that ability to kind of make volume per weight. So when you get into the seven fifty eight D and above, which gets pretty exotic range, that's a pretty special and pretty rare little down feather that is creating this awesome little volume of air around it with very little weight, you know. And and because those those feathers are relatively special, um, that drives up the cost quite a bit because that's you know, hand picking out the most perfect little down feathers and uh and then organizing them by their ability to sort of create volume. And the ones you'll end up the most with the most of are you know, at the lower end of that range. And that kind of range. A good way for me to understand it's always worked is like, if you imagined three, let's just take three different film powers. And if you took three glass jars, say like a court sized jar, and you took um, just pick your favorite unit of measurement. But let's just say like an ounce each different type of feather. You had an ounce of six fifty and ounce of seven fifty and then ounce of nine hundred. It's the same amount of weight. But when you put them into that glass jar and separate ones, the six fifties gonna go up. I'm just making these numbers up. But let's just say two inches, the seven fifties gonna go up four inches, and then the nine is gonna go up six inches. It's still weighs the same, but you've got literally three times the amount of loft or fill in that n jar versus the six fifty jar. And again those are hypothetical, made up numbers, but that's basically how it works. Like for the same amount of way, you're getting a whole bunch more loft, which should make the bag warmer, right, yes, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, And just remembering that that that loft is exactly what your insulation is, that's what makes warmth to the question of the ratings, So that gets pretty wonky. And this is another rare area where Nemo and other specialty brands, UM and some of our retail partners are really trying to think if there's a if there's a better wave for the customer to to kind of organize this stuff. But today, UM we rate temperatures by three different scales, T comfort, T limit, and TE extreme And this is pretty nerdy, but essentially it's it's related to your metabolism and how you sleep at night. So a tea comfort rating is is based on you having to say, a slower metabolism and more likely to sleep cold, and a te limit is you tend to sleep a little warmer, and T extreme is actually the temperature at which it's believed is kind of the minimum temperature that a human being is going to survive. So you know, if if you know point being, if you know that you tend to sleep cold, then you want to be shopping on a tea comfort scale. That that's the scale that sort of correlates to to focus and you're saying that all bags now will kind of have three different numbers on them, it's it gets dicey. It's different, it's different by brand. UM in many cases two or three of those numbers will be indicated. In some cases it's only the T limit. Typically right now, men's bags are rated on a temp at scale, and women's bags are rated on a T comfort scale, and a brand may or may not sort of declare that. Um, but it's a pretty safe assumption that you know, if you're shopping for a men's bag, the rating is based on tea limit, and if you're shopping for a woman's bag today, um, it's based on tea comfort. And there's about it depends where you are in the temperature range. This is where it gets just ridiculously walky, but um, but generally speaking, it's it's about a ten or fifteen degree difference in temperature. So a woman's bag, say, rated at thirty degree, is that same exact bag would be rated at twenty or a fifteen degree bag for a for a quote man um. And you can see where this gets sticky too, because you know, some women's sleep hot at night or cold at night. Some men's sleep hot or cold at night. Um. So so correlating it to gender doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. It really should be the whole system should be based on just kind of how you sleep. Would be a lot easier for customers to kind of land in the spot where they end up comfortable. Yeah, I've definitely had you know, different zero degree bags, and I can I can tell you from a fact that I sleep way hotter and some of them than I do the other ones. Yeah, it gets, it gets, it gets real sticky. Um, i'd say, all, you know, and this is sort of back to something we were saying earlier, where you have your placing trust in a in a brand when you spend your money, right, And I think in any of the brands you named, honest or any of the brands, we would all agree or kind of you know, iconic especialty brands in this space, I think you can trust that they're testing at a reliable test agency and those are good. Um, those are good, honest published results. But you know, another thing that happens is no two bags are exactly the same, and no one publishes, including Nemo, no one publishes their bag temperature as sixteen point seven nine degrees. You know, we all they're all ten degree, fifty degree, twenty degrees. So there's a certain amount of rounding that's happening there as well. Um. You know, depending on the construction of the bag in the insulation down for example, can settle within a bag. You know, so unless you construct a bag to handle that, and unless you take care of your bag and kind of fluff it up and pay attention to this, you can easily have cold spots. You can put a sleeping bag on a pad that doesn't match the insulating value of the sleeping bag, and that you know is an integral part of that sort of insulating envelope around you. So you could have a you could be in a minus forty degree bag and then laying on a sleeping pad that has in our value of one. You're squishing all the insulation below you in that sleeping bag, so it's basically doing nothing below you. And then you've got a in our value that doesn't match that minus four degrees and it could be zero degrees out and you're freezing your butt off. Right, You're thinking, what's wrong with this minus forty degree bag, But it's really a matter of having to pad the matches so it gets it gets wonky. Yeah, yeah, you gotta know how to how to use all that stuff together. Yeah, system, All right, we're gonna do a fix it segment. You're gonna throw out a hypothetical scenario. Um, you get to camp, you pack in, you blow up your sleeping pad. You know, you cooked dinner or whatever, you go to get back on your sleeping pad and it's deflated a little bit, So you've got some kind of hole or something in it. Um, where would you start? I guess, you know, let's do a hole first, and then maybe let's say it's leaking from the like the vowel stem type situation. What do you do? God, it's a great question and certainly a real world question. So the first thing I'd want to do is make sure that the valve is in fact operating correctly and closed all the way. It's pretty easy, depending on There's lots of different kinds of sleeping pad valves out there, but pretty easy to get a piece of grit, you know, stuck say under an oh ring or caught kind of in the interface of a cap. You know, and that's happened to me before. So I, you know, as much as you can want to kind of disassemble that, inspect it, make sure that it's not just a valve issue. Um, if you're sort of Once you move past that, the challenge then would become trying to locate where that leak is. And I find I have found over the years that most of the time, if I have a puncture in a in a pad in a pretty quiet, quiet environment like out in the back country, if you get everyone to be quiet around you, you just take a minute and sort of move that pad past your face. The combination of kind of feeling the air draft on your cheeks and listening carefully with your ear, I'm usually able to find that. So I kind of do a careful inspection all around see if I could kate where that hole was. Fixing that then will become a matter of do you think you can actually like pinpoint the whole or do you have to then maybe put on some water something to actually see the bubbles you can do that you have like a little soapy water can be great because then you know you've got soapy water on stuff. In my case, I've had pretty good luck. And really it's as much about your ear as it is about the little hairs and nerves on your cheeks. Um, if you kind of move that pad across your face, um, you're going to feel that little draft of air. And actually I find them usually able to really kind of zero in on that. And then most of the time, or say many times, you're gonna be able to when it comes down to once you're in the zone, you're going to be able to visually see, oh, there's a little slice that came from the pocket knife I left in my pocket or my keys or whatever you know, or the or the thorn on the ground or whatever it was. And then you're down to the matter of how you seal that up, and hopefully your pad has with it um some means of doing that, whether that's you know a little bit of like a your thane adhesive or a self adhesive style patch, which would make that pretty straightforward as long as it's small. Otherwise your best bet is going to be hopefully in your kit you've got some other manner of tape, like maybe some duct tape that won't be any sort of tape solution is very unlikely to be a permanent solution, you know, so you're you're still gonna most likely get air seeping out kind of through the yarns of the fabric underneath whatever that. Unless you can get a glue down in there to kind of seal that up, you're going to get a slow leak. So you know, that night might be about sleeping for a couple of hours putting a little bit more air back in. I'd probably want to to bolster that pad with taking some extra kit, like maybe take the foam out of your pack, or take some extra clothing, find some pine bows, some other things you know, that you could put under your pad, And particularly if you know it's late season and you're on frozen ground, on can kind of shore up the insulating power of the pad when you're applying the adhesive or tape or whatever you're doing. Would you do that with the pad completely inflated or deflated. No, you're gonna want very little air pressure in it because, particularly if it's like an adhesive, it's gonna be pushing air up through that. You know. So if you if you try to put a like a seam and grap like euthane adhesive over that and you have any air persian there, it's just going to be making little air bubbles up through that and sort of spoiling that connection. If you can do all those things, by the way, um, that's pretty sweet too. If you can get a little dab of some manner of glue on there to kind of lock up around where that hole is and then shore that up with some tape. There's no harm in kind of overdoing it. You'd probably have a permanent fix at that point. You may have a permanent fix. Yeah, and you'll know, I mean if you you know, if you make it through the night with you know, no very little apparent loss and air pressure, you're probably good to go, right because the next night, um, you know, you only let's say, you only need a pad really to hold air for eight or ten hours at the next Jordan likes to sleep about fourteen hours for most of us. Uh, that tenacious tape from gear Ade is a good uh is goo good tape ye that I carry with me that patch pads with before and uh yeah yeah. Still if you can seal that underneath that just because if you think of the fabric as a we've there's still little air gaps, like through those yarns and things. So even as great as a tape like that is, it can't get kind of down in there to seal up around to all those little yarns. So the best thing is if you can get a glue in there in addition to that. Well, Cam, thank you so much, man, We appreciate your time. We'll let you get out of here. But that was great. I learned a lot and uh hopefully Jordan did and everybody else listening, so uh, thank you, and um yeah, let's let's keep email on back and forth and come up with another list of fun, you know, techy gear topics to talk about and we'll have you back on here in a little bit. Sounds great, Well, thanks so much, guys. Truly an honor and a lot of fun. All right, thanks camp here camp cheers