We had the opportunity to spend the weekend at Troublesome Gap. It was nice to get away and also nice to enjoy camping on a campsite that I had the opportunity to design. The campsite has 100% positive reviews on HipCamp going back to 2022. This has been a fun project that guests enjoy tremendously. Reading the positive reviews and emails from guests is very enjoyable. We really wanted this to be an wonderful place to tent camp, glamp and overland
How to spend the weekend camping on Troublesome Gap
While camping, one thing you’ll end up developing are traditions. Some are big, some are gigantic, some are small, but all are valuable.
How to build traditions.
Over time, enjoyable repeated activities can grow into traditions. Or, traditions can happen by accident. Something may work well once, so you repeat it. By the tenth time you realize you have a tradition. Keep in mind that when you do something that is comfortable and enjoyable, you’ll keep doing it. You may find that it is important to your family to go camping on a certain date or a particular place because it brings back special memories and there is an expectation that you’re going to make more good memories—that’s a tradition.
Repetition builds traditions.
I’ll give you an easy example. There’s a restaurant in Winston-Salem, TJ’s Deli, that Connie and I tend to stop at when we’re headed for the mountains because it’s on our way. They have awesome, homemade sandwiches and to-die-for fried mushrooms. Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a fancy place, more like a hole-in-the-wall, but the draw is the food and the tradition. We order the same meal every time, a gigantic sandwich and fried mushrooms on the side—I always save some of the mushrooms for the remaining drive. Even when we travel with friends, we stop there. Every time.
Is having a meal partway to your destination part of camping? No, but it can be part of the entire camping experience. When we head west to camp, we usually work our departure around stopping at TJ’s Deli for a meal, which we both look forward to. The detour helps break up the trip and I think the tradition is nifty.
Another tradition we have is camping at Troublesome Gap every Memorial Day weekend. We are so predictable that friends call to ask if we are going this year. Those calls made me realize traditions can even spark a camping interest with friends.
Tradition looks different to different people.
You may never go to the same restaurant twice, but you may have a tradition of stopping at some restaurant on your way to the camping site. You may never camp at the same location, but you may set your supplies up in the same order every time. Or you’ll always be sure to have a campfire. Or roast marshmallows.
You could lean towards more open spaces because you like to throw your daughter up in the air in the middle of a grassy field. Or perhaps you like to take a morning walk right as the sun is beginning to rise and dew still licks the grass blades. Maybe one of your kids is an early riser who likes to get up with you and help build the morning fire, which is a teachable moment by the way.
Priceless moments.
You guessed it, when a tradition is created, most likely a priceless moment will as well. Look for those traditions, spur them along, and allow them to happen. Some occur organically. Some we purposefully build. You can’t force them, but you can encourage and grow and build them.
Keep up with traditions.
When camping with others, they’re watching. So if you always have a ham sandwich with onions the second day for lunch or you always have s’mores the first night over a roaring campfire, then your family may be disappointed when the activity doesn’t happen. Usually these traditions are special camping experiences, not something you normally do at home. Some traditions are hard and fast, and some of them aren’t. You’ll just have to work that out depending on your family.
Anyone can start a tradition.
Sometimes you’ll do the most obscure activity with your kids, maybe throwing knives into an old stump or forging your own path in the woods. It may not make an impact on you, but your child doesn’t forget and wants to do the same activity the next time you go camping. It’s usually the simplest things.
Perhaps you take your family on a spectacular hike and see breathtaking scenery, but the thing your kids remember from their day is the mound of soil behind the apple tree they created dirt castles from. Whenever you get the chance to interact with your children, do so. Even if it’s making dirt castles under a canopy of low-lying tree limbs. Those are the moments to grab and revel in.
If you are single and reading this book, then you can still build great traditions while camping with friends or family, or going on a solo trip. If you are divorced or widowed, a camping trip could be just the thing you need to get out of your day-to-day rut and create wonderful new experiences. While I’m spending a lot of time talking about family camping, there are still many ways to enjoy a trip while single, divorced, or widowed.
Be flexible.
If you’re into schedules, that’s great. But keep in mind, if someone in the family is enjoying an activity, put that hike off for an hour. If there’s rain in the forecast, consider doing an activity closer to the campsite. Agendas don’t matter, the memories and time together does.
Stories grow over time.
Kids remember events. Some of those stories grow like fish that you caught. You know the story of an angler who catches a twelve inch fish and by the time he tells the story about six times, its two feet long. Well, sometimes memories are that way too. Sometimes they’re precise; other timess they’re not even close. But, what matters is the memory.
I’ll give you an example that’s not camping related. When one of my daughters was in elementary school, I began going to school and having lunch with her once a week. Kids won’t be young forever, in fact there may come a time when they don’t want to spend much time with you. Anticipating this, I made a point of making that weekly meal a priority. A number of years into this tradition, my daughter noted I’d been coming to have lunch with her every week since whatever grade. She enjoyed it, I enjoyed it, and so it remained a tradition, a thing between just the two of us. She valued the time I carved out for us. Over the years when she’d tell the story, she’d share we’d been lunching together longer than we actually had. Should I correct her? No. Am I trying to encourage her to be inaccurate? No. I guess the thing is it pleased her that we had lunch together once a week. And so, it was a big deal that became a bigger and bigger part of her life. And her nailing down exactly when we started doing it really didn’t matter. What mattered was how appreciative she was because we were making lifelong memories.
Interests change.
Your kid’s interests will change over the years. Be flexible. Something that is important to him this year may be boring four years from now. This means your camping trips may change. The important thing is to give your kids attention, relate to them, and listen to what they want.
At some point you or your kids will look back and be thankful you hiked every waterfall trail in North Carolina, or made s’mores every night around the camp fire, or took the time to find a thick enough branch to make a walking stick the first night of each trip. Those were traditions and you enjoyed yourselves and made memories. But, there may come a day when your kids decide they’d rather spend time with their friends and that’s okay. You need to roll with it. You’ve spent years developing a set of experiences and memories that you can share and remember forever.
Continually ask questions and listen to see what the people in your family want to do this year and next. If we can be flexible and go with the flow as interests and needs change, then we have the chance of keeping the tradition of camping alive and the opportunity for creating more memories. In fact, a lifetime of them.
Also keep in mind that your interests and capabilities change. Maybe you used to be able to hike ten miles a day when you were younger, but now perhaps four is your max. Or maybe you used to hike only difficult trails, but you’ve learned that moderate means success. On the other hand, if you want to push yourself then take a long hike. Maybe you used to hike moderate trails, but after hiking a challenging trail you realized you have the capability to hike longer and more difficult trails, so push yourself and revel in that accomplishment. If you are camping solo, then this may be a good time to enjoy the fruits of your physical fitness efforts with a long challenging hike. Alternatively, taking your athletic, teenage kids, on a difficult hike may be something they really enjoy. Just keep your capabilities and stamina in mind so everyone, including you, can enjoy the physical challenge.
Quality time.
Whether it is a yearly guy’s trip, or a monthly trip with young kids, or maybe a romantic getaway with your wife, the important thing is to be free from distractions and spend quality time with loved ones. If you have more than one child, each parent should try to spend concentrated time with individual kids. You may find your children consider this quality time a tradition. Now, note that tradition for traditions sake is worthless, unless you are accomplishing something important.
Traditions are usually simple.
Many times traditions aren’t bound up in spending some ridiculous amount of money, but are instead simple. It may be somewhere you ate, and spent the majority of the meal laughing. It may be playing in the mud behind the apple tree. It may be hiking a specific trail that you’ve hiked every year for twenty years.
For example, if your wife or child is asking to go on a particular hike again, you need to figure out if they want to go on a general hike or a specific trail and for what reason. What do they really want? What’s important to them? Ask questions and dig. Because they may be looking for the smiles, laughter, and love they felt on a past hike. Maybe it was just you and them on that trail. Perhaps Mom wasn’t there, or maybe Dad wasn’t there, and was just the two of y’all. That’s the moment you’ll realize there is a new tradition of going on this hike, perhaps just the two of you. And it’ll be a special time. Then you make your plans based on this information and how you can make it work.
Don’t try to please everyone.
Depending on the age of your children and how many you have, satisfying only one for the next ten minutes might be your only option. Sometimes everybody’s in tune and sometimes they’re not. In those challenging moments, you may want to break up your group. If you have two children with two totally different interests at the moment, maybe Mom goes with one child and Dad with the other. Breaking that up gives you the opportunity to pursue those varied interests. And there again, build those great memories. But, maybe you have a situation where everybody wants to do something together. You can figure it out even if it’s not always easy.
Plan, but don’t plan.
One tip I suggest is make a list of activities available for your location. If you don’t plan, but instead wait until the last second, generally whatever you wanted to do won’t happen. Say there’s a national forest right down the road; maybe you pack into the car and go there to experience the wonder of it all. Perhaps there’s a body of water close by so you get into a canoe or a row boat or a paddle boat. That can be fun as well. Keep in mind though, you may have camping trips where what everybody wants to do is sit by the fire and relax. And all of a sudden, it may explode into a hiking trip, and then they go back to sitting by the fire. So, planning is great, but also be flexible and see what happens. But, don’t forget the simple things like running around in the woods to just explore. You can also make a game of the mundane activities that it takes to put together a campsite—like, accumulating stones to edge the fire or gathering kindling and firewood. My point is to make time for organized hikes or rafting trips, but leave gaps available for exploration and inspired play time. Sometimes the simplest and least expensive things are what we remember.
Always keep budget in mind.
I have found it’s not the amount of money you spend; it’s the fun, fellowship, and relationship building. Keep in mind, if you spend money on something and it stresses you out, everyone will pick up on the stress and fun diminishes. Perhaps you can do something that costs close to nothing and still enjoy yourselves. I have found the best trips right-size your activities with your budget, your physical capabilities, and everyone’s expectations.
In the process of talking with folks about this book, I’m not surprised to hear they have such fond memories of camping as a child. I hope you can find your own traditions, and develop those priceless moments everybody will cherish for a lifetime.
Remember the Meme on Pinterest that I talked about in the first chapter? It showed a Prius at the top of the image, and at the bottom a Jeep in the desert sitting on the crest of a hill, in front of a sunset. A guy and his kids are in the Jeep enjoying the sun setting in this majestic place. The closing message of the meme said, “Your kids will never, ever remember you getting fifty-five miles per gallon. However, they will remember the night you watched the sun set over the mountains.” Let’s talk about some camping basics today.
Because there will never be another today. In the Prius Meme, the point is that things don’t matter, experiences matter. Perhaps you can make a daily drive fun with some singing or frivolity. Or perhaps ride to the top of a mountain to watch a sunset. Those are the priceless moments to chase after. I encourage you to get out and enjoy life. Not everything has to be constrained, and I think in many ways that’s what camping is all about.
Don’t allow challenges to get in the way.
When you consider camping, there can be challenges: you might get rained on, it could be extremely hot or cold, the bugs might be extra annoying, dry kindling may be hard to find, etc. But, at the end of the day, the goal is to build memories. There are only so many opportunities to go camping with your children or your spouse or even take a solo trip. Right now it seems as though you have all the time in the world, but you really don’t. Your kids will be in college or active in other things before you know it. So grab those moments while you can.
The experience matters, not the stuff.
Someone who had a very nice late-model sedan asked about my Jeep. He indicated that if only he had an off-road vehicle, he would try camping. Why go camping if you can’t go trail-riding, he said. That’s the wrong attitude. True, driving on thirty-five inch tires with a four inch lift and a bunch of modified stuff is great. It’s nice when you’re riding around on a spring day with no top and you’ve got no doors. But you can still create those priceless memories by rolling down your windows and opening your moon roof.
Persevere.
The trick with camping is that you can find yourself in a rugged situation, for example it might rain the whole weekend leaving you nothing to do but play cards in the tent, or after rain from the first night all the kindling is wet and you can’t start a fire, maybe an animal got into your food supply and now you have nothing to eat. It doesn’t matter what happens, the secret is in how you handle the situation.
Don’t give up, persevere. Sometimes camping makes no apologies. Your skills might be tested, but I am going to promise you that you will still have opportunities, even on those off weekends, of making solid memories. You might be sitting around the campfire or hiking or hearing the coyotes howl or watching the sun set or building a fire with your child—those priceless moments can’t be bought so grab a hold of them.
Keep a look-out for memories of a lifetime.
Keep your outlook fun and positive because you can’t predict when memories will be created. But trust me, your kids will remember and they’ll tell their children about these special times one day. Just put yourself in a good situation to have those moments. They may occur in your Prius getting forty-five miles per gallon because of the song you sang. Or perhaps when you’re sitting on top of the mountain and out of your element as you watch in fear as a bear ambles by. Be available and put yourself in situations to achieve those priceless moments.
Coming up, we’re going to look at convenient, low-cost, low-pain, and low-suffering ways to be in a good situation to discover joy. By attaining that joy, you get those memories that will live on because you taught the next generation skills. And one day, your kids will not only pass along the skills to their children but will share their childhood priceless moments around a roaring campfire.
It was nice to have a weekend where we just enjoyed camping on the farm, without working. The grilled creation was cooked over the fire in the black cast iron cookers. The shell was made of corn dog roll with hot dogs, chili and onions inside. Tasty!
The Mayapples are growing. We never get any of the fruit because the critters always beat us to it.
This book helps families (or individuals) make that first foray into the woods and actually enjoy it. I share what I’ve learned in a lifetime of outdoor adventures. The book is not about extreme camping or anything crazy. I just talk about practical skills, knowledge and how not to spend a fortune on equipment on our way to a great weekend with the family.
If you want to see my handiwork and the campsite that I designed, checkout
We accomplished a lot on Day 1. Most of the stumps were removed. The brush and logs that were left from the last trip were cut up and pushed into piles on the side of the property. I also was able to start cutting some of the unhealthy trees on the perimeter.
The brush piles are good for the wildlife. They provide shelter for birds like grouse. They also provide places for a momma deer to stash a young fawn while she feeds else where. My wife was pulling brush into a pile (on the previous trip) and suddenly realized the was a fawn tucked away just a few feet from where she was working. We had been working in the area all day and the fawn had been there. We didn’t realize it until Connie saw it.
Tommy (with Bluff Mountain Nursery) started pulling stumps at the bottom and worked his way up the hillTommy is working his way up the hill.Some of the stumps were easier to get out than others. There are 58 stumps to removeThe apple tree in the middle of the property had a bunch of apples on it
The apple tree in the middle of the campsite has been a subject of much discussion. The tree has struggled to survive under a canopy of faster growing Ash and Poplar trees. We cleared the trees that shaded the apple tree earlier in the year. The apple tree has put on a bunch of new growth with the extra sunlight hitting it.
The challenge is that the apple tree is in a spot that it is exposed to vehicular damage so we had to adjust the plans for the driveway to protect the apple tree. When we discussed the tree as a family, the consensus was to cut it down. I was the lone hold out to keep the tree. We’ll need to top the tree next year to keep it healthy and trim away growth that isn’t good for the tree long term.
It is important to note that those green apples are sooooo sour that the deer are even reluctant to eat them. You’ll see an apple on the ground with a couple of bites missing, like the deer tried it and walked away. They are cooking apples, just way too sour to do anything else with.
The saga of the apple tree continues, well see how it goes.
2020 has been a crazy year. Despite the Covid-19 stuff, Connie and I have still managed to safely go camping and 4wheeling. If you want to find out more about how to go camping (and take your family) then you can read my first book on camping for free at https://montie.com/book/. Many of the topics in the book also apply to overlanding and glamping.
If you just want something to remind you of better days to come, then maybe a free book about fun stuff will be just the ticket. If you want a Kindle or paperback version, then please visit here.
When we go camping, we take measures to be socially distant and avoid exposure to the Covid-19 virus. If you want ideas on how to do that, then visit an earlier blog post.
We just got back from a great week long trip to the Western North Carolina mountains. We camped up at 4000 feet of elevation near Hot Springs, NC. Because we were going to be gone for a week, we took our big tent. That was a lot more comfortable for an extended period, especially with the dog. She takes up a lot of space in the teardrop.
Having a big tent gives room to relax and come in out of the rain
Since we wouldn’t have the teardrop, we had to use an alternate way to power the 12 Vdc pump for the shower. So we used the battery on the 4Runner, which works great. The 4Runner battery has plenty of capacity to run the 10 amp shower pump for the short amount of time needed to take a shower.
Taking a shower in the evenings is a great way to feel refreshed before going to bed. Its really not an option when backpacking, but a nice perk when car camping / glamping or overlanding.
I’ll also show you a simple DIY sink and countertop setup and storage box that works great if you have the room to haul it around or have a place where you can leave it permanently. We leave it at our permanent camping location and use it again and again. You could use this type of sink setup for a glamping trip as well, but you would have to haul it to your camp site. It might work well for a large gathering where you need a good way to wash dishes for a larger group.
Using a water jug like this makes it super easy for everyone to wash hands. That is very handy!
Our storage box setup is great for extra supplies and for storing higher value items when you leave the campsite.
Our 4Runner battery worked great for powering our portable shower
Reminder, always be aware of wildlife around you. I was standing near some tall grass and this guy slithered right by me and set up to sun himself on that log.
We found out that we had a leak in our tent roof, after many years of reliable service. Or quick fix was to use tarps to cover the top of the tent and make it through the week without any more leaks.
As usual, my wife cooked some great meals! Makes the whole trip better.
Thinking about going camping soon? The video below shows how we tried to stay safe last weekend and avoid the Covid virus while we were camping at Grandfather Campground in Banner Elk, NC.
The goal was to not enter the shower or bathhouse. Instead we used our pop up shower tent and portable, propane hot water heater to shower at our campsite. We used our portable poop bucket for those needs.
Montie’s Note: As product designers, we often obsess with QFD, House of Quality, Pairwise groupings, but some products are just simple and fun. Here is a new product announcement for a Montie Gear product that we had fun with. Here is an example of a simple and less serious outdoor sporting goods product that is very handy for the user in an outdoor environment.
In the pine trees found in Western NC, resin naturally accumulates over years of growth, creating what is locally known as Fatwood. The resin impregnated pine wood makes a great fire starter. One of our local outdoors experts, Bill, harvests our fatwood from the stumps of pine trees that were cut years earlier.
We all love sitting by the camp fire, but the toughest part about starting a campfire is the preparation. Fatwood works as great kindling, as a small amount is all that is required to help you get the fire started. Checkout out our Fatwood options at the Montie Gear store!
Philosophy
Our philosophy for Montie Gear products is pretty straight forward. We provide “Heirloom Quality Products That are Troublesome Gap Tough”.
Heirloom Quality
Many products in today’s world are meant to have a limited life time. A good example is that cell phone that you need to replace every two years. It works great, but over time technology changes and the fragile electronics have a limited lifetime. We want to design and sell products that have a very long lifetime and may actually get passed along to your kids or grandchildren. Many rifles get passed along from parent to children, sometimes marking a rite of passage. Granted a shooting rest isn’t as special as your Grandfather’s rifle. However, we work to design and sell products that are simple, elegant and high enough quality that you will want to pass them along to your kids or grandchildren.Troublesome Gap Tough
Troublesome Gap is a place in Western North Carolina, near the peak of Hap Mountains and overlooking Spring Creek, NC. My parents purchased the property over 40 years ago. I grew up spending time there. We cut firewood for heat, picked blackberries and raspberries, and spent some great weekends up there. Troublesome Gap is remote and rugged, the prefect place to test our products. Troublesome Gap Tough means that the products are rugged and easy-to-use. A delicate, hard-to-use product is a liability in the field, so we avoid that by making sure all our products provide a great customer experience and are built to last, even in demanding conditions.As President of Montie Design, I am proud the fact that we are shipping high-quality, U.S. made products. I am also proud to be an American.Sincerely,
Montie Roland
800-722-7987
Designing any great product is easier when the designer and engineers to have an appreciation for how they are making the customer, reseller and distributor’s life easier and more profitable. This podcast explores how I was motivated to design products for the camping / glamping market. We’ll also explore what it means to have a robust product.
Call me at 800.722.7987 or email montie@montie.com or visit montie.com to discuss how we can help with the design, engineering and prototyping of your next product.
Montie Gear Y-Shot Slingshot
Here is the transcript from the podcast.
Hi, my name is Montie Roland. I’m with Montie Design in Morrisville, North Carolina.
I’d like to spend a few minutes today talking about keys to success in designing an outdoor product.
Let me tell you a little bit about what we do. Montie Design is a product development firm. And we’re also the manufacturers of MontieGear line, which is a line of outdoor and shooting-related products.
I personally enjoy designing products of all kinds. One of the products I enjoy the most is products that are outdoor related. I enjoy spending time in the outdoors – enjoy camping, enjoy backpacking – so I’m always trying to come up with, you know, what’s a way to make that trip more pleasurable, safer, easier. Or what’s a way to extend the capacity and do something better.
I think a lot of us have spent time camping. A lot of times, when we’re growing up, maybe going car camping . . . maybe you just went once or twice. Maybe it was with Indian Princesses or with Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. But being outdoors, there’s a certain freedom and there’s a certain . . . lack of captivity then you are when you’re between four walls. Now the trade-off is that you got to work a little harder. It’s . . . not as comfortable, sometimes. You’re out of your comfort zone. You don’t have some of the comforts of home. And so . . . equipment over the past few years has changed in some ways; in some ways it’s very similar. When you’re camping, you want to be comfortable. You know, one of the horror stories you see on the commercials and on TV (and maybe experienced) is getting wet. You know . . . my daughters and I were camping in the Shenandoah’s a few years ago, and Hurricane Bob came through. We had no idea which way that hurricane was going to go. And we had planned this grip in advance and we finally said, Hey, let’s just go. And worst case? We’ll just drive home. And so we were up in the Shenandoah’s and . . . it rained. And . . . and then the tropical storm actually passed over. And it rained. And, did I mention it rained? Yeah. And in between the rain, there was rain. So, needless to say it was a challenging environment for about . . . I don’t know – twenty-four hours? When it rained for twenty-four hours. Did I mention the cooking in the rain? Or no . . . yeah.
But, anyway, so our tent wasn’t up to the challenge. Now, thankfully, our Aerobed was. So, late that evening, our tent in one corner had about two foot of water in it. And the average depth in the tent was probably six inches. Now, we were car camping, and thankfully, we had put everything in boxes, these waterproof . . . or, pseudo-waterproof boxes, because we had stuff in the truck. So, we had the bed full of camping gear. And . . . so when it rained and tent flooded, we . . . we were laying on the Aerobed, and the Aerobed was floating. Our boxes were floating. So, if you wanted something out of a box, you had to reach over and grab it, pull you to it, take the lid off without tipping it over and bringing water in. Also had to be real careful not to let your sleeping bag fall off the Aerobed, because if you did, it was wet.
So, it was definitely challenging in that way. I think that we still had a good time. Have to ask my daughters. I might be being optimistic. But . . . so in that case, the product didn’t live up to the challenge. I ended up taking the tent back.
So, when you’re outdoors, one of the things you want to provide with your products is you want to enhance the comfort of the trip, if you can. Now, the product may itself enhance the comfort. So, let’s say you’ve got an inflatable mattress, making sleeping more comfortable. That is so nice when you’re camping. But at the same time, I think it’s important to also think about how the product’s carried, how it’s stored, how it’s used. So, for example, you may enhance the comfort of the trip by making an existing product easier to carry. So, for example, if something’s big and bulky and takes up too much room in the car, or in your pack, then you may find that it’s really uncomfortable. Or, let’s say that for some reason it pokes you in the back in your backpack; when it’s in the backpack, its poking you in the back. Or it’s causing some sort of other transportation dilemma. So, how the product is carried, how it packs, how easy it is to pack – those are all things that can help make your trip more comfortable in that respect. And also, less work. One of the things with our Montie Gear products that we push is to have products that are very, very easy to assemble. Because when you’re tired, it’s raining, its dark, its cold, the last thing you want is to have a product that’s overly complex and difficult to assemble. Because once that happens, those conditions amplify the difficulty of using it, assembling it, breaking camp, what have you. And you’ve lowered the user’s perception of the product, possibly to the point they’re done with it.
So, you always want products that are easy to assemble, easy to use. Just because something’s that easy to assemble on your desk at work, when you’re sitting in a comfortable chair and not hungry, not tired, no rain, seventy-two degrees . . . you may be able to do it on your desk and go, Well, that’s not so bad. But then once you get outside, in the outside environment, looking for twelve pieces that you just dropped onto the ground and now found out that the color they are is perfectly camouflaged – those all add aggravation. So, you want to have products that are low aggravation. And generally, readying the product for use – assembly, what have you – is an area where we’ve seen a lot of . . . I have personally when I was camping seen a need to really think through the product. So, you want a product that’s comfortable; you want a product that easy to assemble, easy to bring to bear, easy to stand up. We want a product that is easy to use. There again, if you’re sitting by the fire and its dark, having some precision alignment of holes before you can put something in a pin, before you can, you know, use it; maybe you have to take it apart between uses and put it back together. Well, if it’s difficult to do in the dark, there again, you may have a product that just doesn’t fit that environment.
So, that . . . that goes to the issue of being robust. Robust products are easy to use, easy to assemble, and hard to damage. And give you . . . also, I will argue that a truly robust product gives you ways that you can use it in ways that the designer never intended. So, maybe there’s a “I intended to do ‘A’”; your customer does “B”. At that point, that’s a really valuable piece of feedback to know because that may open up a whole new market for you. Or, give you an idea of a new product you should design.
So, robust products are ones that they are just easy to use, hard to damage, and easy to assemble, easy to take down, and give you options. Sometimes you can do stuff twelve different ways. Sometimes it’s one, depending on the product.
So, the other thing is you want products that are rugged when you’re designing for the outdoors. Now, sometimes you have limits on that, how rugged they are. A great example is a tent pole. Tent poles, by nature, tend to be fragile to keep weight down, especially with backpacking tents. So there’s this implicating understood trade-off that when I lay out my tent poles from my backpacking tent on the ground, I don’t want anybody around because I don’t want anybody to step on it and bend it or break it. And so I understand that the trade-off of having a four-pound-ten-ounce tent is the fact that the poles are delicate until they’re assembled. Now, they’re easy to assemble with a shock-cord and so forth. But until they get into the tent, they . . . can be hard to . . . can be delicate. Now, once they’re on the tent, they need to be extremely robust. That fifty-mile-an-hour wind, or that six inches of snow, that tent needs to come through that, and that pole needs to do its job with no problems what so ever.
So, there are times when the rugged nature and the robust nature has to be within a specific pattern of use, or a specific part of a pattern of use. And I think the other thing that’s important when you’re camping is that you want a product that looks like it should be a product when you’re camping. Now, one of the things that has changed about this is that for a long time camping products were very functional. They looked like something that you’d buy at the Army Navy Store. A good example is Coleman stove. A white gas later gave way to propane. But, they’re great, they’re rugged; you can fix them with a . . . a knife and a screwdriver, some oil; and they’re just great products – they last forever. And I think long life is usually a by-product of having something that’s rugged and something that’s robust. So, a lot of these cots and other things just look like something the military would use. Now, what happened a few years ago is REI came on the scene, a great outdoor provisioning company. And all of a sudden, camping became more upscale. And so as these stores competed for dollars, one of the ways that they made themselves more distinctive was to provide very high quality, very robust products, and provide them at a higher cost, because higher quality robust, what have you . . . and that also gave the opportunity and the need for more industrial design. Where thinking through the customer experience, the customer experience behind the counter, or in front of the counter; customer experience in the field; what the customer sees on the website; reviews; what have you. So, the world kind of changed and now we have camping products that a lot of times are beautiful as well as tough.
And so, with a camping product, you got to also . . . you know, where does it fall? Is it an inexpensive product? And Coleman is an expert at providing relatively inexpensive, less frills, less performance products. Or, is it a product that is a higher quality product and a higher end product (something you might see at REI)? And then in the past few years, there’s also been a switch to what I’m going to call “Glamping” products. And I think glamping . . . which another way to look at it is called “glamorous camping”. It’s something we can thank the Europeans for. And we were headed there anyway. But, in Europe, you can go camping at a campground and camp in a two thousand square foot tent with flat screen TVs, satellite cable, Persian rugs, couches, that are really, basically, high-end homes made out of fabric. And so the option of doing glamping, I think, is starting to come to the U.S., and that’s going to impact some of the products that are designed for this market as well. So, just to keep that in mind, you’ve kind of got a low-to-midrange, which is the Coleman products; a lot of products that folks who own RVs buy; and then the mid-range . . . mid-low-or-high, which is REI – so you’ve got brands like Patagonia, you know; Merrill. And then you’ve got high end, the glamping products. And that kind of gives you, hopefully, gives you a framework of where to start when you have to look at how you’re going to structure this product. Where does it live? And, also, to evaluate whether or not you’ve got the right product designed. How effective it’ll be in the marketplace.
So, these are some criteria. Just to summarize. You want a product that’s rugged. You want a product that’s robust. You want a product that’s high quality. You want a product that fits the intended market segment, be it the lower end (the Coleman, a lot of the RV products), the mid-range (the REIs and Great Out Door Provision Company-type market); or the glamping market. You want a product that’s easy to use, easy to assemble. You want a product that’s easy to assemble when it’s almost dark and raining and cold. You know, can you assemble this product with gloves? Is this a product where once it’s . . . it’s hard to damage once it’s installed, but is easy to install. So, in camping, it’s a very tough market because it’s so functionally driven and so user experience driven. And then also, too, yeah, always keep in mind is that you’ve got different types of camping. You’ve got car camping. You’ve got glamping. And, of course, car camping being you drive your car to up to where you’re going to camp; you unload everything. So, weight and size isn’t so much of a penalty; comfort’s a high priority. Backpacking – weight is everything. Comfort – eh, not so much so. And ruggedness in backpacking is very important, but you have a more sophisticated user that understands that you don’t want to bend that tent pole when you’re twenty miles from anywhere.
So, keeping all those in mind, I hope you design some great outdoor products. If you have a product that you need . . . maybe you’ve got a concept and need us to design an product and then build a prototype and help you get it into manufacturing, or just some small part of that, give me a call, we’d love to help.
Montie Roland, Montie Design, 1-800-722-7987. Or montie (M-O-N-T-I-E)@montie(M-O-N-T-I-E).com. I hope you have a great day. I hope this podcast was beneficial for you. Montie Roland, signing off.
Sometimes products can be used in ways you didn’t intend when you originally created them. As an example, the Camping Shelf we design for Montie Gear was originally intended as a camp kitchen organizer / food prep area.
The realization came, as we were standing on top of the mountain, that this shelf would also work really, really well to hold up our camp shower. Not only did it hold up the camp shower it also held up the wash clothes, soap and served as a hanger for the nozzle. It also made it easy to pull the bucket down to add more hot water. Here are some pictures of the final result.