[pct-l] new resource for home-made equipment (was: REI past &present)

[rmoak at fallingwater.com (Ronald Moak)]

>> While I agree with Ron's general drift, and know his contributions to
hiking and gear development, I gotta defend REI <<

Paul, I hope no one's inferring  from my remarks that I'm somehow against
REI. Quite to the contrary, I like REI, I just don't buy much from them any
more. Nor do I consider it their fault that they don't have the products I
want.

REI's recently come up on another mailing list with the lament that of the
top ultralight gear choices put forth by a recent issue of Backpacker Mag.,
REI carries none of them. It seems somewhat ironic. For the last few years,
people have been lamenting that Backpacker was out of touch with the
ultralight market and now they're addressing that market, the complaint is
being shifted to the large retailers. The problem doesn't lie with the large
retailers. It's strictly a supply issue. 

Virtually all of the ultralight production coming from small suppliers like
Dancing Light, ULA, Tarptent, Moonbow and myself has been either custom or
low production. In fact all the Ultralight Backpacking gear selection
winners are custom manufactures with extremely limited production and
multi-week delays on orders.

In fact of all the ultralight garage shop manufactures, I'm the only one
with the production capability to fulfill an order with someone like REI.
Though Henry's increased production capability is now coming online. While
I'm dabbling with doing retail with a few selected shops, doing REI is
sometime in the distant future. Assuming they would even be interested.

So unless the "Big Boys" make a bigger jump into ultralight, it'll still be
several more years before much of it is seen in an REI or similar  retailer.


-Fallingwater