Outdoor Industry

Here's a cool story that involves eliminating bottled water. CamelBak donated 2,000 BPA-Free Better Bottles to the town of Bundanoon, Australia, whose residence wanted to rid the town of bottle water.

Over the last few years it seems like every company is jumping on the green product bandwagon. Call it what you will, it's great that marketing efforts are raising consumer awareness about the environment. Brands now need to be eco-conscious in order to compete. With all that said, all businesses can learn a thing or two from the Indigenous model.

SALT LAKE CITY (July 21, 2009) – At the 2009 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, CamelBak® will showcase several new hydration products specifically designed to change the way people hydrate and perform. CamelBak will demonstrate its design and engineering leadership in bottles, packs and wearable hydration with a number of industry firsts and breakthrough technologies that take the worry and hassle out of hydration. A 16-foot high, cascading wall of water in CamelBak’s newly-designed booth (#15027) makes the perfect backdrop for the following new products:

Boulder, Colorado, February 24, 2009 – GoLite is pleased to announce continuing progress towards reducing its climate impact. In addition to targeted greenhouse gas reduction efforts, GoLite has chosen to offset those climate impacts that cannot be eliminated through reputable renewable energy credits (RECs) and CO2 offsets purchased through NativeEnergy (www.nativeenergy.org).

I had a chance to take a sneak peak at Patagonia.com's new Tin Shed site today. The new site launches on Wednesday, February 25th.

If you've never visited the Tin Shed site, you should take a look. Do you ever look at the pictures in the Patagonia catalog and wonder, how did they do that? That's what you'll see on the Tin Shed. They have videos, pictures and slideshows where the adventures tell their stories. Check out the "An Attempt at the OGRE" story. All I can say is WOW. Enjoy...

Patagonia is encouraging it's customers to resole their existing shoes instead of replacing them with new ones. Patagonia is looking to reduce the environmental impacts associated with the disposal of old shoes, and the construction and shipment of new shoes. Resoling shoes costs between $50 and $80 depending on the style. Sounds like a great idea. I've resoled my climbing shoes a few times. There's nothing like putting on a "new" pair of resoled shoes that are already broken-in. Here's the Press Release:

Klymit

Easton's new Artica snowshoe line is already receiving praise. The Easton Artica Backcountry was recognized in Outdoor Magazine's 2009 Gear of the Year.

Lowrance introduced three new GPS models at the 2009 Winter Outdoor Retailer Show. These devices support the open source GPX format, so you can easily transfer geospatial data from your favorite website to your GPS device. These will be available in May 2009.

The new Lowrance GPS devices all have the same Physical Specs: