Hipster Bushcraft

I’ve recently begun to notice what I can only describe as “hipster bushcraft”. It’s the outdoorsy equivalent of chocolates or bath products or sea salt being sold at ludicrously high prices because it has a fancy label.

Came across a company yesterday called Bush Smarts. They seem to like red a lot. It’s their motif.

I’ll grant them that they have a clever little device for storing your bear bag line that doubles as a throwing device and has a line clip. $85. I’ll let you decide if it’s worth it or not.

I’ll concede they have wool base layers (in red of course) (long john bottoms, and tops, T-shirt, boxers) that are a decent price, comparable to similar products on the market.

And they sell a crooked knife with a good cover for the blade at what seems like a fair price.

But some of their stuff is just outrageous.

$20 for some birchbark? Sure it comes in a tin, but is that tin very different from ones that cough candies or the like come in? I can find as much birchbark as I want for free whenever I go for a hike.

$30 for a Nalgene water jug? Amazon has the same thing for half the price. Your logo on it adds double the value?

$15 for 10 6" zip ties? Because they’re red? I can buy an entire container of hundreds of various coloured zip ties for less than that. Oh, but in every colour but red....

$15 for 50 feet of red paracord? I can buy a 100 feet of red paracord for $7. Double for half the price.

$30 for a pair of red boot laces? I can use that 100 feet of red paracord I just bought, make boot laces for all my friends, and still have enough money left over for several other colours of paracord.

$40 for 4 titanium tent pegs? Sure, it comes with a little leather cover for the tips, but that isn’t so hard to fashion yourself. Given that I can buy 10 of the same titanium tent pegs for that price, I’ll just spend ten minutes fashioning something out of some scrap leather or ballistic nylon.

Seriously?

They even sell an “insta-beard”. Jeebus. I can just envision the sort of ironic hipster that would wear that.

There is another company here in Canada called Base Camp X that sells axes. They don’t actually make axes mind you. They merely come up with a comforting narrative to enshroud other people’s work in. They sell (the now apparently out of business) Snow & Nealley and Tautahi axes, where they’ve added a paint job to the handle and then sell them for very inflated prices. $75 for a double bit S&N axe at a company that deals with forestry supplies, versus $315 for the same axe at BCX. You can get a Tautahi work axe from them for about $200 to $225, versus the $445 for the same axe at BCX. That’s a lot of money for a paint job.

Come on.

I certainly don’t mind paying for quality. I have and I will. But exorbitant prices for average stuff that has a cute label or a fancy story attached? Get lost. This stuff seems to appeal to a bourgeois demographic possessing more money than sense. It all seems like a desperate attempt at “authenticity”. Doesn’t matter that you have a physique like Olive Oyl and live in an absurdly over priced urban loft. Buy one of these bedazzled, absurdly over priced axes, hang it on your wall and you too can pretend to be a lumberjack.

I’m a proponent of the free market economy. I guess if people are willing to buy your package of boutique label sugar and colour and flavour at a ludicrous price, over the generic brand of Kool-Aid™, hey good on ya. If you can make a successful go at running an artisanal pickle shop, more power to you. If people are willing to pay a premium for what they could easily do themselves, right on. But you’ll have to excuse me for snickering in derision at your effrontery, and the suckers who buy into your marketing over substance.

Marketing (Outdoor Gear) in the 21st Century pt. 1

I think anyone whose advertising of any sort of outdoor gear (although I think it applies to a lot of things) is limited to ads in magazines is putting themselves in a customer awareness deficit. An advertisement in a magazine or even a website in most cases is merely a monologue. Participating in forums or interacting with bloggers is a dialogue.

Being active on a variety of forums and interacting with a bunch of bloggers has proven to me that the way to market a product has shifted. Drastically.

An ad in say a, bicycling magazine, may serve to make me aware or curious about a product, but that’s it. Then I quickly go looking for info about it online. Either to see what people are saying about it on forums or if any bloggers have done a review. A review by a real world user is worth gold to me. I’m not talking about copying the press release and generic ¾ view of the product. I’m talking about photos the user has taken, from every angle, inside outside, top, bottom. Does the review pass the sniff test? Nothing but effusive praise about a product, every product they review, sounds suspicious. Do they identify what they perceive as a shortcoming about the product, as well as what they like? That isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the company behind the product. It merely shows that a real human being, not a lapdog reviewed it. Not every product is perfect for every person. That’s fine. “I thought the shoulder strap was a bit short.” Not a deal breaker for most people, but I appreciate being told that. I’ve seen company reps getting defensive about minor points that a reviewer didn’t like. It’s to be expected. It’s okay.

Successful companies have their own forums and blogs, and participate in forums and respond to blog posts.

Let me cite an example. Kifaru. I own a bunch of their packs. Totally happy with them. Their forum features other happy users. Many prospective customers come there to inquire about their products. “Hey, I have a ........ and it’s this big and will it fit in .........” And the brigade of happy users often answer the questions before the staff does. I’m one of those people. Their users post pictures and reviews. I can imagine the company is thrilled that their good products and good service have created a legion of unpaid sales people and customer service reps. Notice the all important key of having great products in the first place and that their customer service being second to none. Those are the all important building blocks. But if you can then back it up with your fans shouting your praises – that’s golden. And the forum also serves as a great place to announce new products, interact with (and be seen to be interacting with) customers who have a mixed up order, a problem with a product, questions about the product, etc.

Being active on forums devoted to a variety of topics, I see daily how well companies do that have their reps active on those forums. Answering questions about products, heading off customer problems with polite offers of help can pay major dividends. And I see how companies that don’t communicate with their potential customer base, or communicate badly with their existing customer base do. It often takes little more than a few lines, “Hey this was missing that, or item Q had Y malfunction?”
“No problem give me a call on this number and I’ll get you squared away.”
And then two days later the forum poster comes back and raves about what great service they received from such and such company, and how quick they got a replacement. Seeing that tells multitudes of customers and potential customers that the company is responsive and genuinely cares. It makes people realize that of course things can go wrong. One out of a million parts can break, the assembly line might not spit that one part out of the feeder into the box. But if the company is there to respond and rectify the situation, it shows they’re there to help and stand behind their product and their brand. And I’ve witnessed how wrong it can go when customers come on forums to complain about the lousy service they got from XYZ company and no one is there to help, or when company reps antagonize customers. That customer may well be in the wrong. But seeing a company representative calmly try to rectify the situation, is the important thing for everyone else to see.

By the same token, reps finding reviews on blogs and responding, answering questions, correcting erroneous information, offering to help, all those things can pay dividends. Throwing a bone to the blogger who went to the trouble of photographing your product or making a video or writing a review, is also a small gesture that can build goodwill. Offer them a pre-release product to review to help build awareness when it comes out, a T-shirt to wear when they review your next product - simple gestures that make the company look like actual humans work there.

And the important thing to point out is not to be anonymous. Forum posts from shills might work once or twice, but people quickly see through them. Be up front. Post your name and what you do and how to contact you below your post. Blog posts from companies that masquerade as independent reviewers will quickly backfire. Be sincere. It pays off in the long run.

Forums do cost money to run, and some forums might not appreciate a company coming on to essentially advertise their wares. A company might well have to take out an ad to help defray the cost of hosting that forum. But the cost of that, to essentially find some of the most targeted marketing out there, to be able to speak directly to your customers, is a bargain compared to what an ad in a magazine would cost.

I’m sure ads in magazines may help to some degree to help build brand awareness and let people know about new products. But I feel the days of spending most of an advertising budget on that medium are waning. Besides a web site, companies need to spend time and resources on interacting with end users on forums, acknowledging bloggers for their reviews, finding bloggers to slip a product to to review, etc., etc. Consumers place far more stock in a relatively unpolished review by a genuine end user, than they do in a review from a glossy magazine that never says a bad thing about anything they review. A review that is often little more than a rehashed press release. Customers instinctively realize when someone knows what they’re talking about, and when someone is little more than an unctuous salesperson.

I think companies ignore the new paradigm of how to market their wares at their own peril.

Lame product pictures

I probably have more pet peeves than it is healthy to have, but one in particular is the generic ¾ product photo.

It seems like so many manufacturers, and by turn retailers, rely on that one photo and almost seem to be telling their potential customers “Too bad.”

While it might give me an idea, it never gives me the whole picture.

I’ll give you a case in point. Bergans. Norwegian company, I’ve always read good things about them, but they seem to have only a Scandinavian/northern European market presence. (Scandinavian outdoor gear makers with great reputations and their stuff nowhere to be found here in Canada is another annoyance, but let’s stick to one thing at a time.) While looking around on Bergans’ site, I came across their Langevann Hip Pack. Looks interesting, and I’m trying to figure out some kind of hip pack that suits my needs. (Although, I suspect that making it myself is what I will end up having to do.)

So, there is a picture and a bit of a written description. 

Another similar, but made in a different material model as well.

I can tell something about it, but certainly not everything. What is that belt like, what can I attach to it, what are the pouches on that belt like, what does the inside of that bag look like, etc., etc., etc. So I run a search, hoping that maybe some retailer has gone to the trouble to take some photos. And no. All the companies, all of them in Europe of course, all use the same manufacturer provided photo. Really, not a single one of you can go to the trouble to take a half dozen extra shots, from all angles, insides, on a person to gauge size, etc.? It’s not like it’s a printed catalogue where more photos add up to more pages which adds up to more paper which adds up to more printing. It’s the interweb, where those concerns are largely moot.

Maybe a kind blogger has gone to the trouble to take photos and write a review. But, no. I know from my own stats that lots of people looking for info on products have come here because I did a little writeup on them. And I sincerely hope that I gave them some good information that allowed them to make a more informed choice. Everything I’ve discussed here has been purchased with my own money, and my reviews were entirely voluntary, and I received no compensation for them. If a manufacturer wanted to send me stuff or pay me for what I did, I wouldn’t say no. And maybe that’s what manufacturers should do. If they aren’t willing or able to give their potential customers more than the generic ¾ product photo, and a bland writeup, and no one has yet written up a review with some photos to accompany it, maybe they should approach a blogger to do just that. I know speaking for myself, an objective 3rd party review, or two, or three, is more likely to sway my opinion than an ad in a magazine. I just find it frankly weird that a lot of manufacturers still seem to think that old fashioned, non-interactive ads in magazines are the way to go. Or that a good reputation alone will sell their products. That picture on Bergans’ website alone isn’t enough to make me want to have it shipped from Europe to me, only to find out that it doesn’t suit my needs. And it also seems that a company that could potentially do very well in a market like North America, when they are an entity known only in certain geographic locales, like Scandinavia or Australia, could benefit from some non-professional, non-commercial endorsement.

So Bergans, or any other manufacturer or retailer reading this – and I may have singled them out, but there are many, many, many manufacturers like them – give your potential customers more info than the scant drips and drabs you give them now – especially more detailed photos. And if no bloggers are writing about your products, and filling in the scant photographic evidence, approach some that appear to be sympatico and offer to send them some products to review. Either as a give-away or a loaner. Or slip them a $100 bucks for their trouble. It is bound to be cheaper than ads in magazines. And if the traffic that comes to my site is any indication, people are hungry for a lot more info than you are providing them. The old ways of doing things are obsolete. A blogger may not take the greatest photos and may not always praise a product effusively if they find flaws with it, but I think the legions of people reading what they have to say appreciate a sincere and honest look at a product, and also appreciate not having smoke blown up their ass. The ability for a real world user to see what a real world user has to say about it, to see photos of the product from all angles, inside and out, filled with the things that would go into it, etc., etc. is the way that things are going. Giving a potential customer a way to ask questions about the product, either through a website, discussion forum or even of a blogger (like me - I’ll happily help a fellow enthusiast) is to my mind really important and very worth it. And pretty cheap in the long run.

Manufacturers and retailers need to adapt to that new paradigm of marketing or see their market share dry up.