Anyone Ordered and Waiting for Their Big Sky Tent?

Or Molen now has a kick ace excuse why his tents might take a year to get to anybody in the US. "I was helping the homeless in china". Do you really believe that?

I guess anybody but Bob would get their feet kissed by people on this forum for his efforts in China, if those ever happen(ed) … problem is that his credibility is not the best … so … I think that other manufacturers have come up with lighter, more exciting tents so Bob's tents are a bit less interesting and people are more likely to go for competitor's they can rely on … IMHO.

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I talked with Bob at Trail Days last weekend. He said that deliveries were back on track, but didn't mention any recovery relief effort. This would be a good follow-up for Carol after her podcast with him.

My comments and photos are in the Trip Report section.

Umm, excuse me? But how many tents exactly might Bob be able to supply the China relief? IF he is make any difference whatsoever, then he must be supplying quite a number. If he has quite a number at hand, then what exactly were those tents doing before the earthquake occurred? And if he has no tents available right off hand, is he then building the tents at this moment? And does he intend to make the Chinese wait for 2 years till they get their tents, too?

Anybody think about where these tents are made and the excuses that Big Sky has used in the past regarding production problems…. Does the country of China come to mind? The sewing sweatshop where the tents are made could be in the middle of Sichwan province for all we know.

Methinks the newly homeless will probably prefer those cheap but BIG Coleman car camping tents for shelter rather than any of the tiny, tiny tents that BS makes.

So is BS retooling to make big tents more suitable for living in rather than carrying around? Or is Bob Molen really given away US$200+ tents that no refugee family would really want?

Doesn't make any sense to me.

But my other question is still: has anyone recently placed an order for a BS tent? What's your experience?

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Bob apparently said this: "Big Sky's tent production capacity is being dedicated to producing special refugee tents for these homeless"

Bob said the "production capacity". Now forgive me for being cynical, but I'm thinking that he means that the factory that was supposed to be making his tents is now making other tents instead. IE: "special refugee tents."

Now I highly doubt that Bob owns a factory over there. So Bob might not be helping anyone, except for some twisted logic in-that since he is "giving up" his production slots, he is helping. In fact, he wouldn't have had a choice in the matter.

I'm sure that many of the tent makers there will be required by the communist govt of China to supply the refuges. In fact, with the small number of tents that Bob contracts, I don't doubt that, as he has claimed, hes been screwed by them in the best of times, let-alone in a national crisis. If I am right, there is no excuse for him to use this to try make himself look better.

With all that said, I saw an Evolution 2p sell on ebay for 140$ with two sets of poles. For that price I would have gladly bought it.

> The sewing sweatshop where the tents are made could be in the middle of Sichwan province for all we know.

Mike,

I can't speak for the factory that makes Bob's tents, but my wife's parents own a factory in China and treat their employees well. If they didn't the workers would go to another factory.

Every time I read one of these posts about Big Sky tents, I wonder, “Why do people order these tents?”. Then I remember, they make the lightest free standing, double wall tent out there. The weird part is, there is nothing really special about their design (unlike, say, MSR’s Hubba Hubba). It is, for example, quite similar to a tent made by REI. The difference is that they use silnylon and give you the option of using carbon fiber poles. What is frustrating, from a consumer point of view, is that no one else has stepped into this arena. There are some great (single walled) tarp tents (I own a couple) but I don’t believe anything has changed much in the world of double walled tents since this article was written. If you count bug bivies with tarps as a double walled tent, then there are plenty of lighter options. But those offer very little space and thus are much more bivy, then double walled tent.

To make matters more frustrating, tent makers have more options now, and could not only meet the Big Sky performance, but surpass it easily. Spinnaker and Cuben Fiber (and the new Tyvek tent material) are much lighter than silnylon. Nanoseeum could also shave off a few ounces. Combine this with some sort of pole reuse design (combining trekking poles with a few other poles and hubs) and you could make a very light, very solid, free standing double walled tent.

. . . to Benjamin's question:

"But my other question is still: has anyone recently placed an order for a BS tent? What's your experience?"

Perhaps there's been no recent experience by anyone here.

In which case, no news is no news.

JRS

For at lest the next three months about 1/3rd of the tent manufacturers in China will be busy making tents to be delivered to the earthquake areas. That will also mean severe shortages of materials for the next six months or so.
Of course the Big Ski tents are totally useless there, but it is possible that the same factories that are making the temporary shelters are the same that make, or should, products for BS. So in effect a big chunk of the production for the leisure market is on hold.
Franco

Maybe the 2,000 Wal-Marts and K-Marts here can re-export their tents back to China? :)

My take is, if Bob is so enamored with the Chinese market and not with his own existing customers, why doesn't he just cater directly to the Chinese customer base and let go of what he has in the rest of the world? I'm sure that he would have an incomparable number of customers and would make a much bigger killing! He could even move to China and no longer worry about delays!

This from a news article found on Yahoo:

"We need more than 3.3 million tents," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters, adding that 400,000 tents have already been delivered. It was the second call for tents from China in recent days.

"We hope and welcome international assistance in this regard. We hope the international community can give priority in providing tents," he said.

Big Sky to the rescue!

A double disaster for the Chinese.

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More likely than not, as another poster pointed out earlier, BS' contracted factory in China has switched production to refugee-friendly tents — by order of the government.

Perhaps I did not make self clear. Big Sky is just a very small customer for one or more Chinese tent maker. There are only so many production lines that you can have. You need, usually, to place an order of 300 tents to get one going. Obviously a 100 or 300 tent at a time customer is never a priority. At the moment the Chinese government has requested that some manufacturers make tents for the relief effort. Nothing to do with the usual backpacking tents but nevertheless the same production lines and labor is used . Tough luck for anyone else. Bob, like everyone else, has no choice in this matter. If he has tried to make himself some sort of benefactor out of this, that would be another reason not to ever buy anything from him.
Franco
BTW, my info was from China.

Beijing's gain, Moran, Wyoming's loss.

Read the CNN article

This is sort of ironic considering that most tents in the world are manufactured in China. So they are asking for Chinese manufacturers to donate tents, I presume?

Don't know if the government is asking manufacturers to donate tents for free — or simply to deploy their production lines for urgent domestic needs. The central and local governments themselves may be buying up these tents for distribution.