Henry Shire Gets His Due!

Awesome! Restores my faith in Backpacker magazine. I might even have to start buying it again.

And a sincere congratulations to Henry, a true customer oriented and innovative shelter maker!

And an award for the most misspelled name in the cottage industry. It only took me three years go get that right.
In sales I used to tell my customers that they could call me anything they liked ,if they were buying. One called me a taxi.
Congratulations Henry !!!
( I already had given you the awards,it just takes longer for others to figure it out)
Franco
Next year : the Scarp and the Hogback

Love Henry's designs. I'm always waiting to see what he'll come up with next. It is sad that more people don't know about the great gear from cottage companies. I'm sure there are a lot that I don't know about.

My feeling is that the large gear companies don't want you to know that are great people making products in country that are of a better quality and in a lot of cases less expensive then what is being produced over seas.

I say go Henry, Ron, Ron, Grant, Brian and all you other inovators. Keep making great products. I'll continue to buy them.

Thanks very much. I know I speak for all of us in the "cottage" gear industry when I say that we would not and could not do this without your business and support. I really do enjoy doing what I do and I can honestly say that I learn something new every day. I feel very blessed.

-H

Yeah, I saw that too and was happy to see Henry get some props. Unfortunately, the backpacks they featured are another story…

Before this thread was created I had actually just shot an e-mail off to the editor of BACKPACKER saying that I appreciated the acknowledgement of Henry Shires as well as the very loose and pathetic mention of Gossamer Gear. I then listed a handful of other cottage industry leaders who were unfortunately absent from their gear guide. I think the only way to get BACKPACKER to be fair to ALL gear available is to constantly hound them about looking at the small guys too. With that said, if you feel inclined, I encourage you to send your comments to them too.

> I think the only way to get BACKPACKER to be fair to ALL gear available is to constantly hound them about looking at the small guys too.

Just to play devil's advocate a bit, the editors at Backpacker and other magazines are human and don't know/can't review everything. Are they skewed toward the bigger gear companies? Yes, but I think that's pretty typical across the spectrum of industries and the media that covers them. I do a very poor job–Ok, absolutely nothing–to promote Tarptent to any of the print magazines. We did submit a couple of shelters for review this year only because someone requested them. GG, SMD, ULA, etc. etc. can chime in here but I'm pretty sure none of us have dedicated marketing staffs or budgets to work the media. I'm fully aware that it can't possibly hurt to at least make contact with editors to see if there's a review interest. I just don't. No excuses and I'll shoulder some blame for the lack of outreach. But if we, the smaller gear companies, don't make an effort then we shouldn't cry about lack of coverage. Collectively, I think we have still managed at least some coverage the last few years. As the Internet and e-commerce grows, the reach and influence of the print publications declines and the fact that there are indeed small gear companies making quality stuff is proof that there's an ecosystem outside the "mainstream."

-H

Oh, enough of that, we want a picture of the Hogback!

No really, congratulations!

Henry,
after being a backpacker for 30 years, thanks for reminding me that carrying a shelter (Contrail) isn't punishmenet, it's pleasure. :)

P.S.
A discount for my crawling won't be refused! ;)

Mike
No need to crawl with the Contrail.Just sit down and swing your legs in or out. Works better if you use the 2 pole inverted V set up.
Franco

Crawling was for the future, Franco.;)

I saw that too! Way to go!

And then I saw that any time they used the word "ultralight" the item weighed several pounds more than any equivalent truly ultralight version. They seemed to use "minimalist" when things were closer to a reasonable weight.

For Mike
As my uncle Benjamin used to say : are you buying or selling ?
A bit of a strange reply to my " Good morning uncle Ben !" but I got the point.
Franco

I too was very happy to see that :) The editors are seeing outside of the big companies – it is taking time, but they are coming around!

I was also quite pleased to see PackitGourmet.com get two mentions as well – another small company with great service and good products.

Yes- congratulations Henry and everyone at Tarptent!

I've used 6 different Tarptent models and have owned 4 myself. I've loved every one of these shelters and I was so excited to see them featured in the Backpacking Gear Guide when it arrived at my house today.

Fantastic!

Doug

My only regret with any of the five tents I've bought from Henry is being so foolish as to sell a couple of them. Congratulations Henry!

.

That's great. But I would like to add that looking back at a 4 year old issue of the Gear Guide shows that they did review the TT Rainshadow (and the ULA Fusion pack for that matter). Previous issues have also reviewed the Cloudburst and the Six Moons Lunar Solo and Duo. The magazine has to market to a much wider range of backpackers but they do review UL periodically.

Not enough for this group but then that is what BPL.com is for.

And this year's gear guide is the skimpiest of the last 5 years. There used to be pages and pages of specs and numbers but these seem to have been halved.

And if you are backpacker mag, which has to be the largest one out there in the US, you really have to step up to the plate and you should really go through ALL the gear that is out there within a year.

Sure bigger would be better….but how bad has their revenue for ads slacked this year? One thing I noticed missing was car ads this month.

Let us be glad the magazine is in print still. I have already had a couple magazine (non-sports) cancel in the past 3 months on their printing. Newsstands were one area hit bad in Nov/Dec/Jan.

Within in the next 6 months we should see a number of magazines quietly fold across the US.

So I can deal with thinner if it means the magazines don't go under.

Good points Sarah. A magazine does not stay in business by the cover charge alone , it needs advertising money to do so. It's really very commendable that Backpacker even mentions Tarptent and the like when none of them advertise there.
I used to write photo reviews for a local paper. The section , a weekly Tech insert, employed 2 editors and a few staff writers as well as a few freelancers like me. Due to a reduction in advertising revenues from the photo industry, for over a year I was the only remaining contributor to the photo section , about six pages per month. Last year following another" revamp", the space allocated to "imaging" was reduced to about 1 page per month, covered by one of the editors, the other pages are now the horoscope and TV gossip, something that a trained monkey can do before breakfast. Use the dartboard technique for the former and just make it up as you go along for the latter. A similar dumbing down is happening on TV by substituting meatier programmes (documentaries,drama,investigative journalism) with "reality TV" and "The best off" type programmes.
Franco

I've defended Backpacker on more than one occasion and on more than one website but have never defended their gear choices. Using the 90% (possibly more) of the stuff featured in Backpacker is just simply not the best option for any more than the the casual hiker. Will it do? Sure. But it you could also drive your stock Honda Civic around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway…just don't expect to outperform most of the cars that roll across the bricks there.

Not to get too Ray Jardine bowling ball theory on everyone but… there is a lot of emphasis on buying (and rightly so, it is a for-profit periodical) for the sake of it, so much so that one would think you need to be a gear monger to hike. I was just asking myself when flipping through the gear issue- when was the last time they featured an article on how to build an alcohol stove? Has there ever been one?

Anywhoo- as a satisfied owner of a pair of Henry's Tarptents, congratulations. It would be nice to see more small businesses' products featured more frequently. Hopefully they are listening!

"one would think you need to be a gear monger to hike."

I love your references. But we're more like Gear Mongrels.