Cottage Industry Support

There are quite a few hits on Google, including this one –
https://sectionhiker.com/cottage-gear-manufacturer-directory/
I learned a couple of new ones today.

The late John Abela waved the flag for many cottage industry companies.  His website was hikelighter.com.

I just tried to visit his website to see if it was still operational and was greeted with this.   Not sure what to make of it.

Was probably nothing “wrong” with hikelighter.com, except it used unencrypted “http:” instead of “https:”. The big web browser makers have decided to scare the pants off consumers in order to shame all web sites into using HTTPS, so they block HTTP sites and make you jump through more alarming hoops for access.

Reality is quite a bit more nuanced – among other things, HTTPS isn’t all that big a security improvement for simple web sites like Abela’s.

But it looks like hikelighter.com has more serious problems now – probably off the air indefinitely.

Wayback Machine to the rescue:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201130082852/https://hikelighter.com/

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

— Rex

Thanks Rex.  John was pretty tech-savvy.  I believe his background was in IT.  He would’ve known how to archive it onto something permanent had he felt so inclined.

I was concerned that someone had hijacked his page, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

To the OP, Garage Grown gear is a hub for cottage brand gear.

https://www.garagegrowngear.com/pages/about

RE: www. hikerlight.com

It costs time and money to maintain an active website and to own a domain name.

If you are looking for old content, you can often but not always find the content from old non active websites in the internet archive.

Use the wayback machine to pick a date upon which data was archived.

For just one example, see http://web.archive.org/web/20201030161146/https://hikelighter.com/

I just tried to visit his website to see if it was still operational and was greeted with this.   Not sure what to make of it.

The web certifications are not updated due to being expired on the devices browser, due to it possibly being an outdated browser version, and thus not able to update itself. It’s a wicked circle. You can request a cert from each server, insert it into your keychain, authorize it. But they will quite likely just say no, or otherwise have no way of contacting them. Try on another device, see if you have any better success. Or update software if possible

From reddit .com/r/Ultralight/

very exhaustive listing

[UL backpacking gear venders]

I’m not on there! canoepaddler.net I make mostly winter camping and canoe tripping gear but also sell Lawson cordage in Canada and my own brand of twig stoves. Neither is Little Shop of Hammocks from Saskatchewan and Taiga Works from Vancouver so maybe there are more Canadian companies missing.

Thanks Bruce and Simulcra.

Chris,

It’s too bad we can’t establish better postage rates across the border.  I could be in Vancouver BC for dinner tonight but it’s cheaper for me to order something from Florida.  Suluk 46 is another great Canadian company

Many listed on Whiteblaze.net

https://whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php/81415-list-of-cottage-industry-manufacturers

https://blackwoodspress.com/blog/12378/cottage-backpacking-gear-directory/

Ian

Tell me about it! I have cut price shipping to the USA but on big orders it really hurts. To make it worse I have to buy a lot of my fabrics from the US as well, there is almost no supply of 500d Cordura to Canada. I’ve taken to using a parcel service, shipping to North Dakota and a courier picks up for me from there.

Thanks ALL, great links, much appreciated.