Tayson: Here's the big question, how do we lighten our gear and build our confidence so that we can start living a life full of Outdoor Adventures and memories without having unlimited amounts of time, money and previous experience. That's the big question and we are here to help you find the answers. This is the little trolley podcast power, bi Outdoor Vitals. Welcome back to the Live Ultralight podcast. I'm your host Tayson Whitaker.
Tayson: So the founder here at our vitals, which this whole podcast is powered by
Tayson: Outdoor Vitals. And today, we're gonna be talking a lot about our vitals because we're going to be talking about what to come in 2021. There's a ton of stuff, we are what days six here, sitting in Outdoor Vitals. And we're already like, looking at this, what? We've got coming down the pipeline and it's intense. It's awesome. I wouldn't change it for the world but man, we've got a lot of work
Tayson: cut out for us because we've got some awesome stuff down. You know, rolling down the pipeline. So, today we're gonna
Tayson: talk about 2021, what it looks like. I'm gonna be teasing out a few things. Those of you that are kind of interested to know what we might be releasing later this year. You might get some little teasers towards the end of this in particular, and we're going to be talking about 2020 and kind of recapping on that and that really I think is the better place to start. But if you do want to hear
Tayson: what's happening in 2021. So the products that are coming down the pipeline, all the things that we have going on, make sure to stay tuned
Tayson: through this podcast and for those of you that might be new to podcasting, I imagine most of you are not just know you can speed my voice up on most podcasting apps just by adjusting the playback speed. I do that on all of my podcasts and so I just thought I'd throw out that little tip right there. All right, so
Tayson: Stop further Ado. We are going to dive right into a 20/20 recap starting with the first part of 2020. So those of you that are following us on our YouTube channel, we did some pretty cool videos Last Winter where we talked about building a snow cave. A snow shelter or dug out trenches, put a little tarp over it with, with some branches. Some Deadfall and different things. Covered it all up, insulated it and slept in these shelters, it was really awesome.
Tayson: Had a good response. Lots of people loved to comment on that particular video, as
Tayson: well as the next video. A little mention is the hot tent video where I actually take our Dominion 2 person tent and I stick a titanium stove. Inside there the results on that were really, really surprising to me. It's really cool. And you'll likely see us do some
Tayson: additional videos like that on YouTube this winter. So if you're interested in kind of stuff, make sure you're subscribed
Tayson: because our YouTube channel is blowing up right now. We've had a lot of success over there. Big shout out to the team as you're going to Hear probably a lot of times throughout this whole podcast but starting kind of with that. The other thing that
Tayson: happened in the beginning of 2021 for us was we did a Rebrand so we released our new logo. He talked about the Rebrand kind of the newer updated Vision, you know, for us it was like telling old news. So for you guys, it was probably pretty fresh and exciting to see some of the movement with the Rebrand. I know that the feedback we've been getting has been really promising and I think the the new logo and the new look just looks
Tayson: fantastic on a lot of these apparel pieces that we're starting to see it in and that's been the feedback so that was a lot of fun to go talk about the Rebrand release that new logo and move forward with that shortly after that, we talked we released the Dominion tent updates. So we totally revamped the two person did some small tweaks of the one person and just totally revamped those Dominion tents. So release that this is still spring, this is like,
Tayson: March time frame. And for those of you that are interested in those Dominion tents, by the way, we should have more coming in February, so save you a customer support inquiry or going to check that out.
Tayson: And we also around that time, released green, Loft Tech and down jackets. Now, for most of you,
Tayson: you didn't know we had a green down jacket that, you know, are not members because I was a member exclusive.
Tayson: However we did just recently open that up. So now other people can get the green
Tayson: regulator down jacket that one that we totally revamped but essentially, not only did we release a green but we totally revamped that down jacket. Sort of using hyperdrive down in it, which is a wax based treatment on that on the down and that's been really, really Superior. Good performing I should say Compared to any of the other options we've tested over time. So what we've released and revamped a couple products at this point and then comes the big one which was
Tayson: our Kickstarter campaign of the Satu Pants and the DragonWool based layers.
Tayson: So many of you guys are, you are very familiar with Kickstarter, but for those of you that are not essentially, this is just how we
Tayson: release some of our biggest products. Every year we go and we pre-sell it for a very limited amount of time on a
Tayson: Kickstarter campaign. We take that those presells we go then and
Tayson: basically do the deposits on the manufacturing, we get the manufacturing rolling, but you guys essentially pre-order it, you get big discounts, you get it first, you get exclusives and things like that. And so that's that was the release.
Tayson: What was really exciting about that. Is it became the highest funded technical pant ever in
Tayson: Kickstarter history. So that was kind of a sweet badge of honor to get. We raise by the time, the campaign was all the way over we'd raise well over, 800 thousand dollars with the campaign. And then there was also some cool torture test videos and things like that. But again you can go check out on our YouTube channel but overall
Tayson: the pant and then we'll campaign did awesome. And that was a lot of fun to see that there's a lot of turmoil at
Tayson: this point in the year because that was like April and May and covid restrictions. The pandemic stuff was really hitting hard around that time where lots of states were taking action. We weren't we just weren't sure what to expect, but you know, we kept rolling in 2020 and we adapted a ton meanwhile behind the scenes about this time. We actually started testing our Live Ultralight membership so this was in beta form. We had a 200 people on it, testing it out
Tayson: for us and working through some of those Kinks which was really really cool to see. So if any of you guys were on the beta team for that thank you. Thank you. And you guys definitely helped us get that moving forward. So Now we're released. What will hoodie? We'll zip offs, boxers. We've released pants. We've released I guess. I think on there we actually talked about releasing the shorts. That's a five products. Now we're released a new down jacket and a
Tayson: newer Dominion 10th that's like seven products. I'm Gonna Keep a tally here because I'm going to compare it to what we
Tayson: actually are going to release this year and see how close we came in 2020, Okay. So We've got all of that. Moving on the next thing, you know, we start, we were getting into the summer at this point. We did an awesome through hike
Tayson: of a local area, took some some fun videos of fixing gear, doing some cold soak testing. We tested a bunch of gear sort of testing, I don't know if this was like the first time we were testing it. If we'd already done some testing at this point, we're in full mode of our trekking pole tent which I'll talk about when we get to the 2021 stuff. But we had a lot of just a lot of gear that we were testing at
Tayson: this point and working through that was a time that was a ton of fun. Also, took
Tayson: you behind the scenes to talk about some R&D stuff. Now, if you guys are tuning in a podcast, you probably hear that a lot. But we'd have a
Tayson: did a fun video or we kind of went took you through the process, a lot of the process of the R&D which is
Tayson: a good time. I got to go to Alaska, which was a blast. Take a lot of our gear tested. In some really cool scenarios, got to really test like The Loft Tech products,
Tayson: every night in Alaska. When we were up there, I was in the tundra, you know, far far, north 40 ish miles from the northern ocean, you know? And they're in Alaska. And we'd get this crazy fog that would roll in and just everything was wet and it was just, it was really fun to be able to test things like that, lock to jacket and just have that level of confidence when you're literally Hundreds of miles from the nearest city and you've
Tayson: been flown in and then dropped off from there. And so you're just totally isolated and it was a lot of fun to do some testing there. And put the, put the jacket, and all of our gear really, to test, you know, that was that was a good time. So that was a lot of fun. Check that off my bucket list, but definitely went right back on my bucket list by the time I was back just because I had so much fun up there.
Tayson: And now we're kind of getting into August. So at this point in the year, I'll just say, we are
Tayson: starting to feel a lot of the covid delays in production. It definitely slowed down our production. And at the same time, we had a massive lift, obviously, we're on line, that helps us. We're in the outdoor industry
Tayson: that helps us and we had a bunch of awesome stuff going on. So we saw a massive growth here
Tayson: really, really, really solid growth here. Like we typically aim for, for
Tayson: a very high level of growth, much higher than most companies would, and we like doubled that level of growth. So that was really, really cool to see. Actually I have a self-funded, you know, company like us, I would say self-funded, but also customer funded
Tayson: thanks to you guys with like Kickstarter and stuff, but we're starting to fill that pressure. I guess at this point, a little bit, I would start to see some of the,
Tayson: you know, the pant production, the world production, you know, starting to be like, okay, we're going to hit these timelines and, you know, just for working, we're working really hard with that. And I was, that's a big part of the year. Brigham, you know, kicked by just keeping on top of everything and definitely pushing really, really hard. And a lot of the other team members did as well to get product here and get it selling and
Tayson: just pull everything together. All right. So now we're into August. I was saying and we launched the
Tayson: membership, which Big round of applause to the team at this point in time.
Tayson: They've they did phenomenal bringing that all together, putting it all together and really
Tayson: the feedback on the membership has been Stellar. So we have that closed Facebook group which is where I get all the feedback per se at least that I'm seeing and that membership closed Facebook group has really grown but also I just love seeing the comments in there and people have been beyond thrilled.
Tayson: Like I thought that we had created something with a
Tayson: tremendous amount of value, and I wanted to make it so valuable that it really felt like kind of a no-brainer situation, where it's like, there's no reason not to do this so because he doesn't cost me anything. It's just like the transferring, the loading up the store credit for say.
Tayson: And it's been really fun to just see the feedback on the membership and to see that thing grow,
Tayson: which it has grown significantly. It's done super well. And so those of you that are members, thank you. Thank you. And those of you that are not, I'm gonna give you some more reasons to think about being a member when we talk about 2021. But the feedback was really good. We launched a lot of retail
Tayson: products. This is when we started bringing on some of our favorite pieces of gear, like catted eye and filters, and tokes titanium and
Tayson: sort of bringing in the best foods such as Peak, refuel. I need to do an a video on or something. Really. Diving into how much more Superior that stuff is just brought in Mountain. Ops, we started to do
Tayson: a lot of different things there. And the retail side grew significantly, obviously members the side's getting,
Tayson: you know, some of their discounts and different things. They also get those instant rebates when they buy. So again that was that was really good to see where we're gonna. Well I'll talk about that a little bit more 2021. We launched the Shadowlight on
Tayson: pre-sell and sold pre-sold 100s of packs. That was awesome, especially since like, we're not running ads or anything like that. This is, I think, probably we talked about the shadow, like more on the podcast than anywhere else and maybe one or two videos. But overall
Tayson: that thing has just People are stoked for it. I'm stoked for it. It is an awesome, awesome product, and
Tayson: hundreds and hundreds and not quite thousands, but hundreds of you are anxiously
Tayson: waiting us to start shipping those. I literally just opened an email right before I jumped on the podcast and things are
Tayson: moving along. Hopefully we are going to get it really soon and we're gonna start shipping that instantly. Once we get that stuff all shipped out, we're gonna be much more careful, which I'll get to in a second.
Tayson: Try to get everything shipped out, well, on its way and then we will release it to the rest of you. Those of you members that did pre-order this because she had to be a little trip to get the pre-sell discounts on this thing. Does, the did that congratulations? You guys got a smoke and deal and you're gonna get some sweet bonuses?
Tayson: Just For free because you guys have already. This we're
Tayson: going to be throwing some extra things. Essentially in your order's, gonna get for free. When this thing
Tayson: ships, I'll tell you one of them right now. One of them is a Nile fume.
Tayson: If you. Always remember but basically it's a pack liner. So you're going to get a free pack liner. When you order the pack and the rest of you will as well, once we actually issue these things for sale once they're here. But yeah again, thank you for those that have pre-ordered them. You guys got a smoking deal. In fact, Brigham has said since the beginning that he thought the deal was honestly too good and unfortunately, that deal has now closed. You
Tayson: can still get a discount if you're a member. I don't remember how much might be like 15 or 20% off, but the 25% off level has been closed, but you're still gonna get those free bonuses that we will talk about when we release the satellite. For those of you members that have already ordered just know, we're going to throw a few extra things in your package when we ship it out. So, the Shadowlight again, just
Tayson: super stoked on that again, bring him to a phenomenal job. Putting that all together, this is a new manufacturer for us
Tayson: that we towed over a year ago. They have been phenomenal to work on. We may or may not have another project going with Them just been really, really fun to work with them and it'll be awesome. Awesome to get that pack here and shipping in the very near future.
Tayson: Okay. Moving a little bit more on. Now, we're getting into the late fall. We revamped our YouTube channel that's been taking off. Go check that out. It's growing at a tremendous rate. Here's something I was really
Tayson: proud for the team to do. We pulled together a clearance sale in the beginning of November, when we were, we had like no inventory in the entire Warehouse. We had so much stuff sitting at Port in transit and we just were literally looking at this big empty Warehouse thinking, what can we do? And we've put our heads together and we came up with the idea of getting rid of some, of the stuff that's been returned to us or needs to be
Tayson: put on clearance and so great job team in making that happen and pulling that off. Again, just one of those opportunities where we kind of just did a little bit of innovating and it worked out really, really well. A lot of you guys, got some sweet gear, got some really good discounts. So if you're listening with podcast and you're not on our email list, make sure you're over there because that's all. We're gonna get the best deals. And he told about
Tayson: stuff like that that's going on, you know, we do try to update you here on the podcast so much as we can. So then we're moving into November and we're like, are we gonna be able to do Black Friday? Are we not going to do Black Friday? Are we gonna that? Sell was literally canceled, put back on and canceled two full times and it was like we were not going to have a Black Friday sale as of one week, prior to
Tayson: Black Friday, we did not have the inventory. We were sitting there scratching our heads saying
Tayson: we can't even put anything on sale. Why would we run a Black Friday sale? It was wild. I mean it was wild. So we get noticed I remember if it was a week of Black Friday or maybe that Friday before the basically that inventory was in route, it's gonna be in our warehouse very, very shortly and we were able to kick that sell out the door. Just another one of those
Tayson: fun pandemic things. You know, we had so many things planned out. So perfectly everything was
Tayson: lined up. When we canceled it and it re-book, you know, it was just a whole lot of fun, you know what I mean? That kind of
Tayson: fun but we we made it, you know, we put together that Black Friday sale, had some had our best Black Friday sale
Tayson: we've ever done. Which is awesome. And then at the same time that
Tayson: Black Friday sales just closing up, we get our pants and Dragon Ball stuff finally, which was
Tayson: Like the straw that felt like it was gonna break the camel's back here because we were just sprinting, we're working so hard
Tayson: to manage everything that's going on. And then that's when we finally, finally get the pants and the dragon wall and so we shipped out well over a million dollars worth of product in like, two weeks.
Tayson: I mean, we had People and we built new shipping stations. We
Tayson: brought people on left and right and anyone and everyone who wanted to come and ship products. We were basically like, hey, come over here. We've got a job for you and it got pretty
Tayson: intense, and we both, but I'm again, just super proud of the team, we sprinted through that we shipped out, just a ton, a ton of product I mean, they basically had to start bringing solo trucks. They would shuttle trucks back and forth from the postal office multiple times just to
Tayson: pick up all the stuff we were shipping out. It got wild but we did it and
Tayson: it wasn't super clean. We made a couple mistakes for sure, which I want to take a second to apologize for because that's kind of been the name of the game around here. After vitals is, if you guys are
Tayson: followers of us, you'll know that I have never built a company like this before. I
Tayson: had my 30th birthday this year, and I started this company.
Tayson: 2014 was about 24 years old, actually was 23 when I started it and turned 24 later that year. So started this company at 23 years old and we kicked it out and, you know, we've made mistakes along the way, but I feel like we've always tried to, to remedy them over them for the customers
Tayson: and learn from them and pivot and, you know, there's been opportunities for us to learn this year. I'll tell you right now that in the future,
Tayson: we will not when we ship out our Kickstarter items. We essentially shipped out all of our Kickstarter items that we that we thought we could. And then we were kind of working on timelines because we really
Tayson: thought it would be great to be able to push these out before Christmas and let other people start buying them before Christmas and
Tayson: that came back to bite us a little bit. We opened it up and we found there's a huge
Tayson: Huge. But there's a couple hundred orders that somehow just got missed missed essentially and they've been printed, but not shipped somehow and it created an air and we discovered that after we
Tayson: put them live on the
Tayson: The website and we'd blown through a handful of inventory. Specifically dragon wall because we only had half of the shipment and then it kind of put a few people I don't know 50 or so in a position where they had to wait some additional time to get their items that was that was unfortunate and I really apologize to those 50 or so people, you know, and keep them. I mean, for perspective and I get really I can get really focused on
Tayson: that sometimes get down a little bit. But you know, of the four, five thousand people that we should order to, I guess the 50 wasn't For a little bit of perspective I guess. But again that's what we learned from. So going forward, just know that. If you back a Kickstarter you pre-order do different things. We are going to be shipping those out. We're going to be holding before we put them on the website. So that we can maybe start start going
Tayson: through some exchanges because there's always sizing exchanges that are just going to take place naturally. And yeah, so just know if you want some of the stuff that we're going to be pushing on 2021 and its Kickstarter type stuff. Pre-sale type stuff, know that we are going to be
Tayson: taking extra time. You guys are gonna get your stuff actually, you know, up to a month I would say earlier than
Tayson: people that do not pre-order the items. So,
Tayson: Yeah, that's that's one of the things trying to think of other mistakes that we, that we made this year. Because
Tayson: you know, again I love to look back at the mistakes so that we can learn from them. We've learned more and more that we need to continue to dial in procedures and things like that. I mean, that's, that's kind of geeky stuff right now. Stuff that's super interesting to you guys.
Tayson: But yeah, we've learned a lot about dialing in the
Tayson: just the systems around here, dialing in the business and making things flow a lot better and it's been great. The business I guess has been growing not only the product lines and sales and different things like that. What the business side of it has continued to grow and that's been that's been a really really good. I can't think our team enough for all of the work that they put in this year. Sometimes working here. His hard work. I mean, it's just
Tayson: there's a lot on all of our plates because we all of us, typically, are wearing multiple hats and doing multiple things and keeping track of multiple things. It's a blast to work here. It can also be a bit of a Sprint. So, again, just a big shout-out big. Thank you to the Outdoor Vitals team and just looking forward to 2021 where we will be expanding things like our team and so on so forth. So let's dive in.
Tayson: Okay, you guys been with me for 20 ish minutes here. Let's finally get into 2021 and what it looks like because it looks awesome now. Oh man, I think I forgot to track the product launches,
Tayson: maybe we didn't really launched too much later on, so I counted seven and I think I'm just gonna leave it at that as far as the products that we launched. So 2021, here's the highlights of what it is. Looking like we are going to revamp for
Tayson: products. So a revamped product is something kind of like the Dominion tents, you know,
Tayson: where we shaved, where we shaved a pound out of those tents. So there's some things like that we're going to be totally revamping for products. In fact. We are going to be launching Celestial. We launched like seven products this year. What looks like is going to happen? Is we are going to launch about 14, new products slash product lines. That's so I mean that's that's more products coming out than one a month essentially in the revamps. You know, it's about like
Tayson: one and a half new products or revamps a month on average. It's it's just a tremendous amount of stuff that we're going to be cranking out, which is exciting, which we're definitely looking forward to. But that's what I was saying on, when we start looking at 2021, we were already.
Tayson: Just thinking. All right we gotta fix some some things that we do in order to to not die. Try to get all this stuff going this year, but that's gonna be super awesome. Keep in mind too. That like 14, new products is, is a lot. But on the back end of all this, right? On the back. End of all this, that's well over a hundred skews. Maybe, maybe even
Tayson: close to, like, 200 new skus was just skew, is like an individual barcode, right? That's like 200 new barcodes, probably that we're going to be creating this year alone. It's going to be. It's going to be fun. It's gonna be fun and we're again we're just we're trying to
Tayson: we get so many people that are asking for different products and different things. We're trying to round out our lines. We're trying to rebuild stuff that we feel like doesn't align with our newer brand
Tayson: or the newer weight levels that were that we're aiming for. So just a lot, a lot going on there. But yes, lots
Tayson: of new products coming out. We Are going to actually launch two
Tayson: Kickstarter campaigns this year.
Tayson: Timeline wise, not it's going to be.
Tayson: It's going to be fun, it's gonna be interesting, but we feel pretty confident that we're able to push out two
Tayson: Kickstarter campaigns this year. One obviously is not going to be that far into the future. So you're
Tayson: gonna start hearing us tease a little bit about that, it may or may not be. something for
Tayson: say here, but essentially it's a another piece of apparel. And it has some of the most amazing Fabrics I've ever put in my hands. The fabric is just everyone that we hand this garment to is just like
Tayson: what Is garment it is like they're just like you can see on their face. There's wow, this
Tayson: this feels really nice. This is super, super light. You know, they just start to spout off some of these comments
Tayson: and it's been awesome. In fact, the prototypes that I have and we've been going through testing continued to disappear on my house, as my wife, Picks Them Up, which is another indicator
Tayson: that these things are just super comfortable. Whether and, again, they're going to be phenomenal for outdoor, use their, but they're gonna be great for every other type of use, which is really, really
Tayson: exciting to see So yeah, I would stay tuned to the podcast, the YouTube channel because of those are going to start getting
Tayson: teased really, really soon. At least like the first of those campaigns. We're going to be
Tayson: expanding retail. That's been a little bit tougher due to stock, right. A lot of these companies are low in stock production. Slowed cells went up in our industry. And so you've seen like katadyn filters going in and out of stock on our website. A lot
Tayson: that really has nothing to do with us as a lot to do with them, just getting inventory in and then sending it to us. And then
Tayson: by the time we put in the next video, their stock back out again. But you know, looking at things like expanding, you know, putting some
Tayson: some head like a headlamp on there for for people members again because they're getting that that extra discount and bonus back. So since like our members are really taking advantage of the retail side,
Tayson: so things like headlamps play tracking polls. We're going to be looking into getting some trekking poles on there. If you guys have interests, you know, go over to live Ultra light.com and post a comment. There's a
Tayson: Facebook, a little comment thing that you can. You can add comments there, right in. But yeah, we're gonna expanding retail so that's additional products that I didn't even really factored in here.
Tayson: But Yeah, so just that's like a high level thing of 2021 very, very quickly. Starting sooner we've got the Shadowlights they're gonna be out in January.
Tayson: We got really soon before the shuttle lights were going to be releasing a different product, net wool. Neck gaiters and a wool bandana face mask thing. That's probably what we put on the listing, is a
Tayson: bandana face mask thing. But no, we are gonna have wool
Tayson: Gators and bandanas out pretty soon and like maybe within
Tayson: like two weeks. And so you'll want to pay attention for those.
Tayson: We'll do another podcast on those two doing. It one more Deep dive. We've got a couple deep that's obviously coming and then near future, but those are right around the corner and those are awesome. Those are super versatile pieces made with that, you know, with our with our wool partner, New York, and the special way that they that they blend and make the wool. And, you know, we will talk a little bit about the design, the process of why we did
Tayson: our our buff, our, you know, our Gator
Tayson: slightly different, and what's different about it. Besides just the technical materials side. Anyways, those are right around the corner. So we got the shadowlight launch, we've got the neck gaiter launch, reading some things in stock in
Tayson: February and then bam. Right around March, we're going to pushing out Kickstarter. Number know,
Tayson: so Lots going on there. Lots of products being released. We are going to be working on, expanding our warehouse. So, Again, one of those things where like where I hope I hope I instill confidence in you guys from like a financial standpoint. We saw one of our,
Tayson: I don't know, quote, unquote, like competitors or people in our space. This year, go bankrupt, and have to
Tayson: get go through liquidation process or sell out process. That's never fun to see. And I want you guys to know that that that's not us, that's not going to be us. That we take a lot of our
Tayson: financial stuff. Very, very seriously. We're very careful. Yes, a lot of times it's not nearly sexy. We do
Tayson: everything we can to make it as sexy as possible, as far as following our company. But,
Tayson: you know, we're not a VC backed company and we don't have money to just throw a things. Throw it jobs, throw it
Tayson: product and so I appreciate you guys bearing with us, sometimes, maybe we've got stock outs that would have been solved if we had, you know, Deep Pockets, Venture Capital Pockets line pockets. That's a Pockets a lot. But Okay, um anyways, so one of the things that we did that was turned out has turned out to be very
Tayson: very smart financial decision is I purchased a multi-unit warehouse space. We occupy
Tayson: I don't know half feels like about half the building this point, not really. And then we rent out the other units and then, as we've
Tayson: gotten bigger, we've taken over additional units. So, this year, we took over an additional unit 2021, will absolutely be taking over an additional unit. I've already had to talk to the tenant, give them good, long warning on that. But, yeah, we are expanding Our warehouse
Tayson: space which also comes with an expanded team. So if you have interest in ever working at Outdoor Vitals, stay tuned, stay tuned with podcasts. That's probably gonna be the most likely place that we would talk about this. We're probably gonna be putting up a page on the website. At some point, that talks about potential job opportunities around here.
Tayson: Excuse me. And right now, we are in the hunt for a full-time position, a management level position for warehouse and customer service management recently. Dave, went to remote
Tayson: situation for his family purposes
Tayson: and we have opened up a position to manage the warehouse and kind of be the The guy who's leading up the customer I say guy or gal, that's leading up the customer service side of the business. We've had some additional help step in and we kind of live in a college town where we can get a lot of temporary help and people that way. But we need someone who's going to be here. Stable, it's gonna be, you know, 40 hours a
Tayson: week and, you know, just gonna be able to manage and have people come and go underneath that position, but keep everything buttoned up and in line and whatnot. So we hope that this is a career type of a position meaning, as we grow you grow. And as you do better, you know, it's able to grow as well. So the pay will will not be necessarily entry level and then from there,
Tayson: it should go up. So if you're interested in that reach out to us again, that's
Tayson: more or less, you would be a A customer service and Warehouse Foreman or manager. So, if you're interested in that maybe send us in an email, and we're gonna be building a job listing for that. Really, really soon if there's other positions that you might be interested in marketing positions, different things, we may we may be looking for those later in the year don't write in just yet, I would say. But like I say keep it keep an eye out for
Tayson: things as our team needs to grow to to make this happen. I will say we've been extremely efficient, I don't know many companies that run as lean as we do. That pays dividends and that's being able to launch or
Tayson: products. And things of that nature. So, we've been we've been very, very fortunate
Tayson: and in that aspect of things, so, So, Brock lines are growing, we're houses growing teams
Tayson: growing and our followers are growing and our membership is growing, lots of
Tayson: lots of different things. So let's talk about a couple product teases. I already I already teased out on the
Tayson: apparel piece that is going to be our first Kickstarter project. That's speaking to be coming up. It's very unique piece. It's nothing really like it in the world which is very, very exciting and the feedback and testing we've had on it so far
Tayson: has been Awesome. This year, we're going to be dipping our toes into the travel
Tayson: Market. Know, we're not pivoting, our core values, and what we do or anything like that more, so aligning with people that are in our audience already and perhaps other hobbies that they do seems like, Ultralight backpacking, you love to see new things, you love to travel if you're anything like us, we love to do all those things. And so we're we're gonna be releasing some products later in the year that have a little bit to do with travel. Specifically Adventure travel
Tayson: Outdoor Adventure, travel, just kind of the Gap, I guess you could say between a full Outdoor Experience and travel in urban experiences. So custom things there, you're going to want to pay attention
Tayson: to, obviously we tease out way too early. Take another mistake for 2020, we teased that way too early, our trekking pole tents. But those
Tayson: continue to move forward, we are getting closer and closer and we will have them later this year. So, stay tuned for those trekking, pole, tents.
Tayson: The weight savings and usable space inside of them. And all of that is awesome. And
Tayson: so you're really gonna want to pay attention to those. Our pads need to revamp for sure. It's too early to say or tease anything on that. But just know we're looking hard at options where, you know, we've gone through some sampling. We've got more sampling to do for sure, but I'm very optimistic about what we've got going. The direction that we're going with the pads. So we're going to be revamping those pads later in the year. So that's kind of another
Tayson: little tease. We've got some sleeping accessories that are going to be coming out. Probably a little bit sooner than later. Or testing out some new installations.
Tayson: I can't say too much there because there's definitely a lot of people that are watching us when it comes to this after the, you know,
Tayson: things like the million
Tayson: dollar jacket. But just know we're continuing to test in highly highly
Tayson: likely to release something in a slightly different insulation
Tayson: this year. So that'll be really, really exciting. But that's, that's
Tayson: gonna be a little bit later on the year. Potential wall potential, you know, additional wall pieces. I don't know. I'm
Tayson: teasing out too much. But there again, you know, 14 plus products, plus four more revamps plus a couple of Kickstarter. Lots, lots of things that are gonna be coming your way and also, lots of reasons to
Tayson: join the Live Ultralight membership. So for those of you that don't know what the heck, this thing is,
Tayson: this is a store credit membership for 10 bucks a month. It loads 10 dollars of store credit into your account, so
Tayson: it's never expiring. You'll always have it. But let me tell you why being a member right now would probably be a good idea as we get into 2021. First off, you're gonna be building up your store credit that you can then spend at a later point in time. I promise you absolutely promise you you will always find and have something to spend your store credit
Tayson: on whether it's retail side, whether it's just buying backpacking meals, whether it's that new
Tayson: headlamp, whether it's a new katadyn, water, filter, whatever it is, you will always have something, especially with the amount of products that we are turning out. Specially as we're you know getting a little bit more into the apparel side of the game where you know stuff happens sometimes you want a newer, you know,
Tayson: jacket or maybe, maybe it's you rip it Beyond repair, who knows? There's just a little bit higher,
Tayson: turnover and some of those things like pants, you know, pants have probably a life cycle so when you're wearing them every single day but I promise you all always have something to spend that store credit on the other big reasons. Why I'm 2021 you're going to want access to this is you're going to get early access to stuff, right?
Tayson: I'm going to get early access to things that we perhaps put on pre-sell, so those 14 products. I imagine there's going to be at least a few that we put on pre-sale, similar to that Shadowlight backpack, which also means you're going to get big discounts. So obviously, if you're a member, you're going to get a 10% off your round discount, but we're going to give you additional discounts. When we put things on pre-sell, we're just going to be a few.
Tayson: There's gonna be a few things
Tayson: that we're going to put on presale. We won't put everything on pre-cell, definitely. But some of those bigger take items like I would imagine
Tayson: that tracking pull tent. If you want to deal on that tracking bull tent, you should be a member
Tayson: and you're probably gonna see that thing in pre-order status at some point in the spring. Not that it will ship in the spring but that's probably one of it'll start. We'll start talking about it and know more of when the delivery date could be and things like that. So you can want to be a member for that for that early access, you need your best discounts on presells and Deals and things like that.
Tayson: I mention that there's two Kickstarter campaigns. That's one question, I guess really quickly. Some members are having, you know, what about
Tayson: what about Kickstarter or what? If I want to get my discount on Kickstarter or different? Things like that. Unfortunately, there's no way for us to apply your discounts on Kickstarter or give you any kind of
Tayson: Pathetical deal. If there is there's going to be two way, two things that we're going to look at doing for you guys that are members. Option one, we'll see if there's any way for us to give you guys
Tayson: like a free bonus on your orders. If there's any way for us to track that or do anything there,
Tayson: but that is again a stretch almost likely, what is going to happen is We're going to basically keep it under wraps, the release date, the release time will release,
Tayson: it will email all of our members and say, hey this is now available. There's a certain tier that's going to be available. Only to you guys for the next two hours or something, maybe three hours at most. So you guys are going to want to go. Jump on that early bird deal. And super early bird deal launch deal, whatever you want to call member deal. We'll name it something and you guys will be able to get access to that. So
Tayson: there's going to be some timing thing. We'll have to notify you
Tayson: guys a little bit ahead of time when we expect to release that. So you can watch your inboxes and get a deal on Kickstarter. Other than that, I apologize. There's no way for us to just give you 10% off on a different platform that 10% off is clearly stated
Tayson: for the website. So whoa, what what else? Man, join the membership watch out for
Tayson: outer. Vitals in 2021, lots to come quality is just continuing to get better and better. Our manufacturing partners are getting better and better. Our designs are getting better and
Tayson: better just seen some awesome stuff going on. And I'm stoked like I am so
Tayson: stoked about 2021 2020. Has been has had
Tayson: some ups and downs to say the least. I'm sure it has for you as well. I'm not sad
Tayson: at all to see it over but we can't be more thankful for what happened in 2021 from our standpoint as a business. And just what was what we were able to do with the amount of Interest, the people showed me outdoors, and our ability to capitalize on that with an awesome team. So
Tayson: really appreciate the team, really appreciate all of you guys that are following us here. If any of the stuff piqued your interest in this podcast, make sure you get signed up for a newsletter. Make sure you're following us. Make sure you're subscribed to this. Make sure you share this guy's. If you share this podcast, all this is going to help us and help more
Tayson: people and help us grow and launch more products that you guys love. So, really appreciate you guys listening in today. Again, thanks for tuning in for the Live Ultralight podcast and we will catch you guys on the next episode.
Tayson: Hey everybody. This is Tayson again. And really quick. I wanted to invite you to join, probably the best thing that we've ever put out which is the Live Ultralight membership, buying and affording gear is arguably. The biggest reason that people don't get out and truly enjoy nature. You want to go but you don't trust your gear. It can't handle the expected, weather, or temperature ranges, or you simply don't have the right gear in the first place at all. That's exactly why
Tayson: we created the liberal trade membership. It works a lot. Like a simple savings account for your gear. You simply Auto load, 10 dollars of store credit into your account every month, and you get instant access to year-round discounts, you get free priority, shipping and prioritize shipping. By the way, early access to New Gear, the world releasing or early access to cells that are going on, you're gonna get limited edition gear. You're going to get expert coaching, and access to the obtained
Tayson: inside our closed, Facebook group, which is also gated not, anyone can join this, right? And something very, very cool where you can now get our most vetted, our favorite gear from other brands that we're not putting on the website but members are going to get it at additional discounts and instant rebates. So, If you wanted that new cation, water filter that we've been talking about a ton lately, you can get it with your membership credits and you're also gonna be able
Tayson: to get with a membership discount and an instant store credit rebate, that's just Auto added to your account. After checkout. This membership has too many amazing things to cover. So what I want to recommend you do right now is stop everything. Pause this audio head over to Outer vitals.com forward slash membership to sign up and start building your credit. We're going to release some new products in there really soon at Big discounts. So go sign up today at Outdoor Vitals.com forward
Tayson: slash membership, and we will catch up inside the closed, Facebook group after that we can continue this conversation over there.
