Tayson: Everybody, welcome back to the Live Ultralight podcast. Today, we are going to be diving into Retail products and why we offer them how we offer them and maybe some changes that are coming in the pipeline as well as some sneak peeks who are talking about products that we might be looking at or maybe you guys have some insights on things we should look at. But as per the usual, Brigham is here to join me on the
Tayson: mic. So, welcome, Brigham. Speaking a new exciting, we want to dive into before we get into the meat and potatoes of this podcast.
Brigham: That won't take too long to talk about. I mean, there's always something new going on. again, we had out in camping
Tayson: in the snow at all or
Brigham: Hopefully, we got some early snow here. well yeah, we gotta like Almost two weeks ago but it's taking around. Its kind of melting off, but the higher elevations still gonna have snow I'll be out for a few days over the next. Three or four days in the mountains, so that'll be enjoyable. Know.
Tayson: Yeah, I'll be heading out for six or seven nights here this week as well. So I'm I'm gonna be. Pushing the limits, I'm just going to take our 15 degree bag and some layers and but we'll be I'll be camping in the snow for sure and higher elevation and it'll be, it'll be fun. It'll be fun trip for sure, but it's always good to just log that kind of time in our tents and our products and
Tayson: Is there is maybe a better segue here? Is there any of our retail products you're going to be taking. Yeah, for sure. So or someone
Brigham: some of them. Some are just standard items that, I mean, they go on every trip. So like the toaks pot, the titanium spoon, those are Staples that Yeah, those don't leave my backpack ever. So What else? The categorizing beef free filter. Take a nap for sure. let's see, I'll be taking a testing something that we don't yet offer which is a battery Bank, the power bank. So we were kind of testing two different sizes. Right now
Brigham: I'm taking the little one just
Brigham: to try and get like one charge for the phone over the four days. And then I will be taking some any Peak meals. Yeah, yeah,
Brigham: yeah, that's another one that is pretty much guaranteed. So I'll take a few Peak meals just for dinner. Really. and, I may even take some This is I haven't done this for a while, I may take some of that Slumber the yeah, the night time, you know. Warm. Yeah, I think that'll be nice like this time of year. Probably flirting with freezing by the time you go to bed and then it's a longer night. Yeah. You
Tayson: know that's true because a lot of night and you dark at seven. Yeah. 30. And I for a long time, I was taking the Slumber and loving it, but you know, that experience when you like get sick and you You know, throw something up or feel like you're going to throw something up, and then you're like, don't want to look at it as a kid. It was trick cereal for me, but on that Beaver, Fastback, that
Tayson: we did during the hard line challenge. I drank some Slumber, and then that's like a little bit after is when I started feeling sick. And so I've been like a little of
Brigham: It's got about Association. Yeah,
Tayson: well it's kind of two-fold too because I did something I highly don't recommend which, as I was, I cooked in my shelter for a second, a while back. This is like in the spring, I want to say and I cooked up some Slumber in my tent vestibule thinking, oh, it's tiny man. I'll be fine with an alcohol stove and don't cook. Oh, so in Your town that that also made me feel pretty sick. Pretty fast even
Tayson: though like I was barely on, you know, just don't, don't do that, guys. It'll mess you up and they. So I've got two strikes. I don't have to think as anything to do with the summer. I've loved the Slumber. So maybe I'll, maybe I'll grab a couple packs again. And Take him out this time because it is nice to just have about hot drink right before bed. And And any help you can have to sleep better
Tayson: or longer through a you know, 10 plus, our Knight is welcome in those scenarios. So yeah,
Brigham: I think you need both will probably be using some some polls. Yeah,
Tayson: yeah. So if you haven't figured out by now, when we say retail, well, we mean, is there are certain products that we don't make and don't plan to make And and so in those scenarios we have been buying from other companies and retelling them. So we don't plan to make a water filter, it's just not within our wheelhouse not within our Spectrum, but we use them all the time. So we went to cation and said, hey,
Tayson: let us sell your product to our website and our followers. And we've done. So that is a retail product, the toaks products, we call those retail products. So yeah. We've got some other ones. We're going to be testing and using some of you used for a long time that I'm sure we'll be taking out on the trail with this this next week. So, but there's some changes we have coming down the pipeline with our retail products
Tayson: See. So a little bit of backstory, we released retail products on our website at the same time, or around the same time as we released Our Lives Ultra Lite membership. For those of you that don't know, the level for that membership is store credit membership, it's 10 bucks a month, you get 10 dollars in store credit, instantly every single month and then you get a bunch of other benefits. You get year, round discounts of 10% sitewide.
Tayson: You get priority shipping for free. You get access to closed Facebook group, you get access to retail products and inside the retail products, you also get rebates. So, the whole reason that we added, the retail side was really for our members and our little members. So that, let's just say it's food, This is the best way to get food for backpacking, because you can buy Mountain House from us. You can buy Peak refuel from us as
Tayson: well as I think some other items that Now you're going to get 10% off of the pricing, plus you get a rebate back. So I think on Peak refuel, you know, you get 10% off plus a dollar or maybe a little more in a rebate that instantly gets applied, and that's important because It's a cheapest way. You can get say a peak refuel meal and the only reason that we're able to do it that way for
Tayson: members is because it's a, it's a non advertised price. Meaning we're not running ads to a price that says get be grief fuel for this, you know, 11 dollars a bag and or whatever it is 10 dollars a bag because every retailer has what's called map pricing minimum advertised pricing. So, Stay with Catania and they'll tell us something like you cannot advertise and sell the katadyn filters for, you know, under while. I don't know, I think
Tayson: 39 dollars, but so, yeah, 39 dollars, you cannot sell the one leader Catan water filter for under 39 dollars, that's against our terms and if you do that, we'll have to shut you down as a retailer. But if it's a non-public price. Then we can go cheaper and we can do things like the instant rebates. And that's where the members get all this benefit. So whether it's, whether you're putting the ten dollars a month into this,
Tayson: give it call it a savings account. It never expires. Every single month, whether you're doing that simply for food or for water filters, you know, you're going to buy a new water filter once a year or something, you know, or whatever it might be, it works out really, really well for our members and that's the whole original idea behind why we started doing retail in the first place. So with that being said, we have now had
Tayson: the membership over a year. And when we went to First launch, these retail products, we weren't sure how big the membership would get. We weren't sure how successful the retail products were going to be and so we felt like we needed to open it up to the general public initially so that we could hit volumes minimums and stuff with these retailers when we're buying water filters, you know. They're not gonna let you buy five water filters,
Tayson: you can have to buy 50 or 100, right. So we did that initially but now fast forward a year into this. Our membership has grown tremendously. We have thousands of members in here and with that they're also the ones capitalizing and using the retail discounts and rebates the most. And so, the time is now come for us to switch it up. and actually make all of our retail side of our business, only for members, which For
Tayson: those of you that aren't members, hopefully, that's not really shouldn't be a big. Slap in the face because you can get the same price on any other website, right? But now we're just saying, hey you know what we did this for members initially they get these amazing prices and rebates. Now we're just going to gate it and kind of take that off the website for someone who randomly hops on our website and isn't a member. So
Tayson: now members, Retail, items are going to be exclusive just for you. Whatever happened to him. That sounds. Oh yeah,
Brigham: I think so. I think there's a lot of There's multiple reasons for doing that. You know, like number one our priority is out by vitals gears. So you know, like we're not necessarily trying to Expand to become a massive retailer of. Noise. You know, right?
Brigham: Yeah, that's not one of our goals, so I think it helps like restrict that Was the other thought I have, you know, it. It because its members like we have. We keep very It's a lot easier to Monitor and plan for logistically and ordering and kind of observing Trends and seeing what people like, and because its members only we communicate much easier with them. There's a much better line of composition. Yeah, we can really like make
Brigham: a lot of decisions and adapt. With, you know, that smaller sample size versus trying to anticipate or predict like if this is just opened to the general public because again like we want to spend most of our money on large pose for our own gear you know that get out to people. So if complexes some of those things for sure for sure.
Tayson: so, I guess to take it to the next step to you is not only is this going to be a member exclusive now. But we're all going to be breathing some more life into that retail side of the business. Um, for the members. So, we have some products that have been going to be coming down the pipeline and we also want to hear from you guys, what your thoughts are. So if you don't know, we actually
Tayson: started to record these podcasts on video and also put them on YouTube and it's a great place for you to leave comments to be honest. So if you've got a comment during this podcast or another time, go on there and leave your comments because that's a really easy place for us to see what the comment is exactly what episode you're talking about. Or you can always reach out to us to support our vitals.com, that feedback will
Tayson: get back to us too. But if you've got items that you think we should be retailing, that we are not send them over because we are going to have more team members, kind of in that realm of looking into this figuring things out and trying to build out a little bit more that retail side. So that it's a true all encompassing service for our members, the goal would be that they can come to our website, our
Tayson: retail And be a member and get the best price on all our gear. And then they can also get access to all the other types of pieces of gear that we use that, we've Trail proven, you know, we're out there a lot. We're proving the gear a lot. We're also switching through a lot of gear, a lot. And so, these aren't just random retail pieces. These are pieces that we are vetting and using ourselves. We're not,
Tayson: we're not going to offer, you know, Five types of titanium pots for instance, just because we can, we're going to offer the titanium pots that we feel like are the most proven and the ones that we personally want to use where we would spend our own money, right? Because you can buy a hundred dollar titanium pot. But Most of us don't feel like we need to buy 100 dollar titanium pot, right? Or or whatever. Like we're
Tayson: gonna go with the items that we personally would spend our money on and that's what makes up our retail side of it.
Brigham: Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. That was one of the points in my in my mind that Kind of that one of the premises of the, the retail shop as we maybe could call it. But yeah, it is. Like taste and said, we don't make everything but there's a lot of stuff that we don't make that. We also use all the time. And so those are kind of the things that we want to, to offer
Brigham: the members is really stuff that we, we already use all the time that we have a lot of confidence in a lot of experience with. So, we're selective about You know, identifying those and putting them on the retail side of things, a good example of that might be with
Tayson: headlamps, a headlamp would be something we'd love to put on the retail shop and but we can continue to do more and more and more research to find the right fit for it. Because yeah, we don't just want to put up the headlamp that one of us likes in the office or that, you know, something like that. Like we all want to use it tested. The feedback on it and then move forward with a specific headlamp. Yeah.
Brigham: yeah, so I mean, when you talk about you know, asking people listening to Give us some suggestions or ideas probably how that how that would go is. We'd love to hear them and we're We'll take the input. And then, you know, we're going to kind of prove themselves for sure. Like Find the best options that we feel confident in. So you know, if we get if we get suggestions and we start seeing some trends for certain
Brigham: piece of gear, it's very likely, we'll investigate, you know, by ordering some stuff up and then putting it to use and then giving it a good run for the money before we Decide if it's something. We actually want to list.
Tayson: Totally totally. We put it through a lot of the same things that we put our own products through and we feel like it's more of a partnership with those products. Not just a startup on the website, Let Us sell type of a scenario. So got a couple products that are coming down the pipeline and I think it's okay to tease these out or to talk about them. Um but they are going to be releasing both of
Tayson: these should release before the end of the year. So not very far off should be able to get them you know for Christmas shopping or something like that as well. But number one, our items that we have used for A long and Brigham me and you especially have used them, some of the other cheap skates in the office. Usually just rely on us to to handle these items for them. And I can and that is Garmin
Tayson: Garmin products have been a staple in our packs for a long time. Especially with the in reaches. I've used them for years, you've used them for years and I've recently actually switched from The larger size in reach to a mini, enriched saves me, you know, four plus Oz on that piece. But having those in our packs has been Just a massive game-changer because you're always connected. You always have that safety line. You've always got that connection
Tayson: back home, or with every trying to get to, and on The Highline trip this year, we had to use it to Get off the trail. Two different times without it there.
Brigham: Oh totally. Very, very valid. I feel like we could do. Like an individual podcast on Patricia and we should. So Look for that.
Tayson: Yeah, yeah I mean so there's there's the Garmin in reach that for sure is going to be coming. So if we can save you some money on that we will those are more High ticket price items the Garmin watch I've been wearing it exclusive like it almost hasn't come off my rich wrist longer than an hour or two at a time to charge and like eight or nine months. I have been in love with this thing.
Tayson: We got we'll talk about those but we'll be able to
Tayson: save members of buck on those. And this is an extremely proven product and then trekking poles. I don't know how much we want to share on those, but we we've had a very good experience to be able to investigate and use a new style, trekking pole. They're extremely light, not a new style, I should say that a brand. That's maybe not as well known. So in the USA, but they're extremely light extremely strong. We like them
Tayson: a lot. And and we tested the crap out of them over the last handful of months. And it's my personal favorite tracking poll and I just had a ton of confidence in him. I have had trekking poles from other suppliers out there that have been, okay, but maybe I didn't have like the I say confidence in them because they weren't as big of a name brand or didn't really share anything about their R&D to like know
Tayson: what makes your polls strong? What makes them different? What makes them this? What makes them that? But this this brand that will be pulling out here and likely in December, maybe the end of November We got to sit down with the CEO, go through test Reports. Look at behind the scenes, actions in their factories, and then go and use them. And we've all just really, really like their poles. It's it's been awesome. So that's gonna be
Tayson: coming for members. And and then also, like I said, if you've got other ideas things, you want to see us. Look at let us know in the comments. If you can, you know, you can always go write reviews for us on the podcast, but if you want to direct line, I would say go to YouTube. Leave comments
Tayson: or directly chat. With our website to let us know other products. You'd like to see us start investigating and and we can move forward from there. You know, one item that that came on a trip with this pretty recently. Brigham that. I think that I need you to start doing. Some R&D on, is my titanium Chopsticks, though?
Brigham: I have my own pair.
Tayson: That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah. I'll try.
Tayson: I I've yet to actually take them to use them on a trip. Yeah.
Tayson: That was more of a gag item we packed but no, no, stop. You're for sure, for sure using and wanting to see. That we don't make or you don't think we'd ever plan to make is really kind of the category this goes in. But That's that's a lot of what we want to say about retail again. Kind of taking it member exclusive recovering how much money members save. So just for instance, on on say, how can
Tayson: I be free filters? You're gonna get the 10% off, but then you're also going to get an instant rebate. I believe, for something like the cat, I don't, it's about a four dollar back rebates. So, like, you shouldn't be able to buy a cat and be free filter cheaper anywhere else. Unless it's a promotional, you know, offer that's going on for a day or a week, or something like that, but year round, you should not go
Tayson: to buy a cat on for you filter. Cheaper anywhere else because of you know the systems we talked about in it, not being a public offering but it exclusive to a gated community. So Um, and then we talked about, what's, what's coming? Yeah.
Tayson: Yeah, I might be about it. I would just really wanted to cover
Brigham: know. I think so. Actually, I have one idea. Oh, after this. Yeah, so two things. So one just reiterate. maybe our small ask of the listeners is if you're listening and you're a regular listener like you subscribe to our podcast and your regular listener and and it works out easily for you to listen to the podcast in YouTube form. Like, if you're at a desk all day, maybe I'll say, I guess it kind of asking maybe
Brigham: start listening to the podcast on YouTube. You don't have to watch it. Just have a plan in the background so that way you can like post comments and questions like as you're listening to it because with the, with the podcast platforms, it's really hard to get really good feedback. Yeah. So yeah, if you're regular listener or subscriber to the podcast, you know please consider listening on YouTube so that we can get your Your comments. Does
Tayson: that hurt our podcast though? I don't know. That's not my feelings. So yeah,
Tayson: no, I wouldn't worry about that. I don't think. Yeah, I'd say it's a good thing to listen on YouTube, you can still speed up the podcast. You can like, you know, you can, you can talk about, I always listen to podcasts. I'm like almost one and a half speed It's listening to anything about one and a half speed, but you can still do things like that and then you can leave those comments live on their, the
Tayson: YouTube channels, only been around like a week, but it's already getting a little bit of traction. People are jumping over there and
Tayson: it's a good place to listen and we may eventually just take even clips from this. Like, if you don't have time to listen to every episode, you can just get the highlights of certain podcasts. So again, that's the Live Ultralight podcast. YouTube channel. So Live Ultralight podcasts, you'll see our Channel pop up and you can get subscribed and notified their of what's coming.
Brigham: Yeah. So, I have, I have one other idea. Yes. Because depending on when this comes out, and when somebody chooses to listen to this, Our retail products could at that time, be members only like as well today like like as of today as a recording, like, anybody could come on here and buy that, right?
Tayson: Yeah, but I think, by the time, this pushes public will have made this way. Okay, so
Brigham: if you're listening and you're not a member and you are curious like what do we retail if you're not a member you wouldn't be able to see, right? So maybe I just thought like we only have three pages. What if we just kind of list everything that we yeah, have
Brigham: on retail, so smart, I'm just starting on page one. So we have the Tenacious Tape field repair kit, that's four things like tears in, you know, sleeping pads, jackets, sleeping bags. It's got like some some adhesive and some patches. Um, we've got Peak refuel dinners and breakfasts. If you have not had a peak refuel,
Tayson: they're a little bit more money, but it is like having a restaurant on the mountain. They're so good
Brigham: significantly. Better food option than some of the other stuff out there better before you
Brigham: too, which we also carry. So let's see, we've got pyro putty. That's just like kind of a fire starting Aid, we've got toaks, titanium products, specifically the polished Bowl, long handle spoon. We've got polished, we've got two different, titanium pots, 550 and I think a seven or something like that. Yeah,
Brigham: we sell Cadet, Ivy free filters in the one leader, and then, like, the hanging 3 liter one. As
Tayson: we got your bladder for those. Yeah, so
Brigham: toast, titanium alcohol stove, with windscreens, the pot stand, we sell Mountain House meals. Nick Wax, Nick Wax products we've got some Mountain off stuff. So those are kind of like supplements. So, Nick Wax just to cover that really quick that's
Tayson: like what you're going to wash stuff with like your high-end leading bags or rain gear, as well as we treat them for dwr. So that's that's what Nick's products are
Brigham: the Optimus Optimus Crux Lite stove. That's a A canister type stove. I really like that piece. I'll be using that good studies.
Tayson: I'm a big alcohol stove guy but when I'm not I really Stove.
Brigham: Yeah, we do sell a branded like with our logo on it, Arctic insulated. You know, one leader guy right here, if you're watching. Yep, those insulated bottles, kind of a lifestyle piece, we all. So, sell katadyn pump filters, not the squeeze, you know, the, the be free, but we sell like the hiker, the pump filter, JoJo's chocolate squirrels Nut Butter products. So there's the anti chafe. There's the footstep and
Tayson: the saddle butter we've. Yeah, and I've actually spoke with the owner of them, I'm trying to push him to make a sunscreen and they are in underdevelopment, maybe I shouldn't say that, I don't know, but, you know, so that hopefully will be something that we will get at some point because I I really like the little face sticks but that was part of our decision. You know with bringing them on a retailers. There's a there's a
Tayson: handful of items that they produce or will produce that were excited to have on their
Brigham: Yeah, so that kind of covers generally what we have now and like we already talked about were in the process of testing lighting Products. Um tracking polls are coming very soon. What else have we talk about? Garmin Garmin.
Tayson: And one that I'd like to see, I would like to see is build out the food side more. There's one brand, I won't name it just because I don't know. Until we're signed up as a retailer. I don't like to list the name, but, you know, that offer a bunch of like, quicker, food, products, and type products on the trail, go type stuff. So we're going to be I would like to see us in the near
Tayson: future next you know, I say near future, but time goes so fast and we're always so busy, that could be quarter, you know, a couple quarters down the road. I don't know how fast we'll get to it, but I'd like to see us build out some of the food side as well. Because again, I think that's just a massive benefit as being able to buy food at the cheapest possible price anywhere and it's something you're just
Tayson: always in the need of if you're an avid Outdoors person. So the Cs You know, some of those will be coming out. I mean, heck what else is even in our backpacks I don't think we're gonna retail smart water bottles.
Brigham: Know, there's too much competition with the Walmart brand.
Tayson: Let's see what else is in our packs, you know? About that, we wouldn't build someday, you know, there's not a whole lot more. There's not a top of my head,
Brigham: there's not a lot. I mean, if there's, if you need much more than what we Offer with our own stuff or retail, you might be packing too much stuff, anyway. So that's true. I mean, it really is a very short list of what actually goes in, oh, in a backpack. So
Tayson: we're not gonna retell this, but it is something that might be coming on the pipeline that you've seen. In some of our videos are, Lightweight sit pads. So I won't really go for accessing about that because like a healing Ox chair. Would we ever consider retelling that? Maybe maybe it's like that's like a borderline one or maybe would, you know? We don't lately. We haven't been taking them. just, can get so much lighter and smaller without
Tayson: them, but it's something that we have taken, and I use occasionally Yeah, I don't know.
Tayson: Wait oh, Wow, I don't know if this is be a member exclusive but we are gonna start playing around with the freeze dryer. Yeah.
Tayson: And we'll be able to. I don't know if we can, I don't know if we'll have like a code or a discount or something we can give people, but that might be a thing. If you're interested in like freeze drying your own meals. Which were, which will be exciting deal. A lot of stick around to hear what the heck, we're gonna do with that. I think one of the First videos we might do is something like
Tayson: freeze drying. Our favorite foods, like hamburgers and pizzas. I'm excited as well. I anyways, it'll be, it'll be fun. That wouldn't keep us from. So you feel our Mountain House, it would be supplementary to that. Bring more variety on the trail snacks. Different things too. But Yeah, so again, if you've got more ideas of things that you think we really ought to look at and not miss because, you know, you guys know the market
Brigham: as well. You guys hear different things
Tayson: and maybe we hear and for instance, with the trekking poles, that we're going to be using, you know, that's one of those things that's like we knew of the brand, but we didn't know enough to like, do a bunch of research on them, right? Because they're not as popular of a brand. And so, you know, if we had missed that opportunity, we might have missed, you know, offering the best product that we could have offered. So
Tayson: if, you know, even if it's a smaller more obscure brand, let us know and we'll do the research and look into him. So, But all this being said, I would say, you know, let's just call this this episode sponsored by the liberal True. Light membership, if you're not on that membership there's no reason not to be the credit never expires. You can Cancel anytime even if you just sign up for the holidays, you know, you're gonna
Tayson: be buying something from us. It is worthwhile. And I believe currently if you sign up for that little chili membership, we are going to give you a free toaks, titanium polished long-handled spoon. So if you want to just Get that you can sign up and snag that spoon for free when you get signed up. I mean that's and I'm not. So you don't even have to it's not even taking your credit you sign up, you get
Tayson: the spoon sent to you as well as get ten dollars in credit at that first month. So it's a pretty good bonus but really there's no reason not to be a member, you can join the thousands of other people that are members. And then those of you that already are members, make sure you guys get over in that Facebook group. We plan on maybe doing a little bit more in there as far as exclusive content. But
Tayson: it's a great area to interact with us directly. I know. Brigham gets in their weekly. I know I get in there. Seems like almost daily as well as other team members. You have a direct line with us and you get you get heard you know, essentially inside of their and can ask just really good questions, so, Okay, with that. I'm looking forward to getting out tomorrow tomorrow night. I will be on the trail as well as
Tayson: Brigham. Login about six seven nights in the snow and that's going to be a good time for. I'm looking forward to at least, I don't know if everyone else looks forward to stuff like that, but I do. And anyways, we'll return report talk about things that went well, or didn't go well maybe with that and some of that testing, but make sure you're tuned in first part of November, we should be rolling out, some Garmin devices
Tayson: and then we'll have some other launches going on on the tail end of that. And while this podcast is live, our Cody, UL backpack, Travel and Adventure Backpack is live on Kickstarter. That's where we get the best deals possible. Specially that two pack. You're going to get free accessories
Tayson: as well as a discount off the backpack with that. But yeah, go check it out. Currently, when we're recording this, we're recording this on my day two and we've already raised about 170,000 dollars. Maybe 180,000 dollars right now with the backpack. So, expecting big things from it, it's phenomenal piece about a ton of fun building it and testing it. So make sure to go check that out. Okay with that. Thanks for tuning in and we will
Tayson: catch you guys on the next podcast.
