How I Started A Multimillion Dollar Backpacking Brand
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- In this video, Tayson Whittaker shares his incredible journey of founding Outdoor Vitals at just 23 years old. Starting with his entire life savings and a single sleeping bag, he built the company into a multi-million dollar outdoor gear brand with a dozen employees and 100,000 orders shipped. From humble beginnings, working from his college computer and enduring 60-80 hour work weeks, Tayson takes viewers through the highs and lows of growing a business without investors, retail store sales, or prior industry contacts. Through perseverance, creativity, and a commitment to innovation, he transformed Outdoor Vitals into a company that inspires outdoor enthusiasts and continues to grow stronger after 10 years. Today, OV remains dedicated to delivering high-quality gear directly to customers while staying true to its founding principles.
Great hiking gear (support the channel): bit.ly/3LJsdIY
#outdoorvitals #taysonwhittaker #backpacking #outdoors #entrepeneurship
Don't miss OV's 10-Year sale! outdoorvitals.com/pages/10-year-anniversary-sale
What a great example of drive, motivation, taking calculated risks, hard work, building the right team, and most of all establishing clear values and sticking with them. This story is what first excited me about OV and has made me a fan for years. This has generated outstanding products that do just what Tayson and the OV team set out to acomplish - getting people outside. A model of success that fits any personal goal.
You sir, are a “steely eyed missile man”! I have been a fan of OV for about eight years and sincerely believe in your company, your mission, your products, your team and your story. Well done to you and all of those who helped you get to this point. Looking forward to years of being a customer and supporter of your continued success! 🎉
Thank you so much for the support!
Learned so many valuable lessons while packing sleeping bags by the wood burning stove in the duplex! Crazy how far things have come. Can’t wait to see what the next 10 years bring!
Haha those were good times :)
Only company I buy my gear from. Happy to have supported you all these years. If you ever need a chiropractor/product designer let me know. Cheers to 10 years!
Thanks! Funny enough, I come from a family of chiropractors!
Awesome video!! Been using OV gear since the days of the "alien" logo & loved everything since then. Finishing up my first thru hike and my shadow light is still going strong 💪🏻 Keep up the good work OV and thank you guys for what you're doing!
Thank you for sharing. I have your quilt and I’m always happy to share about OV. #keepitup
Love the gear! So glad I found OV back in 2020
As someone who is working on starting my own backpacking business, this has been very helpful. Thank you so much Tayson
Thanks Shawn!
You're my go to company for quality gear! Thanks to all of you for giving 110% and sacrificing so much.
Congratulations on the 10 year plus anniversary Tayson. Looking sharp as well
Nate
Thank you and thank you!
Awesome! Well done. I love my OV quilt.
I’m so pumped for your collaboration with the Exo guys!
Wow, love the new look!
Very cool! Love the story, hard work, determination, and success! So happy for you and the team.
Thanks so much!
Thanks for sharing your experience Tayson and congrats on the commitment to your vision!
And it looks like we're reading the same books 😅
The story of so many outdoor product companies, i.e., Gregory, Kelty, Six Moons, etc. etc. Congratulations Tayson and crew. So glad you kept to your dream. While I'm (at 85) not still on the trail, I know OV products are helping a lot of otherwise couch potatoes hit it with what I couldn't even imagine when I first started like you in the Boy Scouts with a 30 pound pack.
Tayson, what happened to the Gandorf? I almost passed up your video! I’m glad that you succeeded in your dream. I got a few pieces of gear from you that I love. Including the Shadowlight 60 which is now my favorite pack. I’ve been an Expedition Outfitter for REI for 6yrs so that’s not a statement I make lightly. It’s truly an amazing piece of gear, looking forward to trying out some more stuff soon. Thanks for the video. I wish you much continued success. As we both know, this is not an easy market.
Big congratulations. I have a heap of your gear and only stopped because your shipping to Australia cost were more than twice what other companies charge so as soon as that’s sorted I’ll be back.
Shadowlight 60, Loftek jacket, OV hammock system, top quilt, under quilt, peak refuel, and the titanium spoon. Love it all and it is all my go to equipment. Thanks a bunch to all of you.
Thanks for the support! Glad we can be on the go to list!
Good work and congrats. Living the dream.
I own a lot of your gear! I stopped by your shop yesterday on my way back to SLC and used my credit to get the rain jacket, which I love! Thanks for all your hard work in making amazing products!
Woah! What did you do with all that beard!? Great job Tayson! Thanks for the inspiration!
I love to hear your story! The more I’ve become familiar OV the more impressed I am. Can’t wait to see you guys grow!
Thanks Eric! We'll keep working, moving and shaking over here!
This is great. I have been using your 0º Summit sleeping bag for 6 years now. It is amazing. I sing its praises. I have used that bag in some crazy conditions in the winter. I have even used it in the winter down to 8ºF without a tent or tarp. A sleeping pad and your bag! This is a great video. Thank you for sharing
That's awesome! Glad it's serving you well and that your putting it to good use!!
OV is a ripple in the industry! Amazing what you and the OV team have accomplished in those 10 years!
Thanks Devin! That means a lot coming from you!
This is my favorite gear company!! Love all the guys!! I love that it’s a local Utah Company! I have multiple pieces of Outdoor Vitals gear. Everytime I go hunting/ camping and packing in on horse and mules and wear and use my OV gear, I get comments about it. There isn’t a single piece that I have purchased that hasn’t exceeded my expectations. Taysom, I thought I saw in a recent video that you recently got divorced. I’m sorry about they. Been through it a couple times myself. It’s no fun. But life goes on and you will be ok. I’d love to to a camp, that is not light weight, lol, with you guys. We would definitely eat a lot better than freeze dried food. Let me know. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the support and words of encouragement. No divorce has not been fun and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Thankfully I have had great family, friends and kids around to help me keep moving forward. Thanks again for letting us play a part in your outdoor kit!
Still have my original LofTek Jacket and I still love it. Got my start with OV with the Rhyolite Backpack, that was my most comfortable backpack I have used on the trail. Gave that to my Neice and I wish I still had it, I hope she still has it. Outdoor Vitals is so much more than an Outdoor gear company, I couldn't be happier being a customer with them over the years. Congratulations on 10 years, going strong.
Thanks for the support over the years and I always enjoy hearing of how we helped even way back in the Rhyolite days :)
@@TaysonWhittaker The Ventus hoodie is my second most favorite piece of OV gear, its incredible. But the KotaUL backpack is the best all around backpack/bag I have ever used. Best bag for travel hands down, and I have even used it on the trail. I hope you got to enjoy any of the treats I've sent along with some of the gear exchanges I've done. And that too has always been an excellent experience with you and your company.
Inspirational my friend! :) Been following you since near the beginning; congrats on all of your hard work. :)
Thanks for watching and supporting over the years!
I thought this was a prank as I didn't recognize you without the beard. Perseverance will get you through most things in life. One small step at a time.
Fun. Now I want to buy something for you. Good job
Kind of confused...who is this guy and what happened to that guy with the great beard? ....a few years ago I noticed that my first sleeping bag was a OV one, and I don´t even recall where did I had purchase it. It has stayed in the family since then and still a great product. It is great to see what the company has become, and all because of hard work and being smart. Good for you.
Did he shave his beard?
Sorry for got to get that beard wig back on before it was time to film! haha jk...I decided 8 or so years of the beard was enough and cleaned it up...
Thanks for the support!
I love your new beard and the logo!
I've enjoyed your products that I own. A pleasure meeting you on the AT. And, dude, you look 20 years younger with that shorter beard
That’s a nice walk down memory lane. The old logo was pretty bad but I always liked the gear. Haha. I bought one of your sleeping bags back in 2018 and loved it. Lately I’ve been updating a lot of my gear and recently purchased your skyline 30 fast pack. I was blown away with the quality of the pack I received. Outdoor vitals has come a long way and I look forward to buying more gear from you guys. Keep up the good work!
Haha yea putting the video together was a fun walk down memory lane. This whole year has been as I've reflected on 10 years...I'm so glad our products are where they are at today, it couldn't have been possible without the start the way it was. The skyline is a freaking awesome piece of gear for sure!
Anything is possible, but you have to be a special person to have the drive, grit, and determination to succeed. Congrats on your journey. Your company is making some incredible outdoor gear.
Thank you David. That means a lot
Congratulations! (I love my OV quilt!)
Thank you! 😊
Still like the original logo. OG fir OV! (BTW, OV is a fav beer up in parts of 🇨🇦)
0:06 Blue Lake in the Tushars? Literally headed there right now! Congrats on 10 years! 🎉
Yes sir! Hope you had an awesome time! And thank you :)
What a story. Can't wait to check out your gear.
Thanks!
I started with a summit bag off of Amazon and have never looked back. I now have a shadowlight backpack, a vario jacket, a fortius tent…and my next purchase will be a novapro jacket. You are my brand of choice and Brigham was an excellent hire! Not only do I love your gear but I respect your story. Im glad I could be a part of your beginning and I agree…the early logo was awful. However your current logo is awesome! Thanks for sharing your story Tayson….if I ever make it out to Utah, would love to meet you and the OV gang!
Thanks for the support over the years and trusting in us a company. We have an amazing team here and I'm lucky to have them. Also...couldn't agree more on the old and new logos haha
And to add just a couple more things, as I get older, I am more selective about who I spend my money with. Your philosophy of “performance first” resonates with me tremendously versus some companies that have evolved into more “Gucci outdoor” offerings. Take my Vario jacket for instance…whisper light but amazingly warm for its weight…and my original OV summit 20 bag…best bag I have ever owned even though I spent a lot more on some bags. There is a certain amount of comfort in knowing that you develop the gear through your own personal testing and that of your employees. I have had catastrophic gear failures in the past, and I know I can trust every piece of OV gear to do exactly what it was designed to do. That means a lot, especially in a world where we have come to expect products that usually fall short of expectations. So glad you didn’t sell the company although being able to retire at 28 would have been a pretty amazing accomplishment!
I keep thinking of more things I love about OV…your membership is genius for gear heads like me. I started out with the $10 a month version and realized, it was too slow at amassing my wish list, so I upgraded to the $25/month peak membership. It’s like a layaway…only in reverse, and when you start a $50/month membership, I’ll probably upgrade again!!!
I'm a not so proud owner of a sleeping bag with the alien logo. I think the earliest one 😂
You go young man!
:)
You are awesome!!! Combining your education and love for the outdoors in one aspect. Thank you for all you have done and will do.
Thank you, I truly appreciate it
Excellent video! I love the products you have.
Great story, thanks for sharing. I’ve enjoed the Lofttek jacket.
Thanks for the support!
Ok....life goes on
Thanks for the inspiration you guys are awesome! On a side note, how many years did that epic beard take to grow?
It was at least a year or two!
Step 1: Design a pack. Step 2: get it made in Vietnam. Step 3: sales. Boom.
The beard! 🤯 By the way, love my OV sun hoodie
Congratulations!
Thanks!
@@TaysonWhittaker I could not resist placing an order ! 👍🏻
My go to company!
Thanks!
Honestly the company looks a lot better with the beard off. I didnt hate it but it def makes the face of the company more "trustworth" whatever that means.
I love Ma & Pop ops , REI has no longer the soul it had back when I joined their co op back in the early 70’s. I feel screwed when I make a purchase at REI and their not dog friendly either. I’ve made a couple of purchases from Outdoor Vitals and been more than happy . Ma & Pops rule , the fabric of AMERICA 🇺🇸
Thanks so much! We definitely work hard to make our gear and do things in a way we believe to be better!
Man, good for you! BUT THE BEARD???
All good things come to an end...
Thank you! For cutting your beard…lol
👨🏼🦱
the beard...where is the beard?!
yea...about that....
How did you do this? Well, it's now obivous. You sold your beard to finance the business!
Nailed it!
So you grew your business, and your beard, for 10 years, and to celebrate shaved off the most famous beard in the outdoor industry 🤔 😉
Now to go check out th sale...
Tayson, I challenge you to post this comment or at least investigate its merits. I should be your brand advocate. I own your top and bottom quilts and your ventus hoodie. A couple of weeks ago I ordered another ventus hoodie to see if it would fit better than the one I bought in January 2024. I tried it on and discovered it did not fit. I folded it up put it back in the shipping plastic and envelope and sent it back. Your inspectors said they found stains and a pulled thread on the garment when they received it. There is absolutely no way I could have damaged that garment. I had it on my body for less than a minute. I expected the benefit of the doubt and receive a full refund but was only offered your standard 80% refund. On the flip side if I gave you the benefit of the doubt you sent me a shit product that could be stained and thread pulled within one minute of wear, which I obviously know is not true because I’ve owned one of these hoodies since January 2024. I tried to convince your customer support to give me the full refund but she would only give me 90% citing 80% is company policy and that she was going above and beyond. This experience has left a sour taste in my mouth. What a horrible shopping experience. How can I trust you in the future with higher price ticket items that if I have to return them can’t count on you to be trustworthy in your return processes. No body else that I know of in the entire retail industry would inspect a return and be so petty even after inquiry not give the customer especially a repeat loyal customer the benefit of the doubt and graciously give a full refund. I tried to explain to the customer support rep about repeat business and brand advocacy and brand loyalty all to no avail. Is this really your business model? Remember, this is the difference between 90% and 100% refund. 10% on a $179 item. This means nothing to you but it’s a matter of principle to me. I’m now dedicated to find every RUclips video that mentions outdoor vitals and leave a comment of what a tucked up experience I had. Even if I only motivate one person to reconsider buying from you I will consider my campaign a success. The 10% you duped me out of equaled about $18. How much are multiple retail purchases that my campaign prevent worth to you? All over $18. You should be ashamed of yourselves. If this truly is your policy and not the action of a wayward customer service rep you still have a lot to learn about business and your market. I love your products and pray this is not the case. I hope this is an anomaly and you can reassure me this would never happen in the future. My order # is 371999
No reply?!?
I'm just getting back from a backpacking trip and have asked the team for an update on what's going on. Sorry for your poor experience, I'll dig into it.
@@TaysonWhittaker thanks to your team for having the guts to allow my comment to post and thanks to you for at least taking time to investigate. I’m enthusiastic to hear your comments. David
Hey David, so I dug into your case and here is what I've concluded. I've approved the team to give you a 100% refund back based on the fact that you are a repeat purchaser and have have not had repeat issues on returns from you. Our team member did follow our policy and we have decided to reduce and give more benefit of the doubt to people that return products in the condition we received yours. To explain this further, every day we receive products that have abused our policy. People clearly wear the products, take them backpacking, remove tags and more then return them with the exact same story as you've told us...which is that this product was only put on and immediately taken off. The truth is there are a lot of liars out there who shamelessly do so and it makes being on our end more challenging. Garments returned that smell terribly of BO, have sweat rings on them, hair, dirt, you name it. Due to that, a policy was established to protect our company from that. However, from conversations I've had today, I think we had a bit too aggressive of a policy and didn't empower our employees enough to look at things like, has this customer done this before, has this customer bought other goods from us, is this their first order, etc. Going forward we will be working to give more benefit of the doubt to our returns from customers and empower employees to make called based on other data points (like repeat orders or repeat abuse). Also I wanted to note that our current software, which we hope to change out soon, only allows us to charge restocking fee's vs return shipping fees, which is what we actually want to do. We want to provide easy returns options so you don't have to go to the UPS store or wherever and pay outrageous amounts to return goods, however, our software currently only allows us to call it a restocking fee. All this being said I don't expect this to win back your loyalty, but I do hope it sheds some light on the situation. However the garmet was damaged and regardless of who's fault it was, it allowed me to take a closer look at the policy and revise it. Thanks David
@@TaysonWhittaker Dear Tayson, Thank you very much for being the owner that people like Dan Becker say you are. I knew this had to be the case of an overzealous customer service rep just following orders without taking all the factors into consideration. I completely understand that there must be unscrupulous customers trying to take advantage of your return policy and that you set a policy to protect yourself. Unfortunately for me, this clearly was not the case. I do want you to know that the garment I returned still had all the original tags and was sent back in the original wrapping. It clearly was not worn on a trip and if you did see the images of the proposed damage it was obvious nitpicking. I appreciate your willingness to counsel your staff on your return policy to iron out the rough patch to insure you’re protected but also customers like myself don’t go through something like this in the future. Your taking time to dig into this on my behalf proves you are the kind of company I want to do business with. I’ve been very impressed with my 0 degree hammock top quilt and underquilt and my Ventus hoodie. And now that you’ve personally gotten involved I feel like I can trust you as a valued outdoor outfitter. I will be back and instead of a campaign to tear you down based on a bad experience I will make sure my circle of influence knows that from the CEO down these guys want to do it right. They made a mistake but were quick to investigate and pivot to make things right, not just for me but a clarification of policy that hopefully empowers their customer service reps to take in all factors when making a returns decision. Thanks again, David Isham