Making things is simply a lot of fun. My latest creation has been my most fun yet as it brought function, style, and crazy quality into a product I’ve always wanted for business and goofing off travel. Hence the latest pack, the Urban Hippy Tripster Pack, aka, UHTP.
I’ve had a lot of questions about the pack in terms of design, cost, etc, and would love to elaborate. So here you go!
On the price, well, this bag isn’t cheap. Find any bag remotely close to this and it will be $250+. This is a boutique bag and really should be retailing at $280. And it’s not like we only made 100 of them either, we actually ran a pretty good volume, there are just a lot of features and premium materials!
Beastly materials
The cost starts with premium materials. The shell is a 1680 denier nylon in black, camo is 1000d. This is some heavy duty stuff! Most makes are using 400 or 600d. Basically ours is more thick, crazy stuff, and built to last, plus it has a heavy water proof coating on it. Most manufacturers use material that is half the thickness and significantly less durable. The interior of the pack even uses a higher end nylon, rather than the cheap low end black pack cloth that is typical.
Fortified laptop sleeve for MacBooks
I put a lot of focus on the fortification and suspension system of the laptop area. Note that it floats in the pack. So if you drop the backpack, first the laptop sleeve is heavily padded all the way around. Second there is roughly an inch of suspension between the bottom of the sleeve and bottom of the pack, and third there is foam in the bottom of the pack as a last chance safety barrier, but also provides shape to the pack. So three points of protection. I may come out with a version in the future that only has a simple laptop sleeve to reduce cost some and open up more sizing.
The laptop sleeve is also removable via military grade velcro. Note that there is a zipper on top of the laptop sleeve so once removed your laptop won’t slip out. It’s a zipper by YKK too, the best in the business so it won’t fail on you. You can peel it out, and add the optional workout bag inside for storing your wet and nasty clothes post exercise. Then rip out that bag once you get home, dump in the wash, and put your laptop bag back in the pack. Or you could just leave both in, the workout bag is great as is to organize your goods.
Zipper quality
On the zipper note, we use YKK zippers. The Japanese zipper behemoth makes roughly half the zippers on earth. Their focus is quality and function. Take a look at your high quality gear and if you’ve wondered why it’s lasted you 10+ years, it probably has YKK. We’ve used over 100,000 of their zippers so far on our products and had zero quality failures. Granted we had one pack come back with a failure, but I think a pen or knife went through it from what we saw….
Rugged shoulder straps
The shoulder straps are beasts with seat belt webbing at the base and parachute webbing on top. They also have heavy duty d-rings on the straps, not the low end weaker version that is typical.
Sunglasses and water bottles
A pet peeve of mine with most packs is the sunglass and water bottle compartment. Most packs generally only hold one pair of glasses. Ours is designed to hold at least three pairs, but even 4 or 5 will likely fit in this stretchy, oversized compartment. The water bottle holders on the sides are oversized too. Have you noticed that most packs are just too short on these for some reason or use a weak elastic at the top? These hold big beers and big 25oz bottles very securely.
Secret stash
The pen panel is a lot of fun and one of the secrets of this pack. I oversized the pen holders for large pens, added an area for business cards or power supply, and behind it is a secret compartment! The compartment runs the full frame of the pack and can be used to store passports, cash, phone, wallet and other essentials that you want super secure. You can even fit up to 8.5″x11″ documents in there too.
Bottom line
I’m heavily invested on building the best dang gear on the market. Doing so is a balancing act for cost. 99% of the time I have to pick and choose on the frivolous features, but when it comes to “critical to function” I lock in the mode and go for it. By starting at the top we can make a future version that looks like this, but without the secret compartment, a simple laptop sleeve, no tablet sleeve and maybe a few other tweaks for your typical pack.
So it’s all the little details that may not seem like much, but they add up big time. Some think that making gear in the USA is cost prohibitive, one guy even told me I was “naive and an idiot” for making gear in the US. That still puts a smile on my face… Granted overseas can often save you money, but if you want quality materials and quality build, that’s just not always the case. Do you want a cheap bag? There are plenty that are great for under $100, I don’t blame you, I have some too. But if you want a bag built to last with features that are thoroughly thought out and materials that are military grade, take a look at this beast.
Check it out today: Urban Hippy Tripster Pack
Who is Josh Sprague? 