Bill Ostrom from Ostrom Outdoors stops by for a chat about packs & so much more!!

Ostrom Outdoors: Custom Canoe Packs and Outdoor Gear

Description
Discover Ostrom Outdoors’ custom canoe packs and durable outdoor gear. Learn about their design process, commitment to quality, and innovative products.

Core Points:

• Bill Ostrom shares his journey into pack design, starting from age 13, and evolving into a full-time business focused on durable, custom-fit canoe packs and outdoor gear.
• Ostrom Outdoors prioritizes durability and custom fit in their packs, ensuring comfort and longevity, even if it means slightly heavier gear.
• The decision to move manufacturing offshore in 2013 was driven by rising material costs, though Ostrom Outdoors continues to design and innovate.
• Bill discusses unique design projects, including bags for individuals with disabilities and specialized equipment for peregrine falcon conservation.
• Ostrom Outdoors offers a range of products, including barrel harnesses and tump lines and a Mason camp table, emphasizing functionality and user experience.
• Customers can order custom-fit packs online with detailed fitting charts and support, ensuring a comfortable and personalized fit with modular components shipped directly.

www.ostromoutdoors.ca
email: bill@ostrompacks.com
https://www.facebook.com/OstromOutdoors
https://www.instagram.com/OstromOutdoors

Transcript

00:00 - 00:02
Hello and good day, eh? 

00:02 - 00:05
Welcome to the Supergood camping podcast. My name is Pamela.

00:05 - 00:08
I'm Tim and we are from supergoodcamping.com we are here because we're on a mission to inspire

00:08 - 00:12
other families to enjoy camping adventures such as we have with our kids.

00:12 - 00:16
Today's guest designs, some of the most sought after packs in the canoeing community.

00:16 - 00:21
Custom fitted and extremely well made, they ease the pain of portaging. Can you imagine?

00:22 - 00:25
Please welcome Bill Ostrom of Ostrom Outdoors.

00:25 - 00:28
Hey, welcome. Hello, Tim and Pamela.

00:28 - 00:30
Thanks for having me on. This is great.

00:30 - 00:34
Absolutely. Man. I see so many people talk about your packs.

00:35 - 00:38
Dennis Rogers is a, is a massive fan.

00:38 - 00:45
Kevin Callan, you know, all the, all the big guns out there, you know, give me a little thanks

00:45 - 00:47
for being with us on the show.

00:47 - 00:49
I have to get that out of the way.

00:49 - 00:53
But I'm so interested in how did you, how did you get into packs?

00:53 - 00:56
What, what is the history of designing packs?

00:56 - 01:03
Well, it's funny, I, because I was coming here, I kind of thought, when did I make my first pack?

01:03 - 01:05
And I made it actually when I was 13 years old.

01:05 - 01:10
An Alaskan pack frame, a wooden frame with canvas wrapped around it.

01:10 - 01:14
And my mom taught me to sew and my dad taught me to put grommets in.

01:14 - 01:17
And that was actually my, my first pack.

01:17 - 01:24
But we, I went, Ann and I, my wife Ann and I went through outdoor recreation at Lakehead University

01:24 - 01:27
and that I always was making gear.

01:27 - 01:32
I ran my own canoeing business and made paddles and fixed up the canoes because it was a ragtag

01:32 - 01:38
fleet and made my first canoe packs actually for the outdoor rec program.

01:40 - 01:46
When I graduated, they hired me and I spent five years there as an equipment technologist.

01:46 - 01:50
And I never had enough money to buy new gear, at least not enough money.

01:50 - 01:56
But I always had leftover money that was being returned and I changed that into buying sewing

01:56 - 02:03
machines and buying fabric and buckles and stuff and incorporating students into some of learning

02:03 - 02:05
how to sew and learning how to design equipment.

02:06 - 02:08
And that's where we got our origins.

02:08 - 02:13
And that was probably 1983-87. 88.

02:13 - 02:18
And we started the business in 1987 officially.

02:18 - 02:24
And we've been, that's been my full time job my entire life after leaving Lakehead University.

02:25 - 02:26
And we still do it. Yeah.

02:26 - 02:33
So that's, that's where we started with canoe packs, a canvas canoe pack, and then evolved into

02:33 - 02:35
a full line of canoe packs.

02:36 - 02:44
Eventually we had 35 products, including hiking packs, day packs, duffel bags, briefcases, all that kind of thing. So yeah, very cool.

02:44 - 02:55
And so the first thing that you, at 13, you built a pack with, what do you call it? The inside supports. Right.

02:55 - 02:58
Instead of being a frame on the exterior.

02:58 - 03:03
Well, this was actually an external, so you're talking internal frame with the interior.

03:03 - 03:08
And this was if you can picture two pieces of wood with two cross pieces wrapped in canvas so

03:08 - 03:16
you had air against your back and, and then they didn't give you a design for the bag and, and

03:16 - 03:21
my mom helped me design grommets down the side that we could eventually attach a bag.

03:21 - 03:28
But I made it to carry paddles, to carry little barrels that we had before the big blue barrels

03:28 - 03:29
and all kinds of awkward gear.

03:29 - 03:36
We had a little electric motor that we sometimes took into lakes and fishing rods and, and gear.

03:36 - 03:40
Awkward gear that you couldn't generally put into a traditional canoe pack. Yeah.

03:40 - 03:48
And surprisingly enough I, we were in Jasper a month ago and walk into this museum and there's

03:48 - 03:54
a, there's a pack frame, you know, probably a lot better made than what I made as a 13 year

03:54 - 03:55
old and learning to sew.

03:55 - 04:00
But it brought back a lot of memories on my, on that I did, hey make a first back when I was

04:00 - 04:02
really young and learned to sew. So yeah.

04:02 - 04:05
Were you involved in the outdoors from a young age?

04:06 - 04:13
Very much so. My, my dad was instrumental in getting me into canoeing and in the young days

04:13 - 04:17
when I think I started canoeing when I was six and for me it was all about fishing.

04:17 - 04:25
When I was young and my dad was not a fisherman, you know, he put up with me fishing because

04:25 - 04:29
he wanted company and he wanted to introduce me to the outdoors.

04:29 - 04:36
And my dad's fishing rod was a stick with this old green line wrapped around it and just thrown

04:36 - 04:37
out with a lure on.

04:37 - 04:40
And he didn't really care whether he caught a fish.

04:40 - 04:45
Surprisingly, he outfished me until the day he died with that fishing rod in line.

04:46 - 04:49
He'd always catch the big ones or I'd catch all the tiny ones.

04:49 - 04:53
But then I, then I grew to love a lot other things about canoeing.

04:53 - 04:59
And fishing is way down on the list now when I go on a canoe trip, it's there, you know, if,

04:59 - 05:03
if we are in waters where there's some rapids or something, I'm certainly going to fish.

05:03 - 05:11
But 90% if tripping with my dad, I would have been fishing probably 70% of the time around the water.

05:11 - 05:17
Well now it might be less than two, you know, just to get a, to get a fresh fish meal is still special.

05:18 - 05:22
But not, not an avid fisherman, like say Kevin Callan.

05:22 - 05:29
I, I've done two trips with Kevin and it's almost a competition to see who can catch the most fish, the biggest fish.

05:29 - 05:36
And that in a good way with Kevin and, and a fun, a fun guy to trip with, that's for sure.

05:36 - 05:40
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Looks like we'll go back to packs in a bit.

05:41 - 05:46
So, so if fishing has dropped, what are your, what are your higher, what are the, what are the

05:46 - 05:48
better things that you're interested?

05:48 - 05:55
Yeah, well, I'm 64 years old, so the biggest thing is if we don't see people on a canoe trip,

05:55 - 05:58
it's been a great canoe trip whether it rained or didn't.

05:58 - 06:00
The less people we see the better.

06:00 - 06:09
And we, we still seek out remote areas or places that are less traveled and that, that gets

06:09 - 06:14
harder because you, A lot of our tripping early years we were cutting portage trails or going

06:14 - 06:18
into area where the trails kind of were there and, and stuff like that.

06:18 - 06:24
We did a lot of whitewater to both tandem and we both of us paddled solo whitewater and we had

06:24 - 06:32
friends that we would do, you know, a two week canoe trip in solo white water canoes on rivers

06:32 - 06:37
locally here and Pakasa, the White, all kinds of rivers that we, we did trips in.

06:37 - 06:43
Probably one of my favorite was the Mooseland river and the Gull river which went in was really

06:44 - 06:51
difficult to get into, but a place called Devil's Crater and it's a geographical spot on the

06:51 - 06:57
map where there's a cirque of cliffs around a tiny, tiny lake and the cliffs are 200 foot tall

06:57 - 07:02
and it's a protected area conservation area and you can't camp in it.

07:02 - 07:09
So it's a long day of really hard work to get into. 12 hour day to get in and out of, but spectacular.

07:09 - 07:17
So places, the value of just being away from people and getting into nice places has escalated

07:17 - 07:23
tremendously as, as I've gotten older and less people. Yeah, that's, that's huge.

07:23 - 07:25
I hear you on that one for sure.

07:26 - 07:29
Again, as a side question, do you own a bunch of canoes?

07:29 - 07:30
Do you rent your canoes?

07:30 - 07:33
How does that play out, especially if you're doing whitewater?

07:33 - 07:34
Yeah,

07:37 - 07:41
you know, I used to own 10 canoes. I now own three.

07:41 - 07:49
And I say I, Ann and I own two of the three, one is actually my canoe. We downsize.

07:49 - 07:54
We sold our house five years ago and bought a van and outfitted it for camping.

07:54 - 08:00
And we travel looking for house sits and traveling in the van in the off season when we're not

08:00 - 08:07
running Ostrom outdoors and we had to downsize everything, including my canoe fleet. But an interesting.

08:07 - 08:10
I'll tell you, Ann put the limit at 10. Sure.

08:10 - 08:11
She said no more canoes.

08:11 - 08:12
We don't have any more space.

08:13 - 08:18
And I got around that the last Christmas and bought her a canoe.

08:18 - 08:22
She didn't say I couldn't buy a canoe for her. So I actually had.

08:23 - 08:31
We had 11 canoes and we sold them all and gave a few to friends or we had two cedar strip canoes,

08:31 - 08:39
a Peterborough and a Chestnut that we selected who we would sell it to for a nominal fee.

08:39 - 08:43
And, and they are custodians or they own them, but they are.

08:43 - 08:47
They've given us permission to paddle them if we're coming through the area. So. Yeah.

08:47 - 08:48
So we only have three canoes.

08:48 - 08:54
We have a pack canoe, pack boat that folds up into a canoe pack size.

08:54 - 09:01
I have a solo canoe, clipper canoe, 14 foot prospector that I use a lot in the summertime.

09:01 - 09:05
Just get up and we have a, as I said, we have a van.

09:05 - 09:11
My port, my tying on the canoe days are over with this little canoe because it fits right inside my van.

09:11 - 09:15
Open the back door, slide it in and hop in the front and drive.

09:15 - 09:21
And then we have a 17 foot prospector Suez river canoe that we really like.

09:21 - 09:23
So sweet. I share your.

09:23 - 09:27
We have a 17 foot Surrey river as well. Yeah.

09:27 - 09:33
And the fort 14. 14 or 15 foot Swift keyword with the.

09:33 - 09:33
Yeah.

09:33 - 09:35
Really rounded tumble home.

09:35 - 09:36
Yeah.

09:36 - 09:39
It's interesting, but I only have two, so. Just saying.

09:42 - 09:52
Very nice, very nice. Okay, so what was the number you said? 35 for the products. For the product line. You had 35?

09:52 - 10:00
Yeah, at one time we had 35, probably more, but 35 core products and, and now we have basically

10:00 - 10:03
five, you know, and more canoeing. Canoeing products.

10:03 - 10:06
And that will change a little bit in the next year.

10:06 - 10:07
We're bringing out six new.

10:07 - 10:12
Seven new products but not shifting too much from the core value.

10:12 - 10:16
A lot of accessories and one smaller pack. So. Yeah.

10:16 - 10:19
Okay. So I've seen very, very cool.

10:19 - 10:26
Very certainly to discussions with other, other canoeing enthusiasts and, and just, just looking

10:27 - 10:28
at them like very durable products.

10:28 - 10:31
You know, you could beat the crap out of them.

10:31 - 10:34
They're, they're gonna go for, for miles and miles and miles.

10:34 - 10:36
Like they're buy it now.

10:36 - 10:40
It's going to be, you know, 20 years down the road, you're still going to have the same pack.

10:40 - 10:42
That's kind of my take on your product.

10:42 - 10:49
Yeah, thanks. And, and, and honestly, that's what I designed for, I do some things that no manufacturers

10:49 - 10:51
don't do that make my packs tight, tougher.

10:51 - 10:52
You know, we sew them four times.

10:52 - 10:54
Everyone sews them two or three times.

10:55 - 11:00
We have a piece of material down the back where all the shoulder straps and all the heavy stuff

11:00 - 11:05
is that no one else puts down the back and a lot of other little things.

11:05 - 11:07
So it makes our packs heavier.

11:07 - 11:12
But I'm really proud when I don't see one of my packs in a garbage dump.

11:12 - 11:17
And I'm really, I really get excited when camps come back and say, yeah, we got 20 years of your packs.

11:17 - 11:19
We, we got like 300 of your packs.

11:19 - 11:23
Or individual customers just saying, you know, I've had it 20 years.

11:23 - 11:26
I'm giving it to my son because I can no longer canoe.

11:26 - 11:31
You know, I commiserate with the gut person, but at the same time I'm proud of that.

11:31 - 11:36
So our gear is, is tough, it's a little bit heavier.

11:36 - 11:42
But on the other side of the coin, I believe you should be comfortable when you're carrying a pack.

11:42 - 11:47
Just like if you're wearing a pair of hiking boots, they should fit, you know.

11:47 - 11:49
And our canoe packs, we give choices.

11:50 - 11:55
You can, you can buy the basic, you can move up to larger volume, but the comfort level.

11:55 - 11:58
All our packs are custom made, are custom.

11:58 - 12:04
Sorry, custom fit to a certain degree, whether it be torso length, shoulder straps and hip belts.

12:04 - 12:10
So that's important to Ann and I that we, we're not putting out just, just a box with shoulder

12:10 - 12:17
straps on it for putting out a pack that people can feel comfortable with and potentially hand

12:17 - 12:23
it down to their sons or daughters or friends that are different sizes, you know, in some cases,

12:23 - 12:27
depending on how close they fit the, the original owner. So.

12:27 - 12:34
Yeah, well, yeah, if I, if I were to have a custom fit pack would fit neither of my kids because

12:34 - 12:38
they're, they start at 3 inches taller than me. Yeah.

12:40 - 12:44
But you know, as an example, a lot of that's going to be torso.

12:44 - 12:50
If you happen, if they happen to be similar shoulder sizes and stuff, it's just moving the torso

12:50 - 12:56
adjustment up or down and you can fit a tall person and in that same pack, if they're relatively

12:56 - 13:04
close in hip belt size and shoulder strap size, you can fit a person who's 5 foot 4 in the same pack.

13:04 - 13:08
So, you know, but again, some things have to be close. Right.

13:09 - 13:11
I'm an extra large shoulder strap.

13:11 - 13:14
And if you are a medium, there's going to be some give and take there.

13:14 - 13:19
It's not going to fit as well on you as it might on me or vice versa. I won't.

13:19 - 13:21
Torso wise we could be.

13:21 - 13:25
You could be 6 foot 6 and I could be 5 foot 4 and if we had similar.

13:26 - 13:30
Some other similar measurements, the pack can still fit. And I like that.

13:30 - 13:33
I like having flexibility in the gear.

13:33 - 13:41
Yeah, well, I mean I like not, not going into a store and going here are your options. Okay. But I'm different from.

13:42 - 13:43
So I would like it to.

13:44 - 13:48
If I'm going to wear the thing for 20 years, I would like it to be.

13:48 - 13:51
Be comfortable for 20 years as opposed to.

13:51 - 13:54
It's always that one spot that doesn't quite work for me or whatever.

13:54 - 13:58
Yeah. And you know, a lot of people think, well that that's great.

13:59 - 14:06
It'll fit small people and it'll fit tall people or bigger people, but really it should be for everybody. You know, you.

14:06 - 14:10
If you can get a pack that fits you better, you're going to be more comfortable in the outdoors.

14:10 - 14:14
You're going to be more comfortable carrying the weight and you're not going to be afraid to

14:14 - 14:21
do a longer portage or several portages to get away from the crowds, to get into a nicer area and such.

14:21 - 14:24
So it's a core value, I guess might be the way to put it.

14:25 - 14:32
I like it. So I know in the, in the old days you used to manufacture them in house. Yeah.

14:32 - 14:37
The world the way it is, that's a tough thing to do anymore. What.

14:37 - 14:44
Yeah, it is. Probably the toughest day in Anne in my life was when we decided not to produce them in.

14:45 - 14:47
We call it the Nala Loo.

14:47 - 14:51
We were, you know, 45 minutes outside of Thunder Bay where we lived.

14:51 - 14:53
We had 130 acres and we had.

14:53 - 14:57
All our employees were from the area.

14:57 - 15:03
And we had, we shut down the shop for manufacturing in Canada and that was really tough.

15:03 - 15:07
And the reasons for it were that we were a very small company.

15:08 - 15:12
We only had eight employees and the cost of everything.

15:12 - 15:18
An example would be the cost of gas. Well, the same. It's a petroleum product.

15:18 - 15:23
So everything in my line, nylon fabric, buckles, webbing, are all petroleum products.

15:23 - 15:26
And the cost of those products went through the roof in one year.

15:26 - 15:30
The cost of my fabric went up 80%.

15:30 - 15:37
And it just meant that as a small company, you couldn't absorb those costs without passing it on to the customers.

15:37 - 15:43
And my product was already expensive because it was custom made. And it just.

15:44 - 15:49
So we did shut down in 2013, the manufacturing end of it.

15:49 - 15:53
But Ostrom Outdoors continued to design equipment.

15:53 - 16:00
It was just for other people, other businesses and for Myself and for Ann and a few select friends

16:00 - 16:02
and that kind of thing. Yeah.

16:02 - 16:08
So I kept busy doing design projects where I would work with a person that had an idea they

16:08 - 16:15
wanted to get to market, and I wouldn't do all the prototyping and consult with them on what they were looking for.

16:15 - 16:22
And we eventually get a product that was ready to bring to market, and then we'd introduce them

16:22 - 16:28
to different manufacturers, whether it be in United States, whether it be in Canada or offshore in Asia.

16:28 - 16:31
And I still do that. I love designing.

16:31 - 16:39
I sitting behind a sewing machine day in, day out, sewing 100 of these or 200 of these.

16:39 - 16:44
I don't enjoy, but I enjoy making that first four or five to get. To get the.

16:44 - 16:47
The bugs out of and get it going kind of thing.

16:47 - 16:54
So, yeah, so Ostrom Outdoors didn't shut down, but it shut down the production and that. That was tough.

16:54 - 16:58
A lot of good people I had to say goodbye to as well.

16:58 - 17:09
We got over close to 3,000 emails from people over that issue saying, hey, thank you, really sorry you're gone. And.

17:09 - 17:14
And not even that made us feel good, but bad at the same time. Right.

17:15 - 17:17
So, yeah, yeah, I can see the.

17:17 - 17:25
Mixed feeling on that circling back, though, because there was an interesting thing I read that the whole designing thing.

17:25 - 17:32
I don't know the full story, but I pretty sure I saw something about somebody who is mobility

17:32 - 17:35
challenged and you were making a bag for them.

17:35 - 17:35
But.

17:35 - 17:40
But it was. So was a front carry bag as opposed to a rear carry bag? Yes.

17:40 - 17:49
Yeah. I've worked with persons with disability over the years a lot, and it's always been fun.

17:49 - 17:59
The person you're talking about is Louise Syrtis, and the company name was Pack Bags. And Louise had Ms.

17:59 - 18:03
And unfortunately has passed away from the disease.

18:03 - 18:07
And she was in a wheelchair and she was a designer.

18:08 - 18:11
She knew what she wanted, but she couldn't find it out there.

18:11 - 18:19
And she knew how to make things, but she couldn't make them herself.

18:19 - 18:23
So her and her husband Spiro approached us to work with her to bring a bag.

18:23 - 18:30
And the idea was that all the bags in the market were on the wheels or behind them, and she

18:30 - 18:33
wanted a bag that was on her lap or on the front of her legs. So.

18:33 - 18:39
So she wanted to go grocery shopping and be able to put everything in the front big bag on her

18:39 - 18:46
legs, in the small bag, like kind of like a fanny pack per se, on her lap that she could access

18:46 - 18:49
her communications and her keys and everything else.

18:49 - 18:53
And she got it to market and it did fairly well.

18:54 - 19:00
And Then unfortunately, Louise didn't do well and passed on. So. Sad story.

19:00 - 19:03
She was a good friend. Yeah.

19:03 - 19:11
And a lot of times you don't always get to be friends with the people you work with, but she was a special person. Yeah.

19:11 - 19:15
And she left a special product as well. So.

19:15 - 19:17
Yeah, Ms. Ms. Sucks. Just saying.

19:17 - 19:18
Yeah.

19:18 - 19:20
It's something that will help other people, though. That was.

19:20 - 19:23
It was awesome that she was able to contribute.

19:23 - 19:31
Yeah. And I think that's her legacy in many ways, you know, is that she designed something, you know.

19:31 - 19:37
You know, when we were talking back and forth before we started working together, she said something to me.

19:37 - 19:40
She said, you know, nobody will hire me. I'm in a wheelchair.

19:40 - 19:43
I can work at McDonald's, I can work in some nice places.

19:43 - 19:45
But, you know, I used to design.

19:45 - 19:46
I used to be a model.

19:46 - 19:48
I used to design clothes.

19:48 - 19:52
I used to do things at a different level than where I want to work.

19:52 - 19:56
Said so nobody will give me a job, so I'm going to make my own job.

19:56 - 20:02
And that's what she did and was very successful in breaking down barriers and.

20:02 - 20:06
And bringing a product that was exciting to her to the marketplace.

20:06 - 20:08
So, yeah, good for her.

20:08 - 20:14
That's what a great product name actually was. Handy packed just. Just to re.

20:14 - 20:15
Redo that one a little bit.

20:15 - 20:18
But yeah, so that was an interesting request.

20:18 - 20:25
Did you have other people that have had some, like, not the custom, not the typical kind of requests for backpacks?

20:25 - 20:30
Yeah. I'll give you two examples. One isn't a customer.

20:30 - 20:31
Well, is a customer, I guess.

20:31 - 20:33
And it was one of my favorite projects.

20:33 - 20:43
But recently I did a bag with the company name is Bugeye Original, and Mike Turnbull is the

20:43 - 20:50
owner, and he cycled to work every day, and then he had to put on a suit and tie on occasion.

20:50 - 20:56
And he was in the book industry and there was bags out there that did some of that.

20:57 - 20:59
But he had some unique ideas.

20:59 - 21:07
And we designed a pack that turned into a garment bag, but then folded up into a day pack.

21:07 - 21:11
And you could put your laptop in everything you needed for cycling, and yet everything you needed

21:11 - 21:15
for work to look professional. And that was fun.

21:15 - 21:23
And working with a really motivated person who knew what he wanted is not always the case.

21:23 - 21:26
A lot of people have an idea, and then I have to fill in the blanks.

21:26 - 21:34
Well, with Mike, you know, we pivoted two or three different times in the process and went in a totally different direction.

21:34 - 21:37
And the product was exciting when it. When it got out.

21:37 - 21:40
On the other end of it was probably the.

21:40 - 21:47
The funnest or Most rewarding project I, I worked on, on a small project was there was the peregrine

21:47 - 21:53
falcon program where they were reintroducing endangered species, which peregrine falcon was

21:53 - 22:00
into Ontario and a biologist friend in Thunder Bay approached me.

22:00 - 22:06
They would rappel down cliffs to the nest of the paracin falcons and take out the chicks once

22:06 - 22:13
they got to a certain age, bring them up and put a band on them and see how healthy they were

22:13 - 22:18
by taking one little feather out and, and then go back down.

22:18 - 22:23
And through this whole process, you're, you're rappelling and climbing on some pretty severe

22:23 - 22:25
rock faces and you have to lower.

22:25 - 22:29
You wanted the safety of the birds to be the first thing.

22:29 - 22:40
And so we designed a box that you could quickly open up, put the chicken and close while you're repelling or sitting there.

22:40 - 22:46
And it was safe for the chicks to get hauled up quickly and then do all the work and then put

22:46 - 22:51
them back in the box and get it back down to the nest as quickly as possible to make it.

22:52 - 22:55
It was intrusive, but at the same time it was safe.

22:55 - 23:02
The safety of the chicks and the health of the chicks were improved and the peregrine falcon program was phenomenally successful.

23:02 - 23:05
They're still on the endangered list, I believe, but they're.

23:05 - 23:09
There's many hundreds of them across the province now.

23:09 - 23:16
And for me, the, the reward from that was getting invited out by Brian Ratcliffe, the person

23:16 - 23:22
who is the biologist who was doing it, and Rod Swatten, who was one of the climbers and, and

23:22 - 23:26
I got to hold one of those chicks and, and do some of that.

23:26 - 23:29
And that was, that was special.

23:29 - 23:35
You know, just seeing your product in use is fun, but seeing the end result of holding a little

23:35 - 23:38
chick like that was, was really neat.

23:38 - 23:42
So, yeah, biggest project I ever worked on was a Canadian military.

23:42 - 23:49
If you look at any Canadian soldier with a large rucksack or a small, what they call the small pack system.

23:49 - 23:54
I was the lead designer on that for that project. And that was huge.

23:54 - 23:58
You know, I think 80,000 of those were eventually produced for soldiers.

23:58 - 24:05
And they got a custom fit pack to carry, whether they're doing peacekeeping or any of their

24:05 - 24:08
many services to go into the field with.

24:08 - 24:12
And, and that was kind of exciting because I worked with Queen's University.

24:12 - 24:20
They developed a robotic simulator that you could put a pack on and it had sensor pads underneath

24:20 - 24:26
and there was a skin like fabric and it actually moved, imitated a person's movement upper torso.

24:26 - 24:31
And we could read where the pressure points were, where we needed to change things.

24:31 - 24:35
And silly on their part.

24:35 - 24:39
They said, we'll give you $10,000 to buy pack so we can create a database.

24:39 - 24:44
And I got to go out and buy all my competitors and test it like crazy.

24:44 - 24:47
And we created a database of what was good and what was bad.

24:47 - 24:53
And so that when we designed and put it on the simulator, we knew, okay, that was good or that

24:53 - 25:01
really wasn't good from shapes, curvatures and different materials and able to test stress points and everything.

25:01 - 25:08
And then we take it to the humans, the soldiers, men and women, and test it on them to make sure we were right.

25:08 - 25:14
But it simplified the process and I think made it a lot more science orientated that we could

25:15 - 25:19
measure all kinds of things that we never had access to before.

25:19 - 25:21
And I learned a lot in that.

25:21 - 25:29
Working with science and the really high end education or research background that Queens had

25:29 - 25:31
that brought to it was exceptional.

25:31 - 25:35
That's why I got into internal frame hiking packs and all that.

25:35 - 25:42
I had a lot of information that no one else in the industry really had from, from a certain point of view.

25:42 - 25:44
So I'm a total geek.

25:44 - 25:51
That would be so cool to check all that to see, have access to all that data and go, okay, this is a wear point.

25:51 - 25:55
Well, look, if you round this a little bit, it takes a bit of str off of that whatever, right?

25:55 - 25:56
Like that would be insane.

25:56 - 25:58
Yeah, and that's exactly it.

25:59 - 26:03
Some of it wasn't rocket science, but it was like, oh, we, if we put this hard layer over this

26:03 - 26:08
soft layer, we just eliminated the pressure point. Wow, that's really cool. That's easy to do.

26:08 - 26:13
And all kinds of things led to improvements and was very exciting.

26:13 - 26:18
I enjoyed that working with everyone, the military side and the civilian side as well.

26:18 - 26:19
Well, military boys, they're, they're tough.

26:19 - 26:23
They can just, just, just, just suck it up.

26:23 - 26:24
Just keep going, you're fine.

26:24 - 26:26
Well, you know what though? You're right.

26:26 - 26:28
But, and they are tough.

26:28 - 26:34
But some of the gear they had was archaic, you know, dated back to the Korean War.

26:34 - 26:40
And our Canadian soldiers now, through a program called Clothed the Soldier, anything a soldier

26:40 - 26:48
wore, have some really nice kit, some really nice gear that makes their jobs easier and it fits them.

26:48 - 26:55
You know, it wasn't just, here's a pack, here's a pack with five shoulder strap sizes and five hip belt sizes.

26:55 - 26:58
And it comes in the torso size that you measure out to.

26:59 - 27:07
And so when you're carrying some really, really heavy loads, maybe you're in Winnipeg carrying

27:07 - 27:13
sandbags, maybe, you know, our soldiers have done so many things all over the World.

27:13 - 27:18
At least you have some good gear. And that. That helps a lot. Yeah.

27:18 - 27:22
Cool. Just some. So. So we've talked a lot about packs.

27:23 - 27:30
I know there are a couple other things off the top of my head. You have barrel harnesses. There's a.

27:31 - 27:37
I would like to spend a minute talking about tump lines, because I don't think anybody does tump lines anymore.

27:37 - 27:39
You do, and I think that's an amazing thing.

27:39 - 27:44
Like, I keep thinking that makes so much sense to me, and then maybe.

27:44 - 27:48
Maybe we'll have a minute to talk. You've got. Don't you. Yeah. You've got a.

27:48 - 27:51
Like a packed kitchen, right? Like a camping kitchen.

27:51 - 27:54
Mason camp table. Yeah. With Paul Mason. Yeah.

27:54 - 27:55
One, two, three.

27:55 - 27:56
Oh, sure. Well, you've hit.

27:56 - 27:59
You've hit a nerve here because dump lines are my pet peeve.

27:59 - 28:01
Growing up, I climbed a lot.

28:01 - 28:04
Rock climbed until probably 30, 40 years old.

28:04 - 28:13
And one of my heroes was the founder of Patagonia, and he used a tump line when he was climbing, and it was amazing.

28:13 - 28:16
So we're coming out with a new tump line that I actually redesigned.

28:16 - 28:18
How do you redesign a tump line?

28:18 - 28:23
And I'm really excited about it because I wear a tump line primarily on my forehead.

28:23 - 28:26
Many people, though, wear it across the top of their head.

28:26 - 28:31
And I've just redesigned it that it'll do both, you know, and so if you like it one way, and

28:31 - 28:34
it creates more surface area to spread it out and.

28:34 - 28:40
And a little bit of design in an old product can really improve it. And there are people.

28:40 - 28:42
Other manufacturers that make dump lines.

28:42 - 28:49
I'm not the only one, but I'm probably the only one that spends so much time on them, it drives Ann crazy.

28:49 - 28:53
Like, you realize this is a $10 item, you know, that kind of thing.

28:53 - 28:57
And the Mason camp table we used to make when we. When we.

28:57 - 29:00
Prior to shutting down 2013.

29:00 - 29:07
And it never sold very well, and it still isn't selling really well, but it weighed about 7

29:07 - 29:14
1/2 pounds then, and we used it on trips, in fact, with Kevin Callan, we used it a couple times,

29:14 - 29:20
and Kevin turned it into a bar instead of what it was originally made for.

29:20 - 29:25
And a friend, Andy, was on the trip, too, and it functioned very well, I can't complain.

29:25 - 29:26
As a bar?

29:27 - 29:37
Yeah, as a bar. But its intent is to prepare food or serve food and. And other things. And when we. Paul approached me.

29:37 - 29:40
Paul Mason approached me and said, hey, you should bring this back. What do you think?

29:41 - 29:45
And I said, well, you know, it didn't really sell I think it needs to be a lot lighter, you

29:45 - 29:49
know, and it's not something everyone's going to bring into the backcountry.

29:49 - 29:55
It still isn't, but we went from seven and a half pounds to about three pounds and made it a lot more.

29:56 - 29:59
It's still bulky because it's. It.

29:59 - 30:02
It has to be a table, but it fits on a tree.

30:02 - 30:07
And you use a tree to set up a workstation for.

30:07 - 30:11
For doing all kinds of food prep stuff.

30:11 - 30:14
And I think it's got some cross marketing, which I have never explored.

30:14 - 30:21
During COVID if you walked into a park, you saw people working on laptops or you saw them outdoors

30:21 - 30:22
trying to get their outdoor time.

30:23 - 30:29
And I think if I could set up my computer on a tree in a beautiful park and bring a stool and

30:29 - 30:33
sit down there, it would be kind of cool. So it's.

30:33 - 30:41
It's out there now and people can get it. I'll tell you. Working with Paul Mason. Wow. You know, Paul, We.

30:41 - 30:43
Ann and I were lucky enough to. We.

30:43 - 30:48
We took lessons from Paul, private lessons from Paul, when we were solo boaters.

30:48 - 30:54
And we're nowhere in the ballpark of Paul as a paddler, but we spent four days paddling with

30:54 - 30:58
him in the Ottawa area and learned a ton.

30:58 - 31:01
So that was the start of getting to know Paul.

31:01 - 31:05
And designing with Paul is an intense experience.

31:06 - 31:13
Paul throws himself into it and sometimes during a day he might do two prototypes.

31:13 - 31:24
And Paul is a cardboard stapler, duct tape kind of guy, or a wood, metal and practical kind

31:24 - 31:27
of guy, and you'll throw prototypes together.

31:27 - 31:34
What it was, though, was throwing ideas onto the table, no pun intended there, and working.

31:34 - 31:41
We in probably two, three weeks, we probably went through at least 20 different ideas or prototypes.

31:41 - 31:46
And I would say none of them had something that we didn't take that isn't in the final.

31:46 - 31:50
The final version, and just fun to work with.

31:50 - 31:55
And we have another new product which I'll share with you because you'll be the first to know it.

31:55 - 31:57
It's called the Sous Chef Kitchen.

31:57 - 32:04
And Paul does a lot of river trips and he uses his canoe as a table.

32:04 - 32:09
The problem is when you prop it all up and get it stable, nothing stays very well on a canoe.

32:09 - 32:12
If a wind comes, it takes everything that's on it off it.

32:12 - 32:19
So we've come up with a set of straps that allow you to use your paddles as guides on both sides

32:19 - 32:22
of the canoe and everything in between. Then is.

32:22 - 32:25
Is not going to fall off the table anywhere near as quickly.

32:25 - 32:30
And it comes in a little bag and is real easy to use and is lightweight.

32:30 - 32:36
And in the Boreal forest where I am, we're not on river shores and very rarely do we bring our

32:36 - 32:38
canoe up to the campsite.

32:38 - 32:41
So there's some places it's going to be used more than others.

32:42 - 32:44
But there's a lot of my friends excited about it.

32:44 - 32:47
They said, oh, we always use our canoe. And yeah.

32:47 - 32:51
So my head makes me go like, oh, that's brilliant.

32:51 - 32:53
Yes, that works out well.

32:54 - 32:58
Or the last canoe trip I was on, I didn't bring it.

32:58 - 33:03
And then the guy I was canoeing with, there's just the others three of us, he pulled the canoe

33:03 - 33:06
up and turned it upside down so he could clean fish on it.

33:07 - 33:10
And I hadn't even thought of that. So. Yeah.

33:10 - 33:17
So you've got the inside scoop on a new product that we're introducing this spring with Paul Mason. Yeah.

33:17 - 33:19
And I'm excited about it.

33:19 - 33:19
Yeah.

33:19 - 33:25
And we'll be making with the camp kitchen, the Mason camp table, and this I make myself.

33:25 - 33:27
So I make them in Thunder Bay.

33:27 - 33:33
They're not made like our packs are made offshore now to pretty stringent conditions.

33:33 - 33:37
But at the same time we don't make them ourselves anymore, unfortunately.

33:37 - 33:40
Cool. Tell me about your, your barrel packs.

33:41 - 33:45
A bit of context, I don't. We.

33:45 - 33:50
We have big, the big rubber bags like a Mac Slog or whatever.

33:50 - 33:57
And I use a five gallon Home Depot orange bucket with a spin on lid.

33:57 - 34:05
It's usually our eldest and I that go out so it's enough to do eight days depending on whether he's in a Grossbert.

34:06 - 34:11
But that's, that's my barrel pack with a bunch of stuff around it. I'm. I'm envious.

34:11 - 34:18
And we're about to start doing larger party trips, so I keep thinking I'm going to have to get

34:18 - 34:21
into the actual blue barrel and a blue barrel pack.

34:21 - 34:26
What's the, what's the, what's the beauty of having those packs?

34:27 - 34:35
Yeah. So I think there's, there's pros and cons, but the pros are you have an entirely waterproof

34:35 - 34:38
barrel, plastic barrel that fits into a harness.

34:39 - 34:42
The cons of the barrel would be the shape of the barrel. It's round.

34:42 - 34:47
And at the bottom of the barrel and the top of the barrel, it goes opposite ways to the body.

34:47 - 34:52
And having something round up against your back is, is really uncomfortable.

34:52 - 34:58
So there's a lot of harnesses out there that are very uncomfortable and they, and they don't need to be.

34:58 - 35:05
We make a harness called the Voyager harness and certainly Other manufacturers take the shape

35:05 - 35:07
of the barrel out of the equation for fitting.

35:07 - 35:11
So that's the critical part if you're looking at a barrel harness.

35:11 - 35:13
But I think barrels are so easy to use.

35:13 - 35:15
We for years have been using them.

35:15 - 35:20
We've never, even though we've tripped in remote places, we've never had a bear problem, but

35:20 - 35:22
we're very conscious of it.

35:22 - 35:24
I don't, we don't hang our food packs.

35:24 - 35:28
The barrels we feel are, they're not bear proof.

35:28 - 35:35
But if you can eliminate or reduce the smell of people around barrels, you can eliminate them

35:35 - 35:39
as an attraction or a magnet for bears or other animals.

35:39 - 35:46
So we have a Ziploc bag, we put a little rag in and we put first aid antiseptic in it. It's damp.

35:47 - 35:49
And the last thing that touches our barrel is that rag.

35:50 - 35:57
We wipe the metal ring, we wipe the plastic down and, and number one, it erases a lot of our oils.

35:57 - 35:59
And touching it doesn't eliminate it.

35:59 - 36:01
Because the harness is going to have some of you on it.

36:02 - 36:04
I'm a firm believer that it helps.

36:04 - 36:07
And barrels are easy to use that way.

36:07 - 36:14
Probably the, the cons would be you've got a relatively heavy piece of plastic that you're stuck

36:14 - 36:15
with on the whole trip.

36:15 - 36:21
So if you have a long trip, two weeks and you have three or four barrels or two or three barrels,

36:22 - 36:27
where opposed to say a soft pack of some kind or smaller containers, you can't collapse them

36:27 - 36:31
down and roll them up and put them in the bottom of a pack.

36:31 - 36:33
On the other hand, if you tip, they float.

36:33 - 36:35
So that's a good thing.

36:36 - 36:36
Yeah.

36:36 - 36:40
So our voyager harnesses is integral.

36:40 - 36:45
Part of it is taking the shape of the barrel out of the equation and then the custom fit, the

36:45 - 36:48
different size hip belts and different size shoulder straps.

36:48 - 36:53
And we have a feature on our pack that uses the entire length of the barrel.

36:53 - 37:00
A barrel is approximately 20, the large barrel is 60 liter, barrel is about 24 inches tall.

37:00 - 37:07
And in, in the pack world that would mean it's a medium frame size. Our canoe packs.

37:08 - 37:12
And so you only are going to fit a certain number of people because of that.

37:12 - 37:18
But we've I figured out a way of using the entire length of the barrel and that's unique to the industry as well.

37:18 - 37:22
So it just fits you better and it fits more people better.

37:22 - 37:28
But it won't fit really, really tall people or people with really long torsos as well as it

37:28 - 37:30
would the vast majority of people.

37:30 - 37:35
So yeah, and I think they have their place in the canoeing field.

37:35 - 37:36
We don't always take it.

37:36 - 37:39
But I would say the vast majority of the times we do have a barrel.

37:40 - 37:44
Well yeah. And, and most of the community, whether it's, whether it's from habit or because

37:44 - 37:47
of experience or I don't know.

37:47 - 37:49
But most of the community does take them.

37:49 - 37:53
I just, we, we tripped onto the whole five gallon pale thing.

37:54 - 37:58
It works well for me and our, our eldest.

37:58 - 38:06
I'm not messing with it except we are about to sort of embark on not just he and I tripping.

38:06 - 38:08
We're, we're looking at bigger groups of people.

38:08 - 38:08
Yeah.

38:08 - 38:09
Okay. We're.

38:09 - 38:13
Well, you know, I, I used to trip with olive barrels.

38:13 - 38:19
I don't know if you ever heard, saw or heard those olives from Greece. I've heard about. Yeah.

38:19 - 38:24
And, and I, to, to date myself I had square olive barrels which three of them would fit down

38:24 - 38:30
the back of your canoe pack really well because you had a flat surface instead of three round

38:30 - 38:36
surfaces, rounded ones and, and, and I still think people have forgotten about olive barrels.

38:37 - 38:40
One place where I think they're phenomenal is a kid's pack.

38:40 - 38:47
You give a kid basically a 20 liter barrel with a 6 inch opening to stuff his sleeping bag and

38:47 - 38:52
maybe his teddy bear and a few other things that are him. That's his task.

38:52 - 38:55
And it's still light and yet he can drop it and puddle.

38:55 - 38:59
He can drop it in the river and it's going to be waterproof. So.

38:59 - 39:03
But your idea of five gallon, you're using like the gamma lid.

39:03 - 39:08
Is that what that fits on it and allows you to take it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

39:08 - 39:11
And that's, that's an amazing gadget in its own.

39:11 - 39:13
It's been around and it add.

39:13 - 39:14
You know, you could use.

39:15 - 39:22
We used to make a pack board and probably I've got an adaptation for the Voyager harness where

39:22 - 39:24
you can put them horizontally.

39:24 - 39:32
You could put two or three of those five gallon onto a pack frame or a harness that, that can

39:32 - 39:36
hold those and still have, you know, not have to use a blue barrel.

39:36 - 39:38
It would be cheaper, that's for sure.

39:38 - 39:46
The price of blue barrels has gone through the roof and you would still have kind of three different

39:46 - 39:49
barrels to divide up different foods and label them.

39:49 - 39:51
Well and yeah, so there's other.

39:52 - 39:56
I'm not stuck on blue barrels or, or the barrels that are out there.

39:56 - 39:59
I'm in fact I'm less likely if I was buying them.

39:59 - 40:04
I would be less likely to buy them because of the pricing that's hit them.

40:04 - 40:07
Unfortunately you've come up with an alternative that's cheaper.

40:08 - 40:14
I will Follow up on that 3,5 gallons in a pack thing.

40:14 - 40:15
That might work better for me.

40:15 - 40:16
Cool.

40:16 - 40:20
So just. I would be interested if you could walk us through the process if somebody decides,

40:20 - 40:23
okay, I would like an Ostrom custom pack.

40:23 - 40:26
Do I take my own measurements and email that to you?

40:26 - 40:28
And then how long does it take to get my pack?

40:28 - 40:30
That kind of thing, I'd be interested to know.

40:30 - 40:37
Okay. So the packs are all in stock, and it's taking a generic pack and putting the proper size

40:37 - 40:44
shoulder straps, a proper size hip belt, and if it's a pack that has an adjustable torso, putting

40:44 - 40:46
it together with the right torso size.

40:46 - 40:49
So it's real easy to do.

40:49 - 40:56
And on our website, which you would go to, it has fitting charts and how to measure for your

40:56 - 41:00
chest area, for your shoulder straps and how to measure your torso length.

41:00 - 41:02
And the same with the hip belt.

41:02 - 41:05
And we give you our phone number, we give you our email address.

41:06 - 41:09
We have fitting instructions on how to go through all that.

41:09 - 41:17
And I would guess that maybe 5% of the people just call us up and we walk it through or they

41:17 - 41:19
hit a point where they're not understanding something.

41:19 - 41:21
And we're still working all that out.

41:21 - 41:26
But most of the time, 95% of the time, you can do it yourself.

41:26 - 41:28
And if you can't, we're there to help you.

41:28 - 41:33
So you're going and saying, okay, when I measure with a tape around my chest area and we tell

41:33 - 41:38
you where you'll get a measurement, and you go to a chart and it tells you what size shoulder

41:38 - 41:39
straps you're going to have.

41:39 - 41:44
And then the same thing with torso and the same thing with sometimes a torso length.

41:44 - 41:50
Well, sometimes for all the measurements, it helps to have a partner to help you, unless you're really flexible.

41:50 - 41:56
So, yeah, and then we, we will outfit the pack according to those measurements. And.

41:56 - 42:01
And we're finding that most of the time, we're bang on.

42:01 - 42:05
There's the odd time that something has changed.

42:05 - 42:08
Either someone lost some weight or gained some weight or whatever. And there's.

42:08 - 42:11
There's a lot of flexibility in the sizing.

42:11 - 42:16
And if we, if it's wrong, we just, we just mail you the correct modular pieces and you, you

42:16 - 42:18
mail it back and there's no charge for.

42:18 - 42:19
If you get it wrong.

42:19 - 42:25
We eat that and make sure you're not paying extra because you're getting something custom and

42:25 - 42:29
it gives you a pack then that fits a lot more comfortably.

42:29 - 42:30
You're going to be a happy camp.

42:30 - 42:33
Happier camper or a happier portager. Yeah.

42:33 - 42:34
Did that answer all of that?

42:35 - 42:37
Or was there something kind of.

42:37 - 42:38
What kind of. What's the.

42:38 - 42:41
Like a time length from the time I. Oh, yeah.

42:41 - 42:43
Time length. Well, well, it's. It's.

42:43 - 42:47
If you were to order today, you'd have your pack in two weeks, and that. That would.

42:47 - 42:49
In wintertime, it's a little while.

42:49 - 42:53
Even in summertime, we're busier. But in wintertime, it.

42:53 - 42:56
It's dependent on when my employee is in.

42:56 - 42:57
She's in two or three times a week. So.

42:58 - 43:01
Yeah, so it's not long because we're not making the packs.

43:01 - 43:03
The packs are already there. All the shoulder straps.

43:03 - 43:10
We carry a whole pile of extra shoulder straps in small, medium, large, extra large, and the same in hip belts.

43:10 - 43:14
And the torso thing is, it's not available on all our packs.

43:14 - 43:18
So the Winisk and the Wabikimi have the ability to adjust the torso length.

43:18 - 43:25
The Quetico comes with just a fixed torso, but you still have shoulder strap sizes and hip belt sizes.

43:25 - 43:33
And the same thing with the Voyageur, Although there is one adjustment that allows you to kind of fit taller people. So.

43:33 - 43:36
Yeah, so it doesn't take extra time.

43:36 - 43:40
It's the same amount of time as ordering any canoe pack on the market.

43:40 - 43:43
We get it out the door in equivalent time.

43:43 - 43:48
It's just there's a little bit extra work on our end to assemble it for your measurements.

43:49 - 43:53
Spectacular, honey. Christmas.

43:58 - 43:59
Just saying.

43:59 - 44:00
That's it for us for today.

44:00 - 44:04
Thank you so much to Bill Ostrom from Ostrom Outdoors for joining us.

44:04 - 44:06
And that was awesome, awesome information.

44:07 - 44:12
You can check him out@ostromoutdoors ca on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

44:12 - 44:15
And you can check us out on all of those things.

44:15 - 44:18
We are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

44:18 - 44:19
We have a YouTube channel.

44:19 - 44:24
We would love it if you subscribed, and we will talk to you again soon. Bye.