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Cam Brensinger: NEMO’s Road from a Bivy Bag on Mount Washington to Recyclable Gear · The Wild Idea

• 0:00
  [instrumental music] Welcome to our continuing conversation for a wild, connected, and ever-changing world, this podcast we call The Wild Idea. We are a pair of advocates, defenders, and stewards of wild places. My name is Bill Hodge, and along with my buddy, Anders Reynolds, we have been at this now for going on two years. Uh, and today, we bring you a conversation on the outdoor gear company, NEMO, with the founder and CEO, Cam Breninger. Anders, over 80 conversations now in almost two years. Would you have believed it when I first called you with this idea?
• 0:33
  Oh, hi, Bill. Would I have believed it? Yeah, I did believe. I-- You know, I-- The more interesting answer is for me to say like, "Honestly, no." Uh, I, I thought we'd do six episodes and run out of steam, but that's, that's not the truth. I, I think I did think we would be here. I think I did think we'd get 80 episodes in. I think we've got 80 more in us at least. I'm really happy with what we're doing. If you're looking for an answer on, like, what I'm surprised about, I, I think it's-- the answer to that question, what I didn't see coming was how much we would learn, or maybe I won't speak for you, Bill, how much I would learn. You know, we've sat down and talked with lawyers, with trail crews, with ranchers, with river people, with gear makers, and I think in nearly all of those conversations, my mind has changed about something, which is, as, as you know, and you know me well, that's not something I really want to admit, certainly not easily.
• 1:30
  And, you know, somewhere along the way, all this also turned into a second and a third show under the Wild Idea Media banner, and now into a Signal Award nomination. And I'm surprised about all that, but I am not surprised we've made it 80 episodes, and I'm, I'm really happy to be here with you, buddy.
• 1:49
  Yeah, I don't, I don't know if I ever had a number in mind, right? I-- What I didn't know was the depth that our guests would bring, right? Like, the sort of range of guests that we'd be fortunate enough to be able to have on, and maybe that's reflected in, in us, uh, being up for this, you know, this Signal Award, and, and now this, specifically the Signal, you know, Listeners' Choice Award. But, uh, like you, I've had, I've had some, uh, long-held beliefs challenged a little bit in some of these conversations, which has been great. Um, I've-- Honestly, I think we've both made some newfound friends, right? It's not just-- They're not just guests anymore. They're people that we look forward to continue and interact with, but, uh... And obviously, the community.
• 2:30
  Yeah, are you on the text thread with all the guests? I can't remember.
• 2:33
  [laughs]
• 2:33
  I think that might just be something we started without you.
• 2:36
  Yeah, I think, I think [laughs] that's probably something you guys left out. I, I have really poor text thread etiquette, so I can get... leave me out of it. [laughs] That's for sure.
• 2:44
  You are never more at your most boomer as to when you're texting me. I'll just get like an, "Okay," and I'm like, "Is he pissed? I don't understand."
• 2:51
  [laughs]
• 2:52
  And I have to remind myself we're not the same age.
• 2:54
  No, we are not the same age, but I am not a boomer. I wanna underline. I may act like one, but technically, I am not a boomer, so...
• 3:03
  Okay, boomer.
• 3:04
  But at any rate, we, we really appreciate that this journey has brought us to this point, to this conversation today with Cam Breninger, but we also remind you guys, one last chance. You have a opportunity until tomorrow, till October 15th, to vote for us for that Listener Choice Award. You can find out how to do that at our website at thewildidea.com. Anders, one other thing I'm excited about is in this, uh... We still probably need to refine this name, but in the Anders Nerd Word of the Day, we now have audience members coming to us with suggestions. And so this is our first one that comes from our audience, and they would love to see you work in the word imbrication. Imbrication is your Anders Nerd Word of the Day.
• 3:49
  Imbrication, uh, that's like a, uh... How do you define it? It's like a [lip smack] repeating pattern that I think has to overlap, like roof shingles or fish scales. Is that right?
• 4:04
  Yeah, I think, I think you've got it. Of course, it can-- I think it can apply to beyond the physical, right? But, uh, yeah, for sure. So let's see, let's see you fit that into this conversation with Cam Breninger. Cam, we are just so excited to have you join us for The Wild Idea. This has, uh, sort of been in the works for a while, and I'm excited we're getting to have the conversation. I, I like to always sort of start at some place that we refer to as the beginning, and in this case, I wanna start at the beginning of NEMO. You know, many companies are born on a conference room whiteboard or maybe on a cocktail napkin over dinner somewhere, but NEMO was born on a mountainside, actually a notoriously perilous mountainside. Could you sort of share the story of how you started this company?
• 4:49
  Yeah. Thanks, Bill. [laughs] You know, as you were saying that and I was guessing where you were going, there are really a l- a, a number of different moments early in my life that I kind of call sort of the beginning of it. But, um, but what you're referencing is when I was in college, I fell in love with ice climbing and rock climbing and mountaineering, and a good buddy and I, I think it was maybe a Wednesday, we decided that Saturday we wanted to climb... do an ice climbing route in Huntington Ravine on Mount Washington, which is the tallest mountain we have here in the Northeast and, you know, has famously harsh weather. And, uh, and being 20-something and filled with hormones and cocky, we didn't bother to thoroughly check the weather, you know, and we thought, "Oh, we'll go up Friday after our school obligations are done. We'll bivvy out just to kind of get a jumpstart on the climb." And I think it was maybe... It was after dark when we, when we left the parking lot, and we were kind of halfway up to, you know, this ice climb, um, in Huntington when the weather just went completely side-- I mean, l- literally sideways. The trees were kind of blown down to the, [laughs] you know, blown down to the ground. You know, it was just like apocalyptic. So we dug in, got out our bivy bags and then spent the night basically miserable. I was studying industrial design at the time, so I'm laying there in this bivy bag, trying to kind of balance, you know, allowing enough air to get to my face that I don't suffocate, but without just being blasted by wind-driven snow and thinking, "This is the worst product design in human history. Like, this bivy bag is just terrible." And so I kept having this thought, like, you know, what if I-- like, what's the least amount of structure I could have over me right now? You know, like how, like how could I create, like, a little air space in front of my face? And by morning, I decided the best way to do that was with a little inflated tube. And, uh, and so I went back to school, um, at RISD the next day. I didn't have a lot of sewing skill. I sewed this really kind of janky little in-- fabric sleeve and put a, uh, a bicycle inner tube inside it. And that, in some ways, kind of marked the beginning of our product development.
• 7:10
  So I-- it's-- I think the step I'm really curious about, too, is-- and that was the story I was, I was thinking about for the orientation. So how does it go from your design mind? Like you said, you were studying industrial design at that point. How do you
• 7:25
  evolve as the company grows around you, as you start this endeavor to-- how do you take that vision of designing products that will take that experience people are having outdoors to a more comfortable place, a safer place, and how does that get translated out among an ever-growing team there at NEMO?
• 7:43
  Yeah. Well, you know, the, the sort of the rest of that story will help answer that question. So, you know, I make this kind of silly little prototype and it, it turned into the beginning of another thing that's been really important in NEMO's history, which is kind of serendipity. So I, you know, I have this, this little simple thing I've sewn, and I show it to one of my classmates who happens to have been a pro kite surfer from Hawaii. And when he sees this little inflatable thing that I'm doing and kind of hears the story, he's like, "Bro, [laughs] you need to see my inflatable kite." And, and so the next day he brings his kite into school. And I don't know if you guys have ever seen this thing. I hadn't before, before this encounter. But, you know, it's this, like, ten-meter-wide giant kite that's rigidified by pretty low air pressure, by inflating these ribs in it. And when I saw that, it was crystal clear to me that you could make structures lightweight, really fast to set up structures with inflatable things. And so that, that became, you know, our first product mission.
• 8:56
  Jumping ahead a little bit to kind of finish answering the question, Bill,
• 9:00
  you, you know, because really in a lot of ways, you know, I was twenty-five years old. I, I knew so little at the beginning. And so, you know, in a way, our history is just like this series of little watershed moments where I learned the critical lesson to kind of go the next step. And, you know, a next one of those important watersheds was our first line showing at REI, and I think it was 2006. And basically, I set up all the, the products, all the tents that we had, uh, had built at the time, most of which I had patterned and sewed myself, um, and most of which were inflatable. We're-- we called it air-supported, but, you know, came out of that experience on Mount Washington. And when I was done doing my kind of dog and pony show, the buyer said to me, "Cam, these are the coolest, most innovative tents I've ever seen. They're also overpriced and designed for each of our least significant segments." [laughs] And he was right. And, you know, and the lesson I took away from that was I had really been making things for myself. And, and, you know, a critical thing that I needed to learn, that NEMO needed to learn was really understanding the customer and putting the customer in the room and really designing for the customer.
• 10:14
  Cam, thanks for chatting with us today. I wanna ask you first, um, NEMO has been a member of the Conservation Alliance since 2010, but your conservation ethic existed long before that. So I wanna ask first what pulled the company into, into conservation work. Um, Aldo Leopold was wary of what he called the gadgeteer, right? He worried that the more equipment we carry into the woods, the less the woods we're actually gonna meet. But you make some of the best equipment there is, and you've also spent fifteen years funding the protection of, of wild places. So you're the perfect person to ask, how do you think about the relationship between the gear and the ground it's, it's used on? Uh, did the conservation work grow out of that tension or despite that tension, or did it come from somewhere else entirely?
• 11:09
  Such a great and pointed question. You're getting at, uh, what is honestly, I think, an unresolvable paradox on, on some level. You know, this idea that we are concerned about our impacts on the planet, but we make things. Uh, we make more things. And, you know, and I'll say I first grasped that, and I'm realizing you guys are gonna draw a little-- a lot of little stories out of me here, and I hope they don't get old. But, um, but when I was-- sort of back to when I was at RISD, I can't remember the class or the teacher. It's just the question and the answer that, that stuck in my mind. But a classmate... And this is well enough into the program when I think we were all presumed to know the answer to this, but a classmate in the middle of a class asked the professor, "So what is industrial design, actually?" You know, and keep in mind, this is... You know, we're, we're a bunch of industrial design majors.
• 12:02
  And the professor quickly answered, "It's the design of mass-produced goods." And those words just sounded so grotesque to me, to be honest. Like, it, it really struck me and I made a commitment... 'Cause I, I had ended up in design school because of a combination of being a maker at heart. You know, I, I grew up son of an architect, son of a, a, a... My, my, you know, my dad was an architect. My mom was a untrained, but really talented artist. You know, so kind of making things and art were always part of my life. I loved outdoor adventure and I loved gear, and I couldn't see myself as employable. And so tie all those things together, I was like, "I have to start a gear company." So that sent me to design school. But I, I didn't go to design school with the idea, "I'm gonna build a big business. I'm gonna make a bunch of money." Like, I, I didn't... None of that was on my mind. I didn't care about those things. And so when I heard mass-produced, um, I thought that sounded pretty awful. Made a commitment right then, which has stayed with me and with NEMO for these last twenty-five years, that we will only ever bring something to market that we feel deserves to be brought to market, as in it has to improve the experience of outdoor adventure. It has to be different and better than anything else that's out there, and we need to be responsible for its impacts.
• 13:31
  So a, a, a sort of follow-up question beyond just the, the market thinking. I'm gonna go back to two thousand and seventeen when the outdoor industry pulled, uh, its trade show out of Utah over the first shrinking of bears ears. And it was one of the first times that, that I can remember the industry acting like a political constituency. I'm sure it wasn't the first time, but it was sort of my first go-around with that. And since, since then, since two thousand and seventeen, we've had an imbrication of bad ideas, uh, for our public lands. The sell-off fight in Congress, the deep staffing cuts, the land agencies, or rollback of BLM's public lands rule.
• 14:12
  Looking at that arc, what can you say the industry has learned about its own voice? You know, what can businesses say about public lands that might hit differently than when a conservation group says the same thing? And, and what can brands' voice do for public lands that nonprofits and advocates just can't do on their own?
• 14:34
  Yeah, a lot. A lot. First of all, I would just say from the early days of NEMO, I wanted us to have as much impact as, as we could for, for being a small company. And I, I felt, uh, an obligation, um, and a real reward in engaging at an industry level. So I, I joined OAA's, the Outdoor Industry Association's efforts in DC a few years into NEMO. I spent about fifteen years, you know, going to DC pretty regularly, um, lobbying on behalf of the industry, and had the good fortune of being there in some ways in the heyday of that, you know, when OAA and other constituents of outdoor recreation succeeded in getting the government to count the economic impact of outdoor recreation on the economy, um, you know, got the BEA to include outdoor rec numbers in its, um, in its annual assessments and achieved many other things. And man, it was so inspiring to see how bipartisan the appeal of the outdoors could be, how even when so many other things were log-jammed and, and, and not making progress, how our issues, um, could prevail. And,
• 15:54
  you know, in recent years, that's been muddied by a lot of factors. You know, I'd say between the Conservation Alliance, Outdoor Industry Association, Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and so on, a lot of great things are still happening, but obviously we're in a different time today. And I think what bothers me most about it, and I'll come back to sort of, you know, obviously the role of business,
• 16:19
  is I would certainly not argue against
• 16:23
  jobs or energy security or national security. Practically speaking, all those things are important. But in my mind, when you cut back a monument, um, or a roadless forest, you're spending something you can't get back in order to get this sort of one-time return. It just, it just feels shortsighted to me. I don't trust, I don't believe that a lot of those decisions are made on the right basis these days. And, and I recognize I don't wanna be naive. I recognize it's a complicated world. There's a lot of factors, but I don't trust the judgment behind it. Where I think business, um, can play a really effective part is in connecting all those pieces, right? So I mean, I, I do, at the end of the day, represent jobs. I represent economic impact. So when I tell a story about the value of natural places, um, it grounds them in those things. It connects those, those pieces together.
• 17:22
  And NEMO even has a director of sustainability and government affairs, right? Which is, I think, unusual for a company your size. That was, that was something you felt was worth investing in, I assume.
• 17:32
  Yeah, it's... You know, we've made a lot of big swings. I'll jump ahead to a question you might ask, um,
• 17:40
  and just if I can, I'll just tell another little story here. So in two thousand and ten, I was on the board of directors of OAA, of the Outdoor Industry Association. I was chair of Sustainable Business Innovation. So, you know, I was working with OAA staff to help kind of shape the climate targets in particular, um, for the industry, the sort of recommended targets for businesses in the industry, and learning a ton. I was not the expert in the room. Um- You know, being a small business owner. And, you know, and I would take those lessons back to Nemo. And so in January of twenty twenty, right before the pandemic became a thing, I left one of those OA meetings, wrote a memo, which literally sits next to me, I can touch it right now on the wall here, that I called Our Endless Promise. And basically what it said, it was a memo to the product team, and it said, "Hey, guys, what would it be like, and are we up for the idea of making actually sustainable product? Like, like what would that mean if we were to really try to do that?" And what it says here is we'd have to have zero wasted materials, we'd have to have zero carbon footprint, and we'd have to be what I called in this little letter, infinitely responsible. So in other words, we'd have to take responsibility for everything we make for all of time. You know, and I-- it was a test in some ways. And, uh, what I heard back from the product team was, "Hell yeah, let's do that." And, and so we set out in two thousand and ten to do two things that sort of came out of all those conversations.
• 19:26
  One was to cut our carbon intensity in half within ten years. The second was to make the first truly recyclable products in our categories. We have done both those things. We're, we're in the neighborhood of forty percent reduced on a ten-year goal, um, you know, so we're well ahead of our trajectory. And we've launched a, a range of products now that are fully recyclable, and that's harder than it sounds, figuring out how to make a backpack or sleeping bag recyclable. The challenge in all of that has been where the world is sort of meeting us [laughs] on, on those efforts. And in, in twenty twenty, I thought you wouldn't be able to sell a product through outdoor retail without it being recyclable by twenty twenty-five or by twenty twenty-six. And here we are. In some ways, it's gotten tougher to tell some of those stories actually today than it was in twenty twenty to talk about sustainability. And so to kinda answer your question more directly, Anders, it doesn't make a lot of sense to do those efforts if you don't have the, the strategy and the execution behind them. So at the same time we've made those product investments, we've also tried to do as much as we can, and, and you know, as a small company to affect the industry, to affect the storytelling around that, um, to kinda move the whole playing field forward, if you will. But it's-- that is a real challenge today.
• 20:54
  We step aside for a word from our sponsor, and we'll be right back with more of the conversation.
• 20:59
  Hi, my name is Sandy Compton, and I'm from Heron, Montana, and you're listening to The Wild Idea.
• 21:04
  Yeah, I'm kinda curious, you know, from the Endless Promise initiative to, like, your recently, you know, you wrote a piece about the defense of the roadless rule.
• 21:14
  You know, you, you just brought this up sort of perfectly anticipating this question, this part of the conversation. But, like, how do you project that to the consumer? And now, now it's a question of what, which consumer? 'Cause as you just sort of alluded to, things sort of resonate differently these days. But how do you project that the company is more than profits, the company is more than the product that drives those profits in an era when it is really hard to feel authentic and not perform-performative? How do you do that today?
• 21:47
  How we project that our business is about more than profits is putting actions in front of words, right? I mean, it's really... I think customers are very savvy, and it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to do it. So, you know, I think our annual sustainability report, the clear efforts that we've made around product, things like the fact that we have made some of the first recyclable products, those I think show our commitment without having to say it. How we get customers to invest in those things is tricky today. Unfortunately, I think there's been so much greenwashing over the last few decades that a lot of folks are weary of terms like sustainability.
• 22:34
  You know, they're weary of empty claims. And, and not to mention the fact that
• 22:38
  there's a lot of other things on people's minds, um, today that maybe even feel more urgent to a lot of folks. So getting that message through is challenging. I, I think there's another thing going on, too. When I came into the outdoor industry, it was rising from being this kinda counterculture, uh, dumpster diving hippies in Yosemite Valley was, uh, Valley was the phrase that, you know, is sort of the industry used to describe, describe itself in its early days. It was rising from that toward being mainstream. It was kinda being discovered, you know? It was in the era of the, the Everest disaster and, you know, and Ed Visters and, you know, IMAX movies being made about us. And, you know, people were starting to wear outdoor apparel to commute to work and think it was pretty cool. And I would say here in twenty twenty-six, we've kinda become mainstream, and we're not like that new thing anymore. And at the same time, there's just, there's so much going on in the world. You know, I mean, when I came into the industry, there were ten media outlets for getting your message out. And today, how could you even count them? I mean, there are just thousands, right? There's just so much noise. It's so hard to command attention. So I, I think part of the obligation that I have and you guys have and our industry has, all those who ca- of us who care about conservation issues, is getting attention for it. And this is really kind of crass and shorthand, but making it cool again. You know, I think, I think we've spoiled some of our work over the years by drowning people in a lot of kind of fake marketing stuff and a lot of doom-speaking. And I think some work needs to be done to just make it a center of attention, make it rewarding, um, to bring some solutions to it, to bring some optimism, um, to make it something people wanna be part of again. And, uh, and that, that's something that we're certainly, for our own tiny part, we're thinking about as a brand.
• 24:44
  Cam, I, I really appreciate everything you're saying. It's obviously [laughs] you've done some, some deep, deep thinking about this, and I'm learning a lot. I, I do wanna switch gears. You mentioned getting attention, and I wanna ask you how conservation partners get your attention. I know that NEMO supports the Southeast Land Trust, New Hampshire. Um, you've mentioned you partner with Conservation Alliance and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and TRCP, a New Hampshire land trust, a business coalition, two hunting and fishing organizations. Those are groups that don't necessarily always share the same vocabulary, let alone the same politics. You know, what do you look for in a conservation partner?
• 25:24
  I love that. I mean, [laughs] I think part of my agenda there is I consider myself pretty apolitical. I've never been a joiner. I- I've never really identified with a party of any kind. It's kind of why I started my own business. Um, like I said, I, I, I've also never really thought of myself as very employable. For my involvement with the industry over the years, I've always been a voice of support, of bringing different views together, of recognizing that at the end of the day, things really get done in the middle, or at least those are the things that I want to see happen, are the things that kind of live in the reasonable middle. And, uh, and so, you know, I- I've tried from, again, sort of from my own tiny part, um, over these years to bring together the "outdoor voice" with the "hunt fish voice."
• 26:17
  I see a huge intersection there, uh, a huge overlapping in priorities and kind of what matters to both parties. And if we can overlook the, the differences and focus on the things we agree on, that represents incredible political power, right? I mean, if, if you show up in DC aligned between both those parties, I mean, you basically are, I mean, y- y- you are representing eighty percent of the constituency [laughs], uh, and you can get a lot of things done. So I l- I l- point being, I guess, I, I, I don't-- Generally, I think silos are a mistake. Um, generally, I, I, I try to live in a reasonable middle. And generally, as a business, we've seen a lot of opportunity in, um, kind of the spaces between things.
• 27:07
  I was looking for a specific Ollie Segner quote the other day, and I, I couldn't find it, but I came across this famous quote about wild country being a part of the geography of hope. And it, it kinda makes me wonder right now, in this moment at least, if part of the hope right now, part of the intersectionality that you're talking about is that public lands remain one of the few things that Americans across the spectrum still agree on.
• 27:32
  Yeah. Yeah, and especially if you put aside the silo. You know, something we've realized as a brand is, I think, I don't know this for sure, but I think when I was in college and falling in love with rock and ice climbing,
• 27:48
  more people at that time wanted to be one thing. You know, like, "I'm a rock climber." Versus today, the way we understand our customer base is very, very few people want to be thought of as one thing. Like, like most outdoors people are participating in a range of activities. I think that's instructive, right? So, you know, just-- And, and I'll, I'll just weave in a, a quick personal story. I didn't grow up, uh, exposed to a lot of hunting or fishing. My mom's dad was a Norwegian immigrant to Northern New Hampshire,
• 28:23
  lived in Berlin, New Hampshire, and he and his dad were big deer hunters for food. I mean, they, you know, they, they hunted really to kind of bring protein, um, into the house. But that was about it. I heard his stories. He was kind of too old, um, by the time I was of the right age to really hunt with him or have those kind of experiences together, but I heard his stories. And then at some point in the NEMO trajectory, Steven Rinella, who you guys may know of, became a customer and fan of NEMO. And there were a couple of hunters in our office at the time who kept saying to me, "Cam, this guy is legit. He's kinda changing the nature of the game over there. You really should pay attention." And I'd be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And then after a couple of years, and I, I wish I could remember the name of the book, um, but I read his wonderful book about recreating a Lesaffre meal for a small group of his friends, and it was just beautiful writing, beautiful storytelling. And I thought, "Oh my God, I eat meat, and I have never owned kind of where that comes from." Began a little journey of becoming a sportsman myself. And I, I can't call myself really a hunter. So I've done some hunting and quite a bit of fly fishing since then, but I'm kinda lousy still at both. But I would say in those experiences, I, I realized a backcountry hunter is a backpacker carrying a bow or a rifle. Like, uh, duh. But I, you know, I, I didn't, I didn't process that before then. And, uh, and so that's-- I've sort of used that as a reason in my own mind, um, as a, as a validation, I guess, if you will, that, uh, all of these, a- as long as they have in common respecting the planet, respecting each other, they're different and valid forms of, uh, of, of outdoor adventure. And I think if you bring all those groups together, we realize we have a ton in common. And if you do that, um, in DC, you can generate, uh, a lot of political impact.
• 30:19
  It's so true. This effort to protect public lands is, is gonna take all time, all kinds. It's gonna take... Hunters, fishers, anglers, paddlers, campers, hikers, podcasters like Bill, heartthrobs like me, I'm, I'm glad we're all around.
• 30:33
  [laughs] That's how I always think of you, Anders, is as a heartthrob.
• 30:39
  [laughs]
• 30:40
  Uh, you know, Cam, as we think about coming at this from the range of experiences that people have in the outdoors and in these spaces, uh, it seems like you're pretty focused on making sure your team at NEMO has the time and opportunity to share in those experiences themselves. How does, how does NEMO think about empowering time so that the-- those that are behind the brand are out there with opportunities to use the brand in the places where they're meant to be used?
• 31:09
  Yeah. Great que-- Well, [laughs] I- I'll admit that, you know, I, I started NEMO thinking, you know, I, I love being outdoors. I love my outdoor adventures. If I start an outdoor gear company, surely I'll-- uh, it'll give me tons of time, you know, to do stuff in the outdoors. Um, that hasn't played out that way exactly. But, um, but it's, you know, coming at this as an industrial designer versus, say, as a private equity guy at maybe the dead opposite, uh, end of the spectrum, I recognize that vital to making great product is really understanding the customer, really understanding the activity. And if our mission is we never bring anything to market that doesn't improve the outdoor experience, you darn well better be very familiar with the outdoor experience, uh, to improve it. Um, so it's... You know, I think our reason for having... Like, we have a program we call Go Far, where we reimburse employees for, um, for doing overnight adventures, uh, in the outdoors. That's kind of for two reasons then. One is I want this to be a great place to work. I wanna enjoy coming in here every day. I wanna love the people I'm around. I want there to be a strong culture, and I think that's, that's a big... You know, doing things like that is important to that. It's also-- It also has a practical component, which, which is, you know, if we're gonna be an iconic outdoor brand making really good products, we darn well better, um, understand those outdoor experiences.
• 32:40
  You know, speaking of outdoor experiences, the, the price of getting out into wild places sometimes becomes a barrier for some, right? And we all know that to protect a place, we need to know the place and understand the place, and we need... And this is another one of those double-edged swords, but we need a broad swath of the public to have the opportunity to experience the power of these places. How do you think we continue to find ways to reduce the barriers to access for more of the public? Obviously, we also don't need everybody going everywhere. Otherwise, we're gonna do ecological damage to a place. But how do we continue to find opportunities to reduce those barriers?
• 33:18
  I think a way to do that kind of connects to our tagline, actually. So,
• 33:24
  you know, in the early days of NEMO, when like, you know, I could barely afford to put gas in the car to go do the climbing trip up in the White Mountains, um, for the weekend, we would spend a lot of time doing things locally in the little town we were in at the time. To today, we're in Dover, New Hampshire, which is another kind of old textile mill town in New Hampshire. But we, we started out in Nashua. You know, we were in an old textile mill there about a half mile from the main street, and there was a very cool, is still today a very cool little park, um, kind of just outside our door called Nine Falls Park. We had longboards, skateboards in our office. We had our climbing shoes there. We had an ice climbing training ladder. You know, we had a slack line. And, you know, and, and basically every day we'd have these little, like, micro adventures. And we did a lot of what we called physical challenges, which was like you'd make a little contrived challenge for everyone else kind of on that skateboard trip to lunch. It was like, "Okay, you, you have to start by hanging on the side of this dumpster, and you have to jump from there to the building, and then you can only use the power line." You know, [laughs] like, you know, all these kind of silly little, like, bouldering things. And, and they were so much fun, and they were really impactful in a way in kind of building a relationship with each other. And I remember thinking like, "Man, like, an adventure doesn't need to be getting a permit to the Himalayas and, like, mounting an expedition. It can be a little thing that happens kind of anywhere." And,
• 34:53
  you know, and I think that's, that's something I'm, I'm, I'm still trying to coach myself to know my backyard before I feel like every outdoor adventure I have has to be so- in some exotic, faraway place. Uh, I enjoy riding motorcycles and, and, you know, I'll commute to work on my bike, and I'll deliberately take, like, a little side shoot, and I'll realize, "Whoa, this is a really cool little... I just ended up in a dirt road. This is a cool little area. Didn't even know this was here." And so I think to, to sort of get to the point, Bill, I think adventures in the outdoors can be small. They can be local. Um, you know, I think we've... You know, there can be a mindset that you have to go to your retail store and buy a whole lot of... You have to buy a whole lot of NEMO gear before you can have a real outdoor... That's not true. And in fact, you know, we don't even view ourselves that way. We, we don't look at our, at NEMO as kind of the brand that's likely to be at the beginning of your journey in the outdoors. Like, our stuff is expensive. It's expensive because it's built to perform and it's built to last for somebody who's decided to really engage deeply with the outdoors and invest seriously in it. You don't need NEMO product to have a meaningful engagement with the outdoors. It could be the, the urban park, um, near where you live.
• 36:12
  Hear, hear. I love, I love that idea that people need to recognize experiences come in all shapes and sizes. I know something that's important to Anders is that people not define for people what is a true epic experience. Like, we all have our own versions of, of that experience. We did the math. We know that twenty twenty-seven, which we're rapidly closing in on, will be twenty-five years of NEMO. How are you planning on celebrating? What's that, uh, what's that gonna look like for NEMO?
• 36:39
  You know, just getting... Us to celebrate it is the first challenge, because honestly, I, I think a, a problem we've had over the years is... And maybe it's this New England mindset, maybe it's just like we were a startup for so long that it's hard to get out of that, but it's kind of like as soon as we accomplish one thing, we're onto the next. And a consistent critique of me over the years has been, you know, I need to spend more time kind of slowing down, recognizing what we've done, trying to celebrate. So, you know, we're, we, we are devoting some attention to that. Um, it's not gonna be anything too big. I mean, I, I think it, the, you know, that, that pause, the right pause there would recognize the effort of the team, um, but ultimately there's a lot to do right now, um, and it's, you know, sort of stopping to celebrate isn't, isn't necessarily accomplishing the, the bigger mission. And I, I feel a lot of pressure, um, right now with just, you know, what's going on with public lands, what's going on with AI, you know, what's going on kind of within our industry, um, you know, the, the distraction of social media and technology. It's like we got a lot to do. So yes, we will try to celebrate, but it's gonna be a small thing.
• 37:52
  Well, Cam, as we wrap this conversation up, and as someone who has spent the last several years sleeping in a Nemo Osmo Dagger Three,
• 38:02
  what's next for Nemo innovation-wise? What's, what's coming next?
• 38:06
  Yeah. Well, our goal is really to launch a new category about every three to five years. Um, so we are kind of in the works now. We, you know, we just, we just debuted what we call carry systems in the last few years, uh, which is packs and duffel bags. We have a ton of work to do there, um, you know, uh, lots more to come on that. And, and some very, I think some very compelling things down the road. We have kind of a ten-year plan there, so, um, so you can look forward to what I hope is some pretty game-changing ideas. Um, but we're also kind of already thinking beyond that, um, where do we go from here? And a, a curious thing that we have to wrestle with now is, is electronics. You know, I mean, when I started Nemo, it was like electronic anything was taboo, you know? And then finally the industry kind of came to terms with the fact that everyone's gonna bring a cellphone to their tent at night. Uh, you know, and, and now it's like, mm, is everything gonna have a microprocessor in it? [laughs] You know, and I'm, I'm a little loath to, to, to admit that possibility, um, but I also don't want to be way behind the curve, um, you know, as technology kind of gets smarter, as it involves more electronics. Um, so we're, we're trying to figure that out, and it's, uh, that is like a whole new frontier. We don't, we don't have electrical engineers. We don't have that in our supply chain, um, so that's kind of one of the things I'm trying to sort out today.
• 39:38
  Fascinating. That I wouldn't-- It didn't even occur to me to think that that's might be coming down the pipe, but of course it is. When I hear you say it, of course it is.
• 39:45
  Well, you know, Anders, I gotta say real quick, I- I've always felt like
• 39:50
  ultimately, you know, a tent... The, the ultimate experience a tent can deliver is to be as close to your home as possible, right? And if you think about what makes home home, it's electricity, climate control, uh, you know, on top of the basics of keeping the bugs out and keeping the rain out and stuff like that. So, you know, I, I have to believe that fifty years from now or a hundred years from now, a tent is going to more closely resemble your home. It's gonna do more to kind of create a microclimate. Um, I have, we have nothing to offer there today. That feels a million miles away. Um, but it's an interesting thing to start contemplating. You know, what, what's the next level of your outdoor gear, um, kind of providing, um, comfort, security, um, that unlocks new possibilities. You know what I mean? It lets you focus on maybe things you'd rather focus on or go to places you wouldn't have gone, or who knows?
• 40:51
  As long as I can call block Bill, I'll be happy.
• 40:54
  [laughs]
• 40:56
  Cam, thank you so much for joining us for The Wild Idea. It's been such a, a great conversation. We want to thank you for coming on and taking time out of what I'm sure is a very busy schedule to join us for our conversation today.
• 41:06
  My absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, guys.
• 41:08
  Yeah, thanks so much, Cam. This has been super interesting, and I, I really appreciate the time. Thank you.
• 41:13
  Cheers.
• 41:13
  Coming up on The Wild Idea podcast, we talk a bit about the politics behind public lands law and policy. We dive back into private land conservation with the folks from Wild Idea Buffalo, and we visit with an old friend who has mad skills at bringing the wild straight to your dinner table just in time for Thanksgiving. We truly love and are fed by these amazing guests and stories we have the privilege of sharing with you. If you want to stay in touch along the way, be sure to visit thewildidea.com and sign up for our newsletters. There's also a place for you to financially support us through Buy Me a Coffee. And don't forget to vote for The Wild Idea for the Listener's Choice Award from Signal. Voting ends on the fifteenth. I'm gonna grab my Nemo tent, throw it in my bag, and hit the woods. And when I do, I hope to see all of you on down the trail.
• 41:57
  [instrumental music] The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bryn Russell at Podlad. Digital support by Holly Wilkoszewski at Daypak Digital. Our theme music, Spring Hill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating. And if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com.