Who is Tarptent?

We have the privilege of speaking with the one and only, Henry Shires!

Henry Shires is the owner and founder of TarpTent.

TarpTent is a company that has been in the backpacking world before the ultralight craze, before the backpacking craze, before apps, it began. Born from his 1999 PCT Thru Hike the legend began. Henry sewed together a tent for himself to use on his hike, and once he finished people began to ask him to make the tent for them.

This began the journey of Tarptent. As he stated it was never planned but picked up momentum on its own, and then steamrolled forward into becoming his life. He said the turning point was in 2003 or 2004 when Backpacker picked up the story, and at that point he had a decision to make. Continue to pursue his career in Physics or take the leap fully into owning and running a backpacking company. He chose the later, and we unpack the feelings of the why behind such a choice. On one hand there was security and on the other the giant unknown lay ahead, and he jumped right into the unknown!

We chat about the challenges of hiking back in 1999, the growth of the outdoor industry, the loss of the PCT kick-off and the role social media now plays in his world. We chat tents, more tents, and many tent philosophies and jargons that would make a lot of sense for gear aficionados but had our mind boggling with the intricacies.

We chat about the term "Cottage Gear" and what this entails. The definition of Cottage Gear is defined without being defined. There seems to be a communal agreement on what a Cottage Gear company is, but no standard definition. We curiously pick Henry's brain to see what his thoughts are on this subject. When does a company get to big to be a Cottage Gear company? Can it get too big, if part of the definition is the values of a company, and if the values stay the same, why does the size matter? Is it units sold, production partners, morals, what defines it? There is so much grey area here that we didn't possibly hope to answer the question, but wanted to satiate our curiosity with a company that has been, is and continues to be born from this term.

We chat passion and love for the outdoors, we chat about his wife and business partner Cynthia, we chat about growth personally and professionally, we chat about what makes a life in the outdoors uniquely TarpTent.

We also chat about drones!

FAVORTIE QUOTES:

"My being is there because my creation is there"

"I don't know where this is going to go... today is the day I am just going to do it."

To learn more about the Mac from Halfway Anywhere and get involved check out the link below:

Website: TarpTent

Instagram, Facebook, YouTube: @TarpTent

To learn more about who we are click the link below:

Website: https://www.elevenskys.com/

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