What makes our Store any different from others?
Let's face it, you can purchase your gear from any number of merchants, probably at similar prices - so what makes us different and hopefully the shop you'll choose to support?
Outdoor Skills Education:
Gear Range and Selection:
Keeping Prices Low:
We know our Products, we use them ourselves and we stock them.
So, we hope that all the work we put into testing, selecting good gear for our shop and weeding out the poor, inspecting gear in your order before shipping and focus on a few "Good" and proven products as opposed to the thousands we could list.... all come together to help you feel secure in us and the products that we offer. Thanks for supporting our goals and mission.
Outdoor Skills Education:
- Our Goal is to help people connect/reconnect with the outdoors by providing a solid foundation in essential skills and gear. This is why we're a .ORG and not a .COM.
- Our shop exists to help fund our Goal, current proceeds are being put toward our Land Fund to obtain a woods lot so we can offer local outdoor skills training, and then subsidize class fees allowing youth to attend without paying high costs.
Gear Range and Selection:
- We do not try to list every product that we can get from our suppliers, many sellers already do that. Carrying everything offers no value to you, making it difficult to find the top performing products among the chaff.
- Before any product makes it to our shop, we field test it. Poor performers are rejected, only top performers remain.
- Our product selection process ensures that each product we carry has demonstrated ability, value and durability in the field. We do not carry poor performers, ever.
Keeping Prices Low:
- Our decision to only carry gear which we have proven in the field helps to reduce returns. Returns cost shops a significant amount, and reducing that cost allows us to offer better pricing to you.
- Retail shops usually average the estimated losses from Returns into the pricing of their products. This means that the customers who do not return their products are actually paying for those who do. Is that fair? We handle it differently, we do not impose that overhead in our product pricing, instead we handle that cost only at time of return in the form of a restocking fee. This means that over 99.8% of our customer will enjoy lower prices.
- We inspect each item in your order immediately prior to shipping your package. This ensures that your gear is ready to go when you get it, and again reduces returns - saving overhead costs that translate to lower prices.
We know our Products, we use them ourselves and we stock them.
- Many shops simply post the stock photos and descriptions given to them by the manufacturer, the same photos you see everywhere on the web. We provide our own descriptions and take our own photos. Manufacturer photos are often photoshop'd to look ideal, ours show the real product without alteration - and often from more angles.
- We've tested each product we carry, and use them ourselves. We know them, and can help you find a product that meets your needs. Some shops have never even laid a finger on their products, just a list from the supplier.
So, we hope that all the work we put into testing, selecting good gear for our shop and weeding out the poor, inspecting gear in your order before shipping and focus on a few "Good" and proven products as opposed to the thousands we could list.... all come together to help you feel secure in us and the products that we offer. Thanks for supporting our goals and mission.