OTS ‘09 Part 4

Posted on | October 4, 2009 | 2 Comments

Koolbox

Baz also had a question for this stand, and I am really glad that he did. What a cool find this was. Koolbox distribute Woolpower, Valandre and Pinewood.

I did ask about the Pinewood website and having it in English, and apparently that will hopefully happen by Christmas.

So with that response out of the way, lets look at why I found this a real find.

To start with there is Woolpower. Woolpower are a Swedish company producing merino wool clothing. Seeing as I was asked to enquire about the source of the merino wool that Buffera use in their new merino wool buff, I thought I had better ask the same here. Originally the merino wool was sourced from Australia, but is now sourced from Patagonia. So what of the garments that they produce. Well I have to say they do look good, and the knit of the wool is unusual. Well I hadn’t seen it before anyway. The garments are smooth on one side and terry loops the other. Another thing that was pointed out to me each garment has a label in with the name of the person that made it on. Yep accountability but also a nice personal touch.

Next up is the Valandre down products. The sleeping bags look amazing. Valandre is a French company that uses down sourced in the Pyrenees. The quality looks really good. When quizzed about how they compare weight wise with say RAB, I was told they are lighter than comparable RAB bags. My RAB Quantum Endurance 400 is around 950g (some reason I had 850g in my head), and the Valandre Bloody Mary is listed as a total weight of 1150g. That makes Valandre heavier in my book. But that aside, I think when we start to see these in the magazine reviews in the coming months you will see them doing well. Price wise down isn’t cheap and neither are these high quality bags. I was given a price of £850 for the top of the range Thor.

Lastly Pinewood this is gear that was developed for the fishing and hunting world that is now being pitched at the hiking market. Koolbox think this range will go down well with the lightweight market place. It will be interesting to see how it compares with the more established brands in our sector. I see them being more in the same market place as Craghoppers. I wasn’t given any prices but will be interesting to see how they get on with this.

All this stuff will be available through your friendly local indie outdoor store.

Burton McCall

These guys distribute a lot of products. Sadly I didn’t have time to look at everything they are distributing. But there is so much here that we would use or already use.

As the photo above left shows Burton McCall have the Go Stoves and gas. The picture shows the trekmate and trailclassic. They have a pretty comprehensive range of stoves here and I will be putting more photos in the next Stove Talk. Above Right is a picture of some of the Sea To Summit stuff on display. It was educational to see just how much Sea To Summit produce.

Satmap are also part of the stable. Being introduced for the Satmap Active 10 is this nice ruggedized case (above left). I tell you could of done with this on the Challenge this year. Above right are some pots and pan sets that are also from Go and the thermo mug they do.

I managed to get sometime with POE on the stand, and get some footage that I needed for an up and coming video. Admission time I have to admit I like the POE sleeping pads. POE are making a big push into the UK market place this coming year. So expect to be able to get easier access to them in your local gear emporium.

I really did myself an injustice not having more time to spend on this stand. Yes there was that much to cover here.

TOS ‘10

Yep the organisers behind The Outdoors Show were at this trade event. Which you would expect really. Yes I bent their ear about what I thought was missing from the shows that I have been to in the last couple of years. Which is exactly the sort of feedback that they wanted. It seems that the organisers are in a listening mood. So let’s get some organised, in the next couple of days I will put up a post that will be used to get some feedback for them.

Highlights of Show

For me the highlights of the show were the Koolbox stand and POE on the Burton McCall stand.

Disappointment of Show

No sign of the Primus EtaSolo. What can I say I would really liked to have seen this up close. I think everyone would of liked to have seen this covered in Stove Talk.

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