see you on the trail,
Mike
#optoutside
That's awesome! Shame we have to sign up to read the article.
73 de W4BKR
Not all who wander are lost... - J.R.R. Tolkein
...Besides, if we get lost, we just pull in somewheres and ask directions - Captain Ron
The ever striving gram weenie...always updated with the next trip
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that's nice. i'm not going to create an account to read the article though. maybe someone can paste the text here
Honestly it isn't too bad that people from here can't see it. It has some inaccuracies like the top cover of the Chameleon is waterproof and weather proof. The casual reader of Lancaster's newspaper business section wouldn't pick it up but the well ready HF reader would tear it apart. I just hope all those girls that broke my heart over the years read it an weep.
Peace Dutch
GA>ME 2003
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http://dutchwaregear.com[/URL]
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April 11, 2017
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Lancaster outdoorsman turns his self-made camping gear into global business
JON RUTTER | LNP Correspondent 4 hrs ago (1)
Tom "Dutch" Ressler
Buy Now
RICHARD HERTZLER | Staff Photographer
Tom "Dutch" Ressler, founder of DutchWare Gear, tries out his new product, the Chameleon hammock.
Thrift.
It sparked Appalachian Trail thru-hiker Tom “Dutch” Ressler to build a $1.6 million outdoor-equipment business named DutchWare Gear.
And it recently inspired online customers to crowdfund the production of Ressler’s latest creation, the high-tech Chameleon Hammock.
“The whole reason I got into this was I was too cheap to buy backpacking gear,” explains Ressler.
So he started designing equipment for his own use.
On a recent Tuesday morning in the company's new 11,000-square-foot headquarters at 612 E. Walnut St., Ressler folds himself into a blue-and-yellow Chameleon suspended from the walls.
He zips the proprietary Vision zipper, laces his fingers behind his head and lies back under the weatherproof top cover.
Ressler explains that new concepts often come to him when he’s driving or backpacking.
But he’s had fewer chances to hit the trail lately, due to the rapid growth of his company.
Ressler started designing the new hammock about a year ago and decided on the crowdfunding campaign last October.
Lancaster's aideM Media Solutions was hired to produce a 3-minute web video about the Chameleon for the campaign.
Kickstarter.com, a crowdfunding platform for artists and designers, streamed the video from Jan. 15 through Feb. 15.
People who backed the venture received 15 percent off the hammock price; DutchWare got a committed sale, Ressler says.
(View DutchWare's Kickstarter campaign here.)
“We had a goal of $22,000 and we reached that in two hours,” he says.
DutchWare raised a total of $200,000, he adds, but the real benefit was the attention it stirred.
Hammocks are hot, with the site hammockforums.net alone reporting 55,948 members.
The Chameleon struck a chord.
“We could be selling five of these a day,” Ressler says. “We believe it will take us till May” to fill the 700 orders generated through Kickstarter.
“We are scrambling as fast as we can.”
Hanging around trees
The Chameleon is a modular system that can be paired with DutchWare's bug net or weatherproof top cover.
People can switch out components for a summer nap in the yard or a months-long trek through winter woods, Ressler says. A full backpacking setup costs $200 to $260.
With the help of the red-hot Chameleon, Ressler says he hopes DutchWare can break $2 million in sales this year.
That would extend the fast-track sales trend that prompted DutchWare to leave a 2,000-square-foot space on Liberty Street last August for something more than five times bigger —the former Jackson Windows Shoppe site.
Taking advantage of the extra room, the 6-year-old company recently installed six new industrial sewing machines and added five employees, for a total of 17.
Ressler is advertising for more.
Ressler, whose inventory spans about 2,000 parts numbers, considers himself a “cottage vendor,” because he personally responds to customer calls and emails, and he designs and makes cutting-edge gear.
“I’m trying hard to reinvent the industry.”
Recent long-distance hiking movies — “Wild” and “A Walk in the Woods” — have gotten even more people on the trails, “which was good,” Ressler says.
He foresaw none of this during the rainy summer of 2003.
Then a 35-year-old electrician, he’d hit “kind of a hard place” in his job, he says.
He set out walking 2,190 miles from Georgia to Mount Katahdin, Maine.
Other thru-hikers dubbed him “Dutch” after his Pennsylvania Dutch background. Most of them slept in tents or shelters.
“At the time,” Ressler recalls, “hammocks were not very widely used. My first night in a hammock was on the Appalachian Trail,” at Springer Mountain, Georgia.
He liked it. But he thought the system of cords used to tie off to trees was cumbersome.
When he got back home after his 5 1/2-month journey, he went to his basement and started making lightweight rigging gear from military scrap titanium.
The “Dutch Clip,” a suspension bracket that can be used in place of carabiners, was born.
He supplied friends at first, then started selling the things and donating the proceeds to Meals on Wheels.
Like a latter-day Yvon Chouinard, a rock climber and founder of outdoor apparel manufacturer Patagonia, Ressler continued for years hand-fashioning metal accessories.
New path
But the trail held unexpected turns.
“This industry has blown up in the last 10 years,” Ressler says.
And it’s still mushrooming as scientists perfect ever-lighter materials, says Adam Hurst, a Ressler friend who sells contoured quilts — kind of like exterior sleeping bags to warm hammock sleepers.
Hammockgear.com, the Ohio startup Hurst launched in 2009 with wife Jenny, now has 20 employees.
“Hammocking changed my life,” Hurst says.
It also changed Ressler’s after Hurst says he encouraged his “workaholic” friend to give up his job as a third-shift supervisor at a plastic injection-molding factory to focus on hammocks.
Ressler did just that, in 2014.
He began manufacturing the Half-Wit Hammock, which has an attached bug net that covers the upper part of the camper’s body.
His product line has expanded ever since to embrace tent stakes, webbing, magnetic buckles, tarps, spliced-loop cords (stronger than knots) and much more.
More products are in the proverbial pipeline.
A kitchen at the new site will help DutchWare grow its year-old camping food line and evolve toward a one-stop supply depot for outdoorspeople.
“We purchase (food) in bulk and package it up,” notes Ressler, who says he designed 90 percent of his other products “down to the fibers in the fabrics.
“I currently have two patents and seven pending.”
His 25 fabrics include the proprietary ripstop material Hexon 1.0, used in the Chameleon body, and Argon 90, which makes up the top cover.
The light but burly materials can hold hundreds of pounds and serve as a tarp, hammock, sleeping bag or backpack shell.
“We were among the first in the industry” to offer them in multiple thicknesses to accommodate various body weights, Ressler adds.
Meanwhile, his custom spreader bar makes it easier to sling hammocks side-by-side from the same trees, an innovation he says can help convince loved ones to go camping.
Ressler lives in Reinholds with wife, Jessica, and 10-year-old daughter, Alana, whom he notes “has been hammock camping since she was 2.”
No trees? No problem, Ressler says. “We sell ultra-light hammock stands.”
Selling to the base
But none of DutchWare’s sales are over the counter.
“It would be cool to do a retail front," muses DutchWare Project Manager Alex Thomas, but Lancaster is no outdoors mecca. “It’s not clear we’d get the traffic.”
Serious hikers at DutchWare consist of “just Dutch and I,” Thomas adds, though the company maintains a couple of community kayaks and encourages workers to get outside.
Meanwhile, the business's global online trade is booming.
Direct sales to individuals make up about 80 percent of the volume, according to Ressler. DutchWare ships to about 13,000 customers.
Shoppers typically live in North America, Europe or Australia and make three selections.
Fans have come to know the company for its super-light fabrics and titanium parts.
The Chameleon is unlikely to bog them down, at a base weight of 10.65 ounces.
That’s epic for minimalist backpackers, who saw off toothbrush handles to shave weight.
Ressler says it also draws economy-minded tinkerers, who cluster at the DutchGear companion web site, makeyourgear.com.
“We are very big on people who make their own gear,” he says.
He also sells lots of fabric to Hurst, who he met about eight years ago on hammockforums.net.
“He’s still my supplier,” says Hurst, who attends trade shows with Ressler.
The entrepreneurs have backpacked together in Minnesota and the Appalachians.
“Even though we’re sort of competitors we’re also friends,” Hurst says.
They compete mainly to see who can move more goods each year.
“He sells some of his stuff on my website and I sell some of my stuff on his site,” Ressler says. “I haven't beat him yet.”
“I do have to compete with Eno,” a hammock brand popular with mass market retailers, Ressler acknowledges.
However, Ressler notes that his hammocks are longer (11 feet) and says that longer hammocks are generally more comfortable.
At the factory on East Walnut Street, he rolls out of the Chameleon and readjusts his ball cap.
“The trick to lying on a hammock is you lie on the diagonal,” he says.
He believes he’s taken the correct fork in the camping road by focusing on hammocks.
“At the end of the day you have to find a flat spot for your tent,” Ressler points out. Then you must often ball it up damp in the morning.
Not so with a Half-Wit or a Chameleon.
“The hammock, I think, is perfect.”
Hahah, you crack me up man. Congrats on the press. Things seem to be going VERY well over in Dutchland.Originally Posted by Dutch
“The word hammockable (Meaning: two trees that are the perfect distance apart between which a hammock can be hung) is not in the dictionary, but it should be.”
LOL I'm sure they did!
BTW, I enjoyed listening to you on the HYOH podcast. I just started listening to those...great way to kill some boredom while driving to/from trips.
Nice job, Dutch! My partner is from Newmanstown, PA and has family all over the area... Lititz, Womelsdorf, Mt. Joy, Lebanon... I'm going to have them read this so they can see my hammocking is actually a thing that many other people do, and a business in their own area even!
Way to go Dutch! We proud of ya!!
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