I don’t want to get too personal here, but I once had a bad break-up. It was a pretty traumatic, mid-twenties tail-spin that landed me on a therapist’s couch. He listened patiently to my sorry story of a half-dozen years of break-ups and make-ups and then said something I’ve never forgotten.
“All I know is what you’ve told me,” he said. “But it seems to me that you two just didn’t get along. In my experience, when you’re with the right person, it’s not that difficult. When it’s right, it’s as comfortable as an old shirt.”
At Boreas, we try to land that old-shirt feeling in a backpack. No drama. No complicated negotiations. No navigating around a finicky suspension to get a good fit. We think that when it’s right, it’s easy. That’s what we aim for when we design a pack.
It turns out that if you know what you’re doing, if you’ve spent a dozen years designing packs for big outdoor brands, you find out that the answer isn’t the over-engineered, over-hyped suspension. It’s not nearly that complicated. Light weight, great fit and a reasonable price fall into place when the design is simple, straightforward and smart.
We’re a collective of pack designers with a love for simple solutions and the patience to try prototype after prototype until we get it right. We think the best solutions come from an intimacy with materials, components and construction techniques. We’re not afraid to take an idea from a sketch pad to the machine shop and sewing stations in our studio.
In the end, we’re in this business because we think if we care enough, and spend enough time trying, we can make something beautiful. And if that isn’t love, I’ll eat my shirt.