NYC007 Posted January 3, 2006 Posted January 3, 2006 This is my first time seeing these backpacks.. http://www.cilogear.com/packs/packs.html Quote
olyclimber Posted January 3, 2006 Posted January 3, 2006 looks like a decent pack....but I wonder what "Unapologetic technical design" means. Quote
JoshK Posted January 3, 2006 Posted January 3, 2006 Looks like it is constructed from whatever random color fabrics they had lying around. Quote
crackers Posted January 3, 2006 Posted January 3, 2006 Yeah. I have a few hundred. Ok, so that's not that funny, but, hey, I'm still recovering from new years eve. My name is graham williams. I own cilogear and make those packs. In response to your questions, as far as I can: 1) Who has them? Well, for the past year, not many people; we're a new company. There are about 20 of them living in Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. There are another twenty or so around Salt Lake City. There are a handful in California and a bunch in the North East. People like Kelly Cordes and his ilk have been using them and if you know Kelly, I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you why he thinks they're great bags. 2) "Unapoletic technical design". Hmm. That's a bit harder. Here's a go: I looked at all the packs for climbers on the market and I wasn't too cycked on what I saw. I always ended up cutting off straps that were extraneous to my usage and wondering why the damn things were so heavy. I wanted total compression of the sides without zippers or velcro. I thought that different parts of a pack are exposed to different levels of abrasion and different loads, and should therefore have different strengths of material. Our goal in designing these packs wasn't to make something easy to manufacture, but to make something perfect to use. Or at least as close as possible. For example, the large worksack has 146 structural bar tacks. We use three different strengths of thread. I have told other folks in this industry this kind of detail and they want to puke: the average 60 liter pack has less than 20 bar tacks. Whenever I've talked to another company about their product, we get to the point where they're like, well, we had to make this change so we could make them or we had to make this change so we could market them to the whatever community. I haven't had to make those apologies yet. (and when i do, i'll change that tag line.) Does that make any sense? 3) Unfortunately, it is more or less true that we built these packs from available fabric. Each of the packs uses 7 different materials: a Schoeller Dynamic for the places where loads touch your body, two weights of spectra/hi tenacity nylon (210 in the side panels, 500 in the high abrasion points), a nylon ripstop for the extension and the liner, and three different weights of Dimension-Polyant's VX series cloth (VX51 on bottom, VX42 on the crampon pouch, and VX21 on the side wings). Beyond the obvious business sense of keeping low inventories, I honestly can't afford to order over 5,000 yards of material every time I want to make some bags. The minimum dye lot for the pack cloths--the spectra and the VX stuff--is 800 yards. Please keep in mind that a pack uses at most .27 yards of those particular fabric, and often much less. So i buy from the fabric manufacturer's stock programs, which are generally kinda slow and a bit unreliable. They much prefer to make 15,000 yards for Mr. Big than deal with my 1,500 yard order. Any other questions? I'm happy to answer them either on this forum or via email... cilogear at gmail.com is the best for email. BTW, if there is a Mr(s). Reviewer over here on CC, I'd be happy to supply a pack for them to test. Quote
larrythellama Posted January 4, 2006 Posted January 4, 2006 there are only a few people here quilfied enough to use anything other then the skoolbag. other then that i think most cc users just need to get their laptop and lunch to and from the office without it getting wet. send one to me and i will let you know what i think. Quote
crackers Posted January 4, 2006 Posted January 4, 2006 Qualified? Shoot. I doubt I'm qualified to use them these days. Since I decided to make them, I got engaged, gained 23 pounds mostly of fat, and can't climb for crap. Now, I'm not saying I want to be north face, but i am definitely not going to be running a qualification camp to get to use these packs. But that would be funny, wouldn't it? What kind of test first? ? Quote
JayB Posted January 4, 2006 Posted January 4, 2006 Those look pretty sweet - I'm not in the market for a pack at the moment, but I'd definitely consider them if I was. The pricing is pretty amazing too given the amount of work required to produce them. Quote
crackers Posted January 4, 2006 Posted January 4, 2006 Thanks for the positive feedback. According to my model (turns to mirror: 'model? what model?'), I should be able to keep these prices going when i have more than just part time employees here in the states. Most of the cost is in the sewing for sure. It's crazy whenever I think about how we made them. For the first production run i think it took 15 or 16 days to make 200 bags, and my production manager has been making packs and gore tex jackets and anything else for over 15 years. In the same factory, with the same crew, we made 300 technical fleece 6 pocket jackets in 4 days. Quote
whidbey Posted January 14, 2006 Posted January 14, 2006 Tried the website and it got kicked back... is that something to worry about?... I hope not. Quote
whidbey Posted January 14, 2006 Posted January 14, 2006 Disrtel32... I tried to contact them via email and it got bounced back.. Didn't much like that. Maybe it's messed up on the other end but. Your showing packs and selling them and your email gets bounced... Makes me a little skeeeeeeeered. It's your money though.. Quote
crackers Posted January 14, 2006 Posted January 14, 2006 Hold on about four hours and I should have that fixed. I think you tried to email info@cilogear.com which I screwed up when I set up the site on my new host. I use cilogear@gmail.com because, honestly, gmail is a far better solution for me than using my webhost's pop servers. I doubt that whidbey tried that email because I haven't gotten it. The info email address will be ciloinfo@gmail.com. It should be all ok by tonight. Quote
Distel32 Posted February 16, 2006 Posted February 16, 2006 got my new pack last week, fuckin' rocks. Pics to come later. I'm very pleased Quote
layton Posted February 16, 2006 Posted February 16, 2006 got my new pack last week, fuckin' rocks. Pics to come later. I'm very pleased except for the fact that you are a BOULDERER and a tote bag would suffice! Quote
Dru Posted February 16, 2006 Posted February 16, 2006 i though boulderers just rolled up everything in the pad, maybe put the wallet and keys and cell phone in their purse first so the change doesnt fall out of the pad gaps while hiking the 20m in to roadside boulder Quote
DirtyHarry Posted February 16, 2006 Posted February 16, 2006 Haters. Distel has to travel cross the Gobi and shit, by camel!! Probably needs a good pack more than you assbiters. Quote
Dru Posted February 16, 2006 Posted February 16, 2006 it isn't soloing if you have a camel to "hump" that pad for you Quote
crackers Posted February 17, 2006 Posted February 17, 2006 camel toe is aid. I'm not touching that with a hundred inch pole. It's funny, Distal has not mentioned once that he will use the pack for climbing. Instead he's said things that I'd try to transliterate like: argaliye kamaraliya mekonaniyam. whatever that means. Quote
Distel32 Posted February 17, 2006 Posted February 17, 2006 I'm sure I'll use it for sport climbing when I get home..... But mainly I just need it for work here. I need the pack for carrying things like this: Argali lamb collaring from last spring, and my now deceased arcteryx pack Quote
Squid Posted February 17, 2006 Posted February 17, 2006 I'm sure I'll use it for sport climbing when I get home..... But mainly I just need it for work here. I need the pack for carrying things like this: Argali lamb collaring from last spring, and my now deceased arcteryx pack Yikes, that's scary!! Brokeback Mtn II: The Camel Years Quote
DirtyHarry Posted February 17, 2006 Posted February 17, 2006 Told you, you dumb bitches. Distel is one fresh fly dressed human, BTW. Check out the pimpin felt bowler touque juxtaposed with the Arcterix soft shell. Oh yeah, and the baby camel accessory is pretty sharp as well. Quote
olyclimber Posted February 17, 2006 Posted February 17, 2006 the cargo pants are a nice touch....but i'm not convinced that what we see of the baby camel is all there is, and that Distel didn't devour the rest of the leetle, leetle creature. Quote
Dru Posted February 17, 2006 Posted February 17, 2006 he ate the baby camel toe and saved the head for laters Quote
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