Successfully funded on Kickstarter, the Travel Line is now available for pre-order here on BackerKit.
Lawrence, Victor, and Jen from the PD team are LIVE right now, delving into all your questions about photography functionality in the Travel Line. Join us on the Kickstarter page now!
Cheers,
The PD Team
First, let's start with some generally exciting news for all backers:
You can now earn commission by sharing this campaign with your family, friends, coworkers, forum, bridge club, etc. To get started, head on over to Kickbooster. Signup, and you'll be given a special URL to share. At the end of the campaign, you'll get paid 10% of the funds that come in through your link. Whether or not you wish to sign up for Kickbooster, we'd most sincerely love it if you took a hot second to share this campaign with your friends. It takes a village!
Thanks. You the best.
This Thursday at 3pm PT we'll be doing our much anticipated All-About-Camera-Carry Kickstarter Live broadcast. We've gotten a ton of questions about fitting different types of photo/video gear, camera access, and the Camera Cube mounting system. So we'll be amassing an impressive hillock of photo gear and buying you all 1-way tickets to Demo Town. Once you get there, you won't want to leave. 3 drink minimum to get your parking validated.
Lets say it again, but in big letters:
And it's all about photo/video carry capabilities of the Travel Line. Mark your calendars, and come back here to the Kickstarter page to view. We'll record it an pop it up on Youtube after we're done.
Here they are! If you want to skip ahead to specific topics, click the little "Youtube" button in the lower right corner of the video. From there, you can scroll down to the video description and see a list of relevant time stamps.
And while you're there, why not subscribe?
Again, you can find time stamps to different topics in the Youtube description for each video.
Take a look at our Kickstarter page (specifically the Campaign section). We rejiggered the top a little bit to make it simpler and more visually enticing. We are trying to make it easier for first-time backers to take the plunge! What do you think?
As always, we like to sign off with a handful of Kickstarter projects that we've got our eyes on...
Laowa has come to be known for it's funky lenses, and this gun-barrel-shaped macro lens just might take the cake. But don't let looks deceive...this lens can truly do things in the macro world that none other can. Check out their video, which is entirely shot through their new lens.
This ain't Blind Spot's first Kickstarter rodeo, and after several successful portable lighting products, they've turned to the one thing we all crave: POWER. If you own any Sony L-series batteries, their new Power Junkie is a teeny little doodad that aims to be your Swiss Army Knife of charging and powering your gear.
Last year we got a chance to get our butts in Boulder Denim's first generation of stretchy denim pants and we gotta say, our butts have never felt/looked so good. Our butts can't wait to try V2. Sorry for all the butt talk.
We're 3 weeks in and this campaign is CRUISIN' thanks to your wonderful support.
You may notice that we've added quantity limits to our rewards. No cause for alarm there. This is a precaution, preventing us from taking more pre-orders than what we can confidently deliver in our December timeframe. If we max out, we'll make a new set of identical rewards that deliver a month or two later. So, if you or a friend is considering backing a reward, consider this a gentle nudge that you should do it soon to guarantee December delivery.
And now, fun stuff.
Last week Vic (PD Videographer) and Lawrence (PD Art Director) got together and created a cinematic masterpiece. Have you seen Avatar? This is basically Avatar, but pertaining to setup and use of the Travel Backpack 45L. Behold:
You'll laugh. You'll weep. You'll marvel at mind-boggling CGI graphics. What's real and what's an illusion? Which world will you choose?
Don't have 20 minutes to spare? Use the time stamps below to skip to the info you care most about:
Soon we'll share a 2nd video installment that focuses on the Packing Tools (Pouches and Cubes).
Our first 3rd party review! Ladies and gentlemen, we present the bag-man himself, Chase Reeves, covering the entire Travel Line in hilarious and honest detail:
That's right, 58 minutes of pure, unadulterated (like, really unadulterated) 3rd party Travel Line reviewin'. If you're at all a bag enthusiast, we highly recommend subscribing to Chase on Youtube. He's thorough, fair, and void of dull moments.
Mark your calendars: Thursday, 3pm Pacific Time. In this week's hangout we're putting our cameras down and talking entirely about travel. We'll be sure to dive deep into Packing Cubes, Wash Pouch, Tech Pouch, and Shoe Pouch. In a future hangout we'll focus on the Camera Cubes. The hangout will take place on our main Kickstarter page.
As always, we like to spread the Kickstarter love by sharing a handful of our friends' projects that we think you'll like:
Well folks, it's that time of year again. Quite by accident, running these Kickstarters has become something of an annual tradition for myself and for the growing family at Peak Design. With the same nervous excitement I had back in 2011, we clicked the green button and launched the Travel Line last Monday, and the results so far are nothing short of astounding.
That first time, it was a total surprise to see those backers numbers going up. I'll be honest....this time, the feeling I got upon launching the campaign was closer to relief. Relief because we have something special going at Peak Design, and when you've caught lighting in a bottle, the notion of losing it can be terrifying. When you see first a few people, then a few dozen people, then a few hundred people backing your idea with their hard earned money, the fog lifts and the community speaks and the magic continues.
Once again, this community of backers came to affirm that what we've been working our asses off on for the past two years has been worth it. May I just say.....phew. And I'll also say, thank you. As of last night we have passed the 2 million dollar mark, and we are (needless to say) thrilled.
In the years since we've launched the Everyday Messenger, we've seen a lot of qualified competitors come into the bag space, and travel bags in particular. It took two years of deliberation and prototyping to confidently arrive at the family of products that we think are worthy of your hard earned money over the other solid bags on the market. Part of this Kickstarter process allows you, the backers, to ask us questions on why we've done things the way we have. We use these updates, as well as hangouts to answer any questions that come up. I'm going to answer a few right now, but also the details are below for our next live hangout, which we'll record and post.
We launched the Travel Line Kickstarter at Outdoor Retailer in Denver, and the response was strong, to say the least. An enormous thanks to everyone who came by the booth and to the above authorities on this industry that bestowed such great awards on our products and team.
The hottest question has to be, what's up with the weight....isn't this bag a little heavy?
First part of the answer: somewhere between the dozens of prototypes floating around the office and 11th hour Kickstarter page design we got the kg weight of the bag off by a decimal. Our most recent measurements have the bag coming in at just a hair over 2kg (4.5lb for our stateside friends).
Second part of the answer: yes, it's on the heavy side. But it's not that heavy. Features and protection very frequently run in lockstep with weight. We think it is worth carrying an extra bit around to provide 6 sides of protection, burly stowable straps, handles on every face, custom-designed aluminum hardware, hidden external carry straps, a dividable space main cavity, 4 ways of access, and durable, waterproof material. Those are the things that make this bag something you'll love....something you'll want to carry around with you. I assure you that each feature has been added with the consideration of weight, and we vouch for it because we've been using it. Extensively.
(It should also be noted that the 45L Travel Backpack expands beyond max carry on, which makes it nearly as efficient on a weight to volume basis as other travel backpacks.)
Get your questions answered, see the products in action, watch us act foolish on a camera. All of that and more at our next Kickstarter hangout:
Thursday, August 2 2018 4:00 PM PST.
See you there! And/or...
The 45L Travel Backpack and all of the other Packing Tools in this Kickstarter campaign are available to view/touch/wear/drool over at the Peak Design Flagship Store here in San Francisco.
Again, thank you and talk soon.
pd
(Peter Dering, founder and ceo)
Holy moly. Yippity skippity. Wowza.
It's day 1 of our 8th Kickstarter campaign. We've done this 7 times before, and it never ceases to amaze us just how incredibly supportive the Kickstarter community is. Thank you, everybody. And here's to a wild 59-day ride.
We'll keep this first update short...many more to come. We'd like to cordially invite you to our first Kickstarter Live Broadcast, today at 4pm PT, right here on our Kickstarter page!
Our team will be assembled in our Flagship Store in San Francisco, along with some product samples to show off. We'll spend about an hour walking through the new Travel Line and taking questions from the audience. To attend, just come to our Kickstarter page at 4pm. There will be a link at the top to join.
Onward,
The Peak Design Team