Got Bags?

June 4, 2015

The air-freight shipment landed, and the product looks great!!  Man it feels good to finally have some product in stock.  For now anyway.

As soon as the shipment landed, Lee went into PDX and grabbed one piece of everything and brought it back to Hood River so we could study each item in detail.  The quality is absolutely spot-on.  I can’t emphasize enough how great it is to work with such an awesome factory. To Steve, Steve, Anton, David, Ted and the whole factory team: a big hearty THANK YOU!!

We had one final last minute change to the Reckless 80 before production.  The aluminum bar we were using as a stiffener on the leg attachments was too sharp, and was gradually sawing its way through the nylon webbing on the production sample we’ve been using & abusing.  You can see it in the pic below.

So we replaced it with a different solid aluminum bar stock with nicely rounded corners.  It was a last minute change, so this was our first opportunity look at the new bar stock in person.  It looks great.  Whew.

Monday we loaded up all the hose clamps that just arrived (for the Reckless 40/80 heat shield), piled into Lee’s car, and trekked into pdx to QC the delivery.

Got our first look at the air freight shiipment.  It’s amazing how beat up everything gets in transit.  Check out how many boxes are crushed.  Fortunately, they’re bags, so no worries. Everything QC-ed great.  Again: whew.  Our houses are on the hook as collateral… so you can imagine the relief.

Immediately started ripping open boxes, organizing and inspecting everything, and preparing it to get received into inventory.

The above is about 20% of the total production run.  It did not include any panniers (which we currently have some stock on, although we do expect to sell out before the ocean shipment arrives).  This shipment included a portion of the the Reckless bags, some MOLLE bags (also oversold already, we have more coming in the ocean shipment), and 40L duffles.  The rest of the production run arrives via ocean in late June/early July.

All the long boxes in the pic above are Reckless 80s.  We were oversold on this first delivery, so to avoid disappointing anyone, we reached out to all the Reckless 80 customers to find volunteers who can wait until the ocean shipment arrives.  We offered a free MOLLE bag in exchange, kind of like how the airlines do it.  Enough people took us up on the offer, so anyone who didn’t volunteer should have their Reckless 80 order shipped-out next week.

Now we wait for the ocean shipment.  It was loaded on the boat yesterday.

New Hardware

Also this week, our new hardware shipment arrived by sea.

The heat shields look great.  We’ll kit these up with a hose clamp, to ship out with the Reckless bags next week.

Mounting cleats also look great.  These will get kitted up with nuts & bolts, and will also ship out with the Reckless bags.

Our new aluminum mounting pucks are extruded instead of milled, and we anodized them in electric blue to match the new logo plates on the wedge.  Looks rad.

Also got our new elongated washers.

On the new pannier mounting frames, we added this little spot to put a beer.  Because you know… why not??

Visitors

We had a bunch of visitors at our shop in White Salmon this week.

First, Alison DeLapp – an organizer of Overland Expo – stopped by on her way from Arizona to Seattle.  She was traveling by car, but after a 30 second tour of the Mosko office, we headed out on bikes for a little tour of the Columbia River Gorge.  Asked her which bike she wanted, and she went straight for the Super Enduro ha!  Alison currently lives in Panama.  She and her boyfriend are headed out on an multi-year international moto journey starting next year, so she picked up a Backcountry 40 Duffle for the trip.

Next we met with Kenny Gotcher from Toray, the fabric supplier we’ve been working with on the apparel project.  Went through some new fabric samples, and also got an update on the status of the latest samples we requested.  The samples, unfortunately, are still delayed until July.

A couple new customers stopped by.  Got to test fit the Reckless 80 on a WR250 and also a KTM690.  Awesome to see you guys!!

And, finally, our bankers from US Bank stopped by.  Mat & Jay nice to see you guys!

After work yesterday I headed out for a night with friends at Wolf Run Ranch, home of What The Festival (see you there?).  Over the last couple months – when I ‘m not using the Reckless 80 – I’ve been running Scout 25L Panniers and the Scout 30L Duffle on my Super Enduro.  Last night I mounted them on the BMW.  I love the slim profile and clean lines of the Scouts, and they look totally badass on the bigger bike.  25L is an awesome size.  I feel like the Scouts get overlooked sometimes, because they don’t have as many features as the Backcountry’s. Personally, I love my Scouts.

Stoked to finally have some product in stock!  A lot of it is sold out already, so our inventory challenges will continue until the main production order arrives, but at least we can get some bags on bikes in the meantime.