We want you to go out into the world in pursuit of your passions. That’s why we started all of this, making a better ski bag so chasing epic mountains was less of a hassle.
Since then, the world has changed, and today we face unprecedented constraints. The climate crisis acutely threatens the environments we want you to get out and experience, and we are honestly questioning ourselves whether we need to scale back what we love so much in order to sustain it. Meanwhile, the world of open borders and democratic ideals is no longer inevitable: the immigrant who once was a welcome guest in your home has somehow become a stranger not to be trusted. And, this viral epoque we live in has forced us all to retreat back into our homes, making the places beyond the horizon - or even down the street - seem like a distant dream. That all this has become normalized is the most profound philosophical threat to our progress as a species.
Without movement we lose energy. Without travel we lose inspiration. Without the unknown we lose discovery. Without exchange we lose understanding. Without diversity we lose authenticity. And, without seeing the world through an immigrant’s eyes we lose empathy. Never has it been more important to go out into the world than now.
This requires us to step outside of the prevailing norms. For us to create the world we want to go out into, we must take extraordinary steps while recognizing that it isn’t always a choice of A or B, but rather the path between the two that matters. We call these journeys. They change us, they move us, they make us. They are what make the unknown possible. We have a very important journey ahead of us. This requires people who aren’t afraid to reframe the conversation, who have the resilience to engage with the environment and not run from it, and who dare to imagine a future where both our ideals and our reality can come together.
None of this is easy. But we already have the things we need: a sense of adventure, a sensitivity to our environment, a gut feeling that tomorrow can be better than today, and the fundamental belief that design and innovation can enable us to look beyond our current horizon to something better. This is the best part of us; the part that drives us out into the world and into the arms of others, toward the things that make us come alive as people, keeping us wide-eyed in the pursuit of better ways of doing things so we can keep the world an open playground.
