Klymit — a brand best known for its range of backcountry sleeping gear — is rolling toward new horizons. The brand’s parent company, GATHR Outdoors, spent the last few years acquiring Rightline Gear, WaterPORT, and Cascadia Vehicle Tents. After some behind-the-scenes reshuffling, all three brands are on their way to becoming official product lines under the Klymit banner, the company announced in a press release this week.
Rightline Gear makes a vast array of adventure vehicle accessories, while Cascadia Vehicle Tents (CVT) produces car- and SUV-compatible tents, racks, and other items. WaterPORT‘s collection of water storage tanks, hoses, and mounting accessories rounds out the acquisition.
In short, the mergers position GATHR Outdoors to better court the growing subset of outdoor adventurers using their vehicles to explore the outdoors.
“We work tirelessly to find innovative solutions that make spending time outdoors more comfortable and fun. Each of these brands play[s] a specific role in accomplishing that mission, but really fit better as products within the Klymit universe,” GATHR Outdoors camping-section president Cory Tholl said in the press release.
“This move allows those who backpack, car camp, overland, hunt, and fish to come to one trusted source for all their outdoor comfort needs.”
Klymit Merges With Rightline Gear, CVT, WaterPORT
In an interview with GearJunkie, Tholl elaborated on the logic behind the mergers. A mainstay in the outdoor sleeping world for nearly a decade, Klymit noticed its core customers were using vehicles as a type of rolling base camp more and more frequently in the last five years.
“Getting a good night’s sleep, being clean — these are core parts of enjoying an outdoors experience,” Tholl said. “As much as I hate to admit this, it’s sometimes difficult to get my own wife to sleep outside on the ground. But at Klymit, we believe that life is better outside.”
Thus, GATHR acquired Rightline with its car-compatible inflatable mattresses, Cascadia with its rooftop shelters, and WaterPORT with its pressurized water tools.
Rightline Gear and WaterPORT products have already migrated to Klymit’s website. CVT products will make the move later this year. Tholl told GearJunkie that, while the products will retain their names for the sake of clarity, they’ll be considered product lines within the Klymit brand, not brands unto themselves. Eventually, packaging for Rightline Gear, WaterPORT, and Cascadia Vehicle Tent products will reflect that nuance.
In its press release, GATHR Outdoors claimed that merging these brands together under Klymit’s purview will allow for “increased investment in product development and quality.” When asked to clarify that statement, Tholl pointed to the additional manpower and resources now available to directly monitor overseas factories for quality control and good labor practices.
GATHR Outdoors plans to showcase several new products at Outdoor Retailer, an outdoor industry trade show occurring in Salt Lake City next week. Stay tuned.
