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SALT LAKE CITY — Living in Utah provides plenty of opportunity to relish the great outdoors, particularly during the warm months of summer. Finding ways to enhance that experience was on full display at the 2016 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market in downtown Salt Lake City.
With thousands of delegates in attendance, vendors from across the country and around the globe are showing off new clothing, gear and technology, along with others who offer improvements on some already existing products and services.
Core Home — a purveyor of eco-friendly kitchenware and hydration solutions — has developed an enhanced design to help keep cool drinks cool and warm drinks warm for hours on end, said vice president Steven Bram.
“It’s made with double-wall, vacuum insulated high-grade stainless steel with a copper liner,” he said. “(Our first bottle design) keeps drinks cold for 24 hours and keeps drinks hot for 12 (hours).”
The brand is called Manna, a biblical reference about a substance miraculously supplied as food to the Israelites in the wilderness. The substance in this case could take various forms, whether it is your favorite hot coffee, tea or preferred cool beverage, Bram said.
“You can keep this out in the hot sun for 12 or 16 hours, put ice water in, come back and there will still be ice water in it,” Bram boasted. With pricing ranging from about $20 for the original 17-ounce design up to $50 for the 64-ounce design, the products can be found in stores or online, he said.
Among the local firms at the event was a Davis County company specializing in inflatable comfort pads for camping and outdoor activities. Launched six years ago, Centerville-based Klymit has designed the pads to be ultra-lightweight, durable and easy to use by outdoor enthusiasts of any age.
“The genesis is that were trying to come up with a way to make any camping mat more comfortable,” said Klymit president Cory Tholl — a BYU engineering graduate. “As we developed it, we got it so well ‘body mapped’ that we launched as its own self-sustaining pad.”
The company has branched into sleeping bags, backpacks and other inflatable accessories, with pricing ranging from $13 for seating pads up to $225 for the top-end sleeping bag, with other ideas in the pipeline, he said.
“We have a long list of products that we are developing that we are excited to launch, including new pillows and hammock pads,” Tholl said. “They are easy to inflate and simple to use.”
Meanwhile, for the grown-up who wants to relive their childhood, there was an adult tricycle on display with plenty of folks willing to test ride it.
Based on the Big Wheel toy of yesteryear, the High Roller is an updated, more comfortable version of the old-school plastic trike that provides just as much fun, explained its maker.
“I manufacture pure joy,” said Matt Armbruster, designer and chief executive officer of High Roller USA — based in Lafayette, Colorado. After raising $89,000 in a Kickstarter campaign, he was able to finance the first production run of the prototype to make his adulthood dream a reality.
He scaled a 1972 Big Wheel to fit an adult male so “when you sit down, your whole perspective is like when you were 6 years old.”
“Anybody who was a child, that’s who this was built for,” he said. The High Roller is built with a 2-inch diameter steel frame that can handle up to 300 pounds, has a full-adjustable, extra-cushioned seat, front brakes, a rubber front tire and durable plastic back wheels for “power slides,” he said. It retails for $695.
Those are just a few of the hundreds of offerings for enjoyment of camping, fishing, hunting, water sports, hiking, climbing, riding, running or just observing all that Mother Nature has to offer. E-mail: jlee@deseretnews.com Twitter: JasenLee1
