[00:00] Tayson: Everybody welcome back to the live ultralight podcast today we have a very special guest we've got thomas the ceo of Komperdell poles and we're going to be interviewing him and diving deep into the company Komperdell and thomas's role there and and just kind of what drives him um we are going to be adding Komperdell poles onto our website for live ultra members uh at the same time that this is going out so this has kind of dual purposes and dual meetings that will help you get to know those products really really well and why we trust them and why they're our preferred pole but also we'll be talking a little bit about just why you should consider trekking poles um to begin with so with that introduction i'm also coming off of being a little bit sick so brigham i'm going to have him kind of head up a lot of this podcast but um wanted to give a really warm welcome to you thomas thanks for being with us today thank you
[00:52] Thomas: Thank you i appreciate the opportunity
[00:55] Brigham: Yeah we we are very fortunate that um at the last our show we were able to sit down with you for i think well over 30 minutes and you just took us through a bunch of the behind the scenes stuff testing and just had a very private conversation that just really sold us on the poles and and right away we we've got some poles we airship them back to our office so that they beat us home from the show and since then i've personally i was i was actually thinking about this today i've personally put well over 300 miles um on my set of poles that i got at that show so and and you wouldn't know it like you look at the poles i've never had any issues with them they still look phenomenal um and and i'm just i'm more sold than ever after putting 300 miles on them so um that's kind of the backstory i guess for me of why i've really come to love with them but i'd really like to just dive into maybe a couple of the things that we talked about at the show but before we get to that would you mind just giving our audience thomas a little bit of background on you um your role at the company and how you got involved um with Komperdell
[02:02] Thomas: Okay happy june so i'm sitting here in our factory in our showroom it's a little bit later in the evening like 7 30 in austria um yeah how did i get involved i was actually born into the business because we are family business and i kind of grew up so my first experiences in the company was running around as a four-year-old and getting chased off the production flow by my mom and yeah that's how i actually came about it um i always knew that i wanted to run my own company i've seen it from my father it was great he was the chief he could decide where the direction where the company is going it was not necessarily clear initially if what i'm gonna do in which area but then during school and university was lucky that my dad actually you know used me a lot of international sales a lot of product development and then i grew into it and really grew to love the industry i mean it's we're in a great industry we have um people um that have still handshake quality uh you touch a very pleasant part of people's lives um it's it's something you make a tangible product something that they always wanted to do to really see it somewhere and for me kind of the coolest thing is when i'm traveling internationally maybe in some remote location and you see a pole that actually originated right here in the company uh this is just great in the meantime my parents who are still shareholders in the company so we really it's my both my parents and me i took over the company so in the meantime i own the company i've been running it for the past 25 years um we ourselves a very product oriented company for us product comes at the same time we feel ourselves as a manufacturer we are still manufacturing 100 of the poles locally here in austria for us that's important because that's where we can develop we love to play we love to test boundaries you know try out some crazy ideas sometimes some of them fail some of them are not so great as they initially are but you know with the production floor really close by i can just walk out into production slap together prototype take it up on the mountain and then start using it and start seeing how i feel what we do in development and what i do development is something that is for us has always been kind of the the boss role here um is when a developer develop always consumer focused nobody and it's a very challenging things very often people develop something oh because it's new yeah it's new but what reason actually to change a product a product should always bring a tangible benefit and an upgrade to a consumer if it doesn't do that even if it would sell well because it sounds good we consider this not the very honest product if we want to bring something to the market and we really want to bring honest markets to the product it's my name that stands behind it but it's most importantly the name and the feel of my 200 people that been working with me here in austria most of them have been with me for more than half their life so we have an average retaining agent production of more than 21 years um this also shows it means more than just slapping together a couple of sticks but you have to stay in development you have to stay focused it has to have a reason where product is there and you have to feel better when you go up a mountain when you're on your next tour because nobody is going up on the mountain just to carry a pair of poles up there let's also be very clear there's i tell myself always with thomas it's just the stick so we have we can enhance the experience but nobody else said goes up a mountain to carry a stick up there we love what we do i did it out of pleasure every day i've had i haven't had a single day in my career where i did not love and enjoy what i'm doing which is the key aspect for me to carry on with the company and how we do it we love what we stand for and we love to hear from and connect with our customers especially the consumers because they are the ones that drive it we're looking for criticism things that they would like to have improved because then we can always question ourselves in improving our product so that's basically who we are as i said a lot of people invest a lot of heart into each and every product that goes there and that's something that we hope that the consumer out on the market will feel and get touched by it i really appreciate the comment and it's great that you love the pole if you didn't love it then we would have to make some changes but this is something that we really stress
[07:05] Tayson: Yeah i mean i think what really got us interested in them is just your like the strength to weight of your poles so i want to dive into that but before i do so this is the second generation in this company or is it a third generation
[07:17] Thomas: Company it's the second generation in
[07:18] Tayson: The company okay and i think it's very interesting that you guys have stayed so um you know disciplined to one thing right you guys for the most part have just made poles um and you do have kind of a i know some kind of a partner business per se but you know making poles for for what is it how many years i guess you've been running for 25 how how many years
[07:42] Thomas: Old is the company at this point uh the company itself is turning 100 years next year but we took it over in 83 so our family took it over in 83 at that time my father um because we started with the wetsuit company and in the meantime we touch a lot of different faces we do a lot of protection we do snow shoes um and so the company has branched out but the key focus is as you said still poles that's where we can make the biggest difference
[08:10] Tayson: Were there any like technology changes from the time you guys took it over till now that we're just like very pivotal for increasing strength or reducing weight or things like that
[08:22] Thomas: Um yeah the probably the biggest change in if we're talking about reducing weight which is one of the key aspects for you um was was actually when alternative materials to the existing aluminum shafts came out specifically carbon um we very early on saw the potential in it um started playing around with carbon 30 years ago more than 30 years ago and then got deeper into it and that's when we then also decided that for us we not only want to put together the pole both in aluminum and carbon we also own the carbon shaft manufacturing so we really start from scratch because carbon doesn't equal carbon um it's there is we use seven or eight different type of resin families we use 16 18 different types of fibers to build the shaft to the specification what we want what this means is everybody else buys a standard carving shaft combines it with a couple of bricks slaps it together and says that's what the ball is for when you do this you'll pay for a lot of things that you don't need um and you don't necessarily invest the money where you need it so when i design a pole i start by designing the shaft where i want to go some of them i do for lightweight some of them are due for durability some of them i do for stiffness and that's was one of the most pivotal changes was that we actually could find a lighter weight material and then we started playing around with it and saw how much more we can get out of a shaft if you really are able to develop it properly too so now our poles i mean in the first third past 30 years they've lost i'd say 60 of their weight and at the same time gains i'd say 50 strength wow
[10:21] Tayson: Yeah that's that's incredible because i mean we've used we've seen a lot of poles out there there's a lot of lightweight poles out there and when you do look you know just at the carbon on some of those poles a lot of them look identical right like the carbon like the grid pattern of it and you can tell it's it's rolled and a few different things like that um so maybe just i don't know how much is proprietary how much you want to share on that but maybe just touch on a little bit about that because i know there are some poles out there even in our industry where people really like the pole because it's um a super lightweight pole but there's also you get feedback from people saying that they're breaking that pole you know or the or that there's fears of breaking that pole and it's it's at least known like they kind of go in the same conversation sometime and having seen that pole and other poles a lot of their carbon fiber does look the same so from your knowledge being kind of an insider in this industry how much of those carbon fiber shafts are coming from one manufacturer somewhere or um maybe slight variations in in the same pole shaft if you talk with other people are using
[11:29] Thomas: I'd say the base technology behind it is like a 90 is the same okay in order to develop this we have to develop new production processes because at the same time you want to be cost effective on the other hand as you pointed out people have kind of this assumption with carbon you know how many percent of carbon doesn't matter the percentage really doesn't matter as much it's the fiber layup it's the type of fiber that you use it's the resin you combine it with and that's the biggest difference where we had to develop special machinery to actually be able to produce the type of chef that we want to have and you're absolutely right one thing that and there you come back to staying focused and development it is a trekking pole a trekking pole is also a safety item yeah you can carry it around other super light poles but that's not where it's key where it's key is when you slip when you tumble when you actually fall onto the ball and then it has to hold up so i had a lot of things where i said you know i'm not gonna do this because this is something that i would personally no longer consider a reliable tracking and that's the key aspect where we make the difference we could probably make some things lighter but then we would sacrifice the basic need of the of it's a little bit more expensive to do it this way it's a little bit harder but on the other hand you know if you work a little bit harder you can make a difference on the market and as you've seen it's it's they're not only lightweight they're stiff the durability is where we want to have them and that's what we built build the poles for because sacrificing on the basic need of a ball is not good enough yeah
[13:17] Tayson: Yeah i've had conversations with people especially like trail runners where they're just like yeah i just you know i i break a couple poles a year and that's just what happens right and uh that doesn't seem to be what you guys go after because you guys have a a very very um solid warranty program right so why don't you tell us a little bit about what you guys do and how you stand behind the product
[13:40] Thomas: I mean for us it's not only about making the right product what we are looking for is that customer for life so we want you to sell you your next pole the one after that and you'll ask him we know in between something is gonna happen you might drive your truck over it you might step onto the pole my people might make a mistake also this can happen the thing is that how do you actually back it up and just for making it in austria is quality i think it's a very simplistic not correct assumption people in other countries work at least as hard as the austrians to here we just have a little bit more experience so we back it up with a three-year dare to say even if it's four if it's five years if it's 25 years we love to back it up free repair service we do not believe in throwing away product and then just replacing it we think this is we offer a valuable product but you can make mistakes and that's where we back it up no questions asked no receipt necessary no matter where you bought it local in your country even if somebody buys it in the u.s a french guy he can send it locally into france and directly to the manufacturer so people send it straight back to us this helps me get the direct feedback what happened if you drove your truck over it there's no need for me to be concerned that the pole broke if you say thomas this happened now the second time during use it's something where i should actually have a closer look is there a mistake is there a flaw what we can do and the second thing is yes it's about honesty when we say quality we want to prove it i would never want one of my people locally here be ashamed of what we put out it puts a little bit more pressure on us to really deliver on what we do but it's really worth it we have a ton of happy customers and that's what we back it up with and very often my people get you know i get pulse back which have been 20 years old and you know they've been all over the world that's especially the pole we gotta repair free of charge because that's kind of their favorite piece that's something where they really have very fond memories they associate with the product and that's what we do it for as i said for us it's great if we are allowed to accompany a user on their favorite activity and maybe be associated with some of their font memories and for us it's not a marketing gig it's it's a question of honesty making honest product it's a question of excelling not just in product but also in service and once again here when i developed a program i took a view from the consumer's point of view what would i like to have i would not want to go back to regulars maybe far away and then i have to explain myself how i did it and just is this a justified or not i just wanted them thing repaired again so that they can go up the next mountain so what we did is we cut out a lot of steps there and said you sent it to us we repaired we sent it back simple done which means you have the product faster in your hands we can't get the opportunity to interact with you as a consumer and yeah we'll make you happy and and keep you on your product and it's something that we just not put out as a marketing gig it's really honestly meant to be used to use it very proactively we are a premium product so you deserve premium service and that's what we want to back it for
[17:14] Tayson: Yeah and i i i would so like i was i was going to touch on that a little bit later but um yeah you guys are a premium product like you're a little bit more money but you do get that that benefit of the warranty for sure and then also you get um just the best pole which is which is really the whole what most people i think initially are going to be buying off of you know when i want to talk about the locks that you guys use your flip blocks but before i get to that and before we move off of the um just the strength aspect of the shafts i did want to talk about aluminum poles see we're going to be initially launching the the carbon uh c3 cloud that's the carbon pole and then the Explorer Contour Powerlock and that's actually an aluminum pole and you had told us at the show a little bit about your guys's aluminum capabilities and you even said that your aluminum poles are as good if not better than than some carbon poles so maybe maybe uh talk to us a little bit about your aluminum capabilities as well if people are looking for maybe a slightly lower price pole that is still exceptionally well built exceptionally strong and comes with the same warranty
[18:27] Thomas: Um you're right a lot of people use carbon for sexiness i don't believe in that this would not be an honest product carbon is more expensive you expect more fruit if the pole is not considerably lighter why should they use carbon if you look out there what's out there on the market there's a ton of poles out there uh i wouldn't use carbon for it because i can make it out of aluminum 20 percent lighter 40 cheaper so why should i ask so much money from that's not necessary the difference here is it's not just the shaft it's also the grips the components that come with it and on the shaft like we do in a loop in in carbon we only bought the vendor of ours 25 years ago where we were developing the Titanal shafts so we use a special kind of aluminum alloy in the very special heat treatment process this means we can reduce the wall thickness a little bit and still carry even more than not just the same but more strength than other poles on the market out there do this helps you reduce the weight and if you look at something like the explorer i think it's right now at around 218 220 grams go out on the market and look what the carbon pole is some of the major competitors that i have carbon poles out at 300 grams or more there's no need to go there you just don't need it and that's the main reason why we say okay both poles would be a great choice because your message is light yeah that's what you have to stay true to but it's also about durability and i love the explorer it's my best-selling home it's not as crazily light as the c3 cloud i mean what you have to see is that the c3 cloud in a three section pole weighs less than the lightest weight single shaft ski pole out there on the mark that's how far the difference is where we go so although we have three sections although we have locks and everything on it we can still have less weight than you would have on a single stage aluminum alpines keyboard carbonyl pencil and that's the big issue that you have between it in the end it comes down to you feeling it as i said your experience on your next trip has to be better and if you consider that during eight hours you lift your pole 100 000 times and if you lift 100 grams more it means you have 10 000 um kilograms more that's 10 tons extra lifting might be good exercise but it's not really what you want to do
[21:14] Tayson: That that's really interesting uh to break it down like that um but it's it's a it's very very true i mean i i recently just was out on a hike and i was in the snow and so i put on my heavier snow boots and i couldn't believe how much more tired those boots made me um they're just i need to replace them and get some lighter weight winter boots but you know even over the course of say five miles i could absolutely feel it and the same thing goes with trekking poles right i mean you're just repeatedly picking it up moving it picking it up moving it and a little bit over you know like you said eight hour period adds up to be tons and tons of weight i mean you hear some numbers out there that i don't i don't know if those are actual numbers or truth or not but
[21:56] Thomas: Um i can tell you bill's feels like that yeah they really are as is that you we once ran an advertising campaign you know get those elephants off your back is because this is it during eight hours you actually lift an extra elephant elephant is an average of eight to nine tons wow
[22:16] Tayson: Wow i like that i'm gonna steal that and uh put that in the back of my brain for a minute that's that's really cool um brigham i'm gonna let you ask him a little bit about the locks i know that those are some of your favorite aspects and something that we're just super super interesting um to see and hear about um from thomas at the show
[22:35] Brigham: Yeah um that was you know there were so many things when we when we met you face to face and and it was so easy to just sit there we could have sat and talked with you all day um you know and and all the the the details of your development and the engineering and the testing that was just so intriguing and and pretty inspiring actually and the locks was one of those areas where as we had them in our hands and we we flicked them open and then clamped them closed and you just without you explaining anything i was able to kind of tell like there's something different here than what i felt in other poles and then when you went on to explain the the engineering that goes into the poles and the materials and the manufacturing processes that make them so strong and then the the testing that you you were able to explain to us and show to us on your laptop with with the graphs and the videos i mean it was all remarkable and i um you know i think our listeners would love to hear kind of some of those things the details you explained to us about the locking mechanisms how you develop them and and the the strength that uh is can be expected from these poles
[23:54] Thomas: Apigee the biggest i mean our locking mechanism is really unique the biggest difference compared to anything else what we have before or what everybody every other program is playing with is that our locking mechanism is made fully out of forged aluminum um we always had external locks usually there were injection molded with the thermal plants and they work not badly but the thing is with the thermoplasty you always get the thing that they stretch over time when there is pressure on them they can stretch which means they lose their holding power when you open them and close them again they can lose up to 40 60 percent of their holding power i think i showed you that as well and what you also have to see is that the pole has a temperature range sorry being european i have to stay in in centigrade of 140 degrees centigrade where the block is out if you leave it on your dashboard it's immediately within 15 18 minutes it's up to 70 80 degrees that's close to water boiling temperature and then at the same time you are out somewhere in in in the arctic circle you can go down to minus 40 minus 45 degrees so that's where the lock has to perform the one thing that we saw is that when we developed the Powerlock 3.0 so the third generation of our Powerlock system is and i always got the wish oh thomas you know can we make it look nicer and so and then we come back to making credible uh innovation as if yeah the looks is okay but it's not gonna really change something fundamentally on the performance and then i started looking at and saying since i have a lot of experience in aluminum that i said you know why not change the material because that was the only deficiency i really saw was the strength of the locking mechanism and if you look at the customer's reviews on websites and what you get back is always yeah those telescopic holes they are great but they can slip so kind of the holy grail was okay make a pole that really almost cannot sleep anymore and i then saw that with a thermoplastic would not be possible to go there so we have very strong manufacturing capabilities in manufacturing small aluminum parts and we then said okay if we want to do this effectively with the consistent quality that we want to have behind it we had to invest heavily into machinery so it's a fully automated production cell that we actually run there we also saw that you cannot just use any type of aluminum you cannot use a cast aluminum because this wouldn't get you something so we had to get uh to a forged aluminum and at the same time we had the restriction that it should not weigh more than a thermoplast which is basically kind of of a pain in the butt because aluminum has a higher density than the thermoplastic you have more but with the luminoi i can create less volume so the overall weight of actually the Powerlock 3.0 is even a gram less than our olds 2.1 uh the strength quadrupled so we now have a holding power of bits at around 200 kilograms i think you've seen it when i showed you the video that in most cases that we had this was just by accident because i have a production manager and our test facilities start compressing it vertically is that before the poem slipped but the locking mechanism slipped actually the shaft exploded so you really have something you have an incredible strength i don't think that this that they said okay uh if i could drive my i have a bmw suv on four pairs of poles with the platform i could actually drive my bmw on it and it would not slip that's how strong the whole thing is the big thing however that the user says is i don't i want it to be as slip proof as possible second thing is i also don't want to readjust constantly what we have in there and this is the benefit of aluminum because it does not stretch
[28:20] Brigham: Maybe tell us a little bit you kind of touched on right there some of the testing procedures you guys do why don't you talk to us a little bit about what are some of the tests you do and maybe how does how do your poles stack up against other poles that you've tested
[28:36] Thomas: I mean we always testing consists of two basic things number one is what we do here in the lab so that's where we also you know we like to compare uh holding powers vertical tests three-point pain tests dynamic heat tests you hit the poles against rocks so you want to make sure that also especially on a carbon shaft that it is not too brittle because what you have to see is the lighter you make it the carbon is very hard the problem is that sometimes that hardness can become brittle and then when you hit it against the rock the carbon shaft might crack what people have maybe experienced in the past so there's at least seven or eight basic lab tests it goes through during development i'd say like 10 000 test cycles that we run it through uh always depending on what you want to use also not just to the static compression test on the locking mechanism the prettiest thing is actually when you hit it on granite or so on just with two fingers hold your pole and then the locking mechanism starts to slowly come down so those dynamic tests are really important as well and then for me the key is then actually going out into the field trying it out ourselves does it really give us the performance that we want and the third the most critical test is then also getting it out with the beta series in the hands of consumers people general uses inexperienced users to see okay what else can go wrong on the pole so these those are the three major stages a product goes through until we actually start to release it on the market the testing here in the shaft is also the quality control when you actually run for it because you have to especially with carbon ensure that you have a stable quality um and yeah the rest is then just a lot of times paid out in the in the field and trying it and seeing and always looking for what i don't like you know is does it feel comfortable in your hands does it swing properly it's not just the weight that is important but also how it feels in use and that's something you can just test out in the field
[30:56] Tayson: Yeah i've uh i've fallen in love with the grip of the of what you guys have on your grips um that's definitely been my favorite grip that i've used so far and so i can also test it it's not just all about the weight and the strength but even sometimes just how it swings in the grip um play play major factors as well so um you had talked to us and again you don't have to get into specifics but you had you actually had shown us um some information about you testing your poles with the highest and other poles and we won't name the brand names or anything like that on the market and basically you're showing us that that yours are lighter and stronger according to your own testing because again you're not taking just your poles through those five or six different testing methods you're taking you know your competitors poles and you're seeing what levels they're at and and basically what you showed us is that you exceed you're exceeding them on every front um and that was that was really really interesting for us to see and i think at that point i was just kind of going like man why is everybody not using a comfortable pole and it sounded like when it wouldn't and i think it you know maybe we'll get there maybe we'll help you get there but um it sounded like you know you guys have been a massive player in europe for a long time but maybe you you haven't been as aggressive in the united states is that true
[32:14] Thomas: Yeah that's true i mean the united states and canada are a super important market for us we've had the honor to work with a lot of major companies also but the key focus we are coming from europe has always been in europe so in the u.s we might not be as well known as we like and as we think sometimes also the product deserves so i appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation here today um and you know it means word of mouth we haven't had the us distribution for as long as some of our competitors have had it so this is something that we have to get out because you have to have people that are happy about it and put it out there so that's probably one of the the main reasons why we are not as well known as the product deserves it doesn't mean that we're unknown i mean we're us is a very successful market for us but it could certainly be more and yes what you pointed out how to compare how to stack up against your your peers and your your competitors on the market this is important for us because what you have to see is yes i respect everybody everybody has his own way of doing things uh we have to follow what we believe is is necessary sometimes you know focusing on consumer benefit means sacrificing a little bit of short-term business success because you can sell it for their sexiness but that's not something what we're in the market for we are in the market for a long term our company is 100 years old and they wanted to be still present in the force in the market in 100 years from now and that's where we cannot take those risks and when for example the locking mechanism when we compare this the second strongest block in the market that we saw was at 78 kilograms and we are at 200. so that's almost three times as much in holding force that we can actually generate with the lock if i look on average not only is something like the c3 cloud the lightest weight let's say it fully considered trekking pole out on the market as you said there is some things out there that compare better to a fly fishing rod than to a pole it is the case it's you know if you like you said trail running oh i don't mind if it breaks what they have to see is however that the pole is also a safety item yes when you stumble you fall onto it and when it then breaks and you crash on it then you might have a fatal crash or actually really fall off a mountain and take something which that responsibility is something that we take seriously but on average i'd say let's put it this way our aluminum pole currently is the second lightest pole the difference is six grams than any other pole on the market from any other brand and the Carbon C3 Cloud is 25 to 30 lighter than anything else else out there on the market on average if we compare sets and price points and so on where we are i'd say that we are about 30 percent lighter yeah but what we want to stress is that we do not sacrifice strength for it we that's something that we don't want to do and you pointed out the bridge doesn't it is important i believe in very clean designs for example we have everything done in foam the inside the injection molded parts are very small so this way you have nothing that can be uncomfortable chafing on your wrist or getting blisters is just not there anymore and at the same time i save a tremendous amount of weight what it needed however was a special production technology that only we have to really make what we call a full foam grip so that the whole piece down to the tip on the top part where the strap is attached is really fully made out of home we save money this way we save weight this way yes we have to invest something but this brings me back yes we make a premium product the consumer also expects a premium experience with the product
[36:33] Tayson: Yeah i i would agree with all of that um i've had times when i've leaned on a pole and had it slide on me you know the and i've always in my mind been like oh maybe i had like the twist locks right like oh maybe i didn't get it tight enough or or something like that or um or there's been times when the trekking poles have saved me from you know falling down or tipping over or something and so i agree they are a safety item and you definitely don't want them to fail and so seeing how light your poles are as well as backed up by all of the claims that you've been talking about through this the strength and and not only the poles but the locks and and so on so forth um to me just put together a fantastic package um and then obviously you're backing that up by an amazing warranty as well so for us um you really kind of stole our our hearts i guess you could say as far as just falling in love with these poles um again you know me putting hundreds and hundreds of miles on them now um have just they've become my favorite pole and have just a lot a lot of confidence in them which i think is i think is just really important that when people get that product um they have that confidence in the product um and that that that goes a long long ways because the more confidence you can have we say this on the show all the time but you know the more confident you are the more you're going to go out and do stuff the more you're going to go out go on trips go on hikes um and a lot of that comes down back to the confidence and the gear that you have so um brigham any last uh questions for thomas before we let him go and be respectful of this time here but um
[38:06] Brigham: Not necessarily a question just just some comments you know we're we're a product focused brand as well there's lots of there's all kinds of brands that are product focused brands and you know in my position in design um there's a lot of decisions that always have to be made you have to set priorities um i i i guess i hope um you know that our that are listeners in in you know listening to everything you have to say i hope they have a very clear understanding because i feel like your priorities are very clear you're very upfront and honest about them and so i personally just really appreciate um how how clear that is to see just you know we we spoke in person and we're talking again and yeah i think that's incredibly valuable um and i think you know the world could use more of that those clear visible transparent priorities and and uh yeah it's just it's been it's been a pleasure to to get to know you and and learn more about everything that you do
[39:13] Thomas: Thank you i really appreciate the accounts uh it's very nice but i also have to say it's always very nice to have customers those are really out focused and you know are interested in the product and how to make it better this is not always the case it's specifically true however in north america there's a lot of technical interest also from the consumers we see it consumer questions that we get are really very close by and that's something that we really love unless you said yes we put it up out there we would want to have to be upfront about it and also say this is what the product can do this is what it cannot do and yeah we love seeing people out on the slopes and and using our product and hopefully having fun with them because that's what they're essentially there for i mean they're such a very pleasant part in people's everyday lives and it's for us always a great challenge being in sporting goods in general is that there's always something new coming you know whenever we whenever i finish a product line there's already a hundred new things they'll say okay you could maybe try this and do a little bit better that's the constant challenge which you have to embrace if you want to be in the sporting goods market because yeah it never gets old but on the other hand you're always driven because you have to drive fast and live what you do but if you enjoy like i do it like a lot of my people here really do and and live for us for the brand and standing for something then then that's something where that boundary between private and work and really grow together i mean tasting product out on the mountain is not actually a bad working day for me so
[40:59] Tayson: Yeah i think when we talked i think when we talked we felt like we just aligned very well in in that aspect as well where it's just you know we have a lot of similar um thoughts on where we are in this kind of passion industry where there's just always going to be innovation because people are just so passionate about it but um i think both of us just feel like or all three of us just feel like we're we're still lucky to be a part of it even if it means you just can never sit back for half a second you know you've always got to be pushing forward so that's what we're here for that's what we do it for that's why we enjoy it
[41:34] Thomas: Gentlemen i greatly appreciate the really detailed interest that you had at the trade show um in the product also making this possible today it's not very often that we get the opportunity to to explain of what we do and remember our meeting really well uh where we really you know it's for me somebody who's doing product development it's great to see to have somebody who's really interested also in what we do and how we do it but not just say okay thomas you get a lot of money for your product do your job and shut up also acceptable but naturally i appreciate it when somebody is really interested in what they can bring to the market and i hope you have fun with it and yeah i look forward to seeing you then on the next show hopefully soon and show you what we explained now
[42:23] Tayson: Yeah no we definitely look forward to meeting you again in person we'll go ahead and let you go here thomas but thanks so much for for taking the time with us this evening um we're really excited about the product we're really excited to show our customers that and and uh you know like also again to to meet up in person again so thank you i really appreciate it
[42:43] Brigham: Yeah yeah no thank you very much and have a good rest of your evening over there in austria
[42:43] Thomas: thank you thanks bye bye thank you
[42:54] Tayson: Awesome um so we still got me and brigham here and we wanted to just do kind of a breakdown i guess of of that i know the audio is just a little bit rough on that one so we might kind of cover a couple things again just to make sure you guys can hear that and and understand it all but overall um i don't know what were your thoughts on on how that went brigham and is there anything new that came up for you um
[43:20] Brigham: You know i don't remember when he was talking about you know the the carbon um their development and how they've got all the different resins and fibers and weaves um i remember him touching on on that but i guess it was a little more in detail today but i i i really uh that's really impressive to me and like how honest he was about when when he said like in the end you know 90 of it's the same but like when you think about it well what where's that other ten percent come from and i think it comes from that level of detail where he was going into like the different types of resins and weaves and fibers um because that focus rather than just kind of pulling off like uh you know acquiring a general commodity level of carbon shaft um or manufacturing technology i think that additional 10 percent comes from their focus on you know just getting the best you know uh carbon shaft that they can based on what the objective is like he said whether it's you know trying to make one that's incredibly light one that's incredibly strong um you know different thicknesses different strength levels and i i love that attention to detail and that focus on like you know yeah ninety percent of its same but here's how we go above and beyond and it's really involved if you think about from a manufacturing standpoint their their investment there with all the the machinery and and and doing all that is is pretty cool
[44:56] Tayson: Yeah you can tell they don't shy away from um investing in machinery it's like if this is going to give us you know an advantage or an increase in in performance then seems like they just buy that machinery and move forward right so um yeah i'd agree though i i think you know years ago i definitely did not understand that not all carbon was was the same or i thought it was all the same not that not all carbon is the same um but yeah i think the more that you really get into that obviously we've actually walked some factories that do carbon production we've seen some of that and it's a very extensive process and just like you mentioned sometimes those minor details make all the difference and sometimes they're major details ones that um maybe we're not well we're not allowed to share some of these due to uh proprietary information and production but i'll just tell you this there's there's a reason that some of these carbon fibers um perform at a totally different level because the production of it is completely different and uh that's definitely seems to be the case with with Komperdell so um yeah just really really impressive i mean i i know we can't show these he was showing us you know again some kind of private footage and stuff behind the scenes of some of these tests so we were kind of watching the videos of them putting different poles in until they were you know breaking and testing these different things and definitely left us very confident in the pole and like i said we we instantly purchased uh some poles and airship them home so we could you know get them out on a trip we were doing literally the next week and we wanted to just put as much time on those poles as we could and we and we have like i said i've put a lot of miles on them so those other people in the office and uh just a very confidence inspiring product i feel like that's just that's just a great way to sum it up
[46:48] Brigham: Yeah i i'd agree i i think if being able to hear um somebody of a knowledgeable position in their company um at the off the top of their head be able to go into so so much depth in the short period of time you know like that 45 minute conversation where um they can address like all the things that they do to make a better pole essentially right that's to me that that's where a lot of the confidence comes from because it's not he's they're just very transparent and straightforward about you know what they prioritize and i um you know the idea of if we can't make something that's better that that makes a better experience um then there's no point in doing it um yeah it's pretty pretty cool
[47:47] Tayson: Yeah so we and we touched on this a little bit but we are going to offer two of these poles to our live ultralight members one is the aluminum pole that's the Explorer Contour Powerlock pole um we've used that one i haven't used that one as much as the carbon pole but i do have you know again just a lot of confidence in that and and it is the cheaper pole so you can get that if if if maybe this carbon pole as a little bit out of your reach you can always go with this aluminum pole and basically know that it's as good as almost all the carbon poles out there anyways is kind of a it's a little bit of a broad stroke but you know obviously some of the upper level carbon players are still going to have really really good poles but this pole is going to compete with any carbon pole out there as an aluminum pole and then we're going to be offering the Carbon C3 Cloud or the Carbon C3 Cloud and that's the pole that we've i've used quite a lot it's going to be a little bit lighter and just as a as a very very amazing pole um so these are now you know we did this a little bit ago but we gated all these products just to our levels like members so if you do want one of these products they are available to the live ultra members and the Live Ultralight membership again is a store credit membership it's ten bucks a month that ten dollars instantly goes into store credit and then you get a bunch of savings on things such as these poles you're gonna get ten percent off site-wide year-round then you're gonna get additional savings on sales and and things like that um you get early access you get limited edition stuff you get free priority shipping on everything so and you get rebates so on this product right here you cannot i can guarantee you you cannot buy these uh poles anywhere cheaper because by the time you get your ten percent discount plus rebates back on this you're going to be saving a ton of money on these poles um and then yeah i think we didn't touch on this but we did talk to him in person about it the uh the warranty aspect if you do need to use the warranty you do contact us i believe you can and we can try to help you out or you can contact them directly um i believe and correct me if i'm wrong brigham but um and i wanted to say this in the interview but i um just didn't get the chance but they you would contact someone within the u.s you would not be contacting you know australia austria branch to get your poles fixed so they won't be out of commission for a long long time they're very quick and timely on any type of warranty repairs as well so um is that is that correct bray gum yeah yeah that's right there i think they even go as far as to say like they prefer just direct contact with them um okay it is the fastest way and it that you know for all the benefits it contributes to their ongoing uh development and quality control and improvement but it also is like the best way of just the fastest most efficient way of getting your your pole fixed and like it's free you know what i mean it's they're not charging you uh the repair cost um which is pretty remarkable he did he uh it's a very yeah like he said it's no questions asked i mean he even he he told us before he he mentioned it on the podcast you know like you run over it with your car but we're not gonna know because we don't ask you know what i mean so yeah it's a pretty pretty cool system they've got yeah gives you a lot of confidence when you're spending a decent amount of money um so you're probably i guess wondering what the prices are the regular pricing on these would be 200.199 for the carbon pole and i believe 119 for the aluminum pole so then obviously you're going to get your 10 off that plus your rebates um but again you're getting an amazing pole and an amazing warranty to back that up um so to kind of wrap this up i don't think that we'll go into say like why we believe in using trekking poles i think that we'll save that i do know we have a video on our youtube channel under vitals um that will go into like why we use trekking poles but i will just say this we're really big believers in trekking poles you will pretty much never see me on a trail without them if if i don't have them it's for a very specific reason probably testing something because i literally don't leave home without them and i believe in them so much that i actually i actually leave extra poles in my truck just in case i'm going out with someone who doesn't have them because i know by the end of the trip they're going to ask for mine to borrow mine and i got so sick of lending my own that i literally have an extra pair of trekking poles just to lend to people because i i don't want to give up mine and i believe in him that much so i know you're you're kind of the same brigham i never see you out without your trekking poles
[52:36] Brigham: Yeah uh unless i forget them which i i rarely do but i'm sure it's happened it's happened to me and after it happened i decided that i would no longer pack my trekking poles um next to my backpack they would actually have to go in my backpack from my house to the trailhead because that's what happened as i i'd be moving from one car to the other or take it into the office to weigh the pack and then i'd take it out to the truck and i'd lose those trekking poles um so now my rule of thumb is that they are inside of my pack from the moment that i'm leaving the house to getting to that uh trailhead so
[53:14] Tayson: Anyways um yeah trekking poles make a massive difference we really are excited about offering Komperdell on our website so for those of you that do have interest go check those out again you will not be able to see them i don't think you can even see them without being a member of the live ultralight membership so if you do want to see those if you are a member make sure you're just logged in and with that we'll go ahead and wrap this podcast up so thanks for being with us today if you have not yet read or subscribed to the podcast please do so it does make a big difference for us we do appreciate that and it just allows us to continue to to bring amazing products to market as well as share our experience with other amazing products or other brands that we've had good experiences with um and just get you out on those the trail more comfortably and more confidently so thanks for tuning in to the level try podcast and we'll see you on the next one
