Inside the Sea to Summit Roadshow

Every few years, outdoor gear manufacturer Sea to Summit takes its team and products on a tour of the country in what’s known as the STS Roadshow.

These events are primarily an opportunity for Sea to Summit to showcase new products to the businesses that stock them, while also educating those stockists’ staff on technical details.

However, the event also represents a rare opportunity for a specific segment of the outdoor community to meet and socialise on a scale that’s usually prohibitive – outdoor enthusiasts are usually either hard at work or, well, outdoors.

For these reasons, Wild took interest in attending the STS Roadshow event in Melbourne, which was hosted at Zinc, on the riverfront beside Federation Square.

Sea to Summit: A Brief History

Sea to Summit has now been in operation for 25 years, which for any privately owned and operated Australian business is a significant milestone given that the majority fold before their fifth.

However, from another perspective there’s little wonder the brand has gone from strength-to-strength, given the background and tenacity of its founder, Tim Macartney-Snape.

Having supported Macartney-Snape and the rest of the first Australian expedition to summit Mount Everest, Wild was following with interest as he continued his adventures around the world – a career in the wilderness that seemed to reach a crescendo in 1990, with the ‘sea to summit’ expedition.

This pioneering expedition marked the first time anyone had ever climbed Mount Everest beginning at sea level and, as it began at the Bay of Bengal, it took Macartney-Snape over three months to complete.

It also inspired the name for the outdoor brand he founded that same year, setting up manufacturing operations in Perth.

25 Years of Gear

Since 1990, the outdoor gear landscape has continued to evolve apace and Sea to Summit has grown from a cottage-industry operation into a global company, including offices in North America, Asia and Europe.

Its products may no longer be manufactured in Australia, but its team are still proud to say that the brand’s design team still operate out of its Perth-based offices, and they’re still innovating when it comes to creating concepts for outdoor enthusiasts of all stripes.

Of course, the roadshow’s major function was to begin generating some buzz around these (and Sea to Summit’s brand partners’) products, with special attention given to its range of sleeping mats, as well as the new X-Pot.

This focus wasn’t even driven by the Sea to Summit staff at the time, they simply introduced attendees to the items and the products appeared to do the rest. For almost two hours prior to a round of more formal presentations, the entire crowd took turns lying on the demonstration sleeping mats, and with only a handful of sleeping mats available and as many as 100 attendees, it certainly made for an interesting procession to watch.

As for the X-Pot – a collapsible cooking pot that comes in a variety of sizes, each with different features – there were more than a few people who were plainly itching to test them out with their favourite dish.

For the rest of this time before presentations began, the room was littered with knots of people talking animatedly about product, business, recreation activities and conservation issues; it all conspired to create something of a community meeting atmosphere, rather than being purely a matter of commerce.

And the outdoor ‘industry’ needs events like these. Not only would people not be able to travel as effectively in the wilderness without innovative products like these, but they also need forums like these in which to share ideas with others, to discuss the topics that matter to them with people they may not normally associate with for all kinds of reasons.

If the STS Roadshow for 2015 has given even a small glimpse into what this year’s Outdoor Retailer Australia exhibition has to offer, then we can surely look forward to an exciting event come June.