Hello everyone! We are making some changes here at Chicken Tramper and wanted to be upfront with what's going on. Our customers are an integral part of the Chicken Tramper team, and we want to be as transparent as possible with you all.
One of our driving principals at CTUG has always been to produce the highest quality and most durable outdoor gear, and that is NOT CHANGING! What is changing is where some of that high quality gear is being made. We have been working with a new production partner in Vietnam to help us scale up production of some of our most popular products. As many of you know, we have often run into production issues causing items or color sets to be out of stock. This has also affected our ability to make backpacks, camera bags, and other custom items for you all. As you also know we generally have long lead times on this custom gear as well. With this new partnership we are hoping that all will change. Starting with our Water Bottle Sleeves, some of our accessory items will now be made by our partner in Vietnam. We will continue to have a Made In Michigan option available on our website for those who still want to purchase gear made in the USA.
Before getting into the weeds of why we are doing this, I want to talk a bit about who we are partnering with. We have selected Vision Products as our production partner based on a number of reasons but mostly because of the quality of their work, professionalism, and care of their employees. Vision Products has been upfront and transparent throughout the entire process; from quoting, to material sourcing, to samples, and final runs of product in a way that we have not seen from other suppliers including some in the United States. They have gone above and beyond to find the correct materials and create the right processes for making products up to the Chicken Tramper standard. The quality of the products we have seen from them are superb and they are trusted by many big names in the industry to make their gear. I’m not at liberty to say who is making gear with them, but you can find out with a quick internet search if you want. They hold certifications for ISO 9001, SMETA, WCA, and Better Work among others indicating their commitment to quality products and an ethical workplace.
I was also able to visit their facility in Vietnam first hand to meet their team and see the production facility myself. I spent the afternoon talking with production leaders and staff as well touring the different areas of the factory. I have seen and worked with many factories over the years, both foreign and domestic, across several industries, and I was impressed with the equipment they had and the skill of the employees working there. They have many advanced and specialized sewing machines as well as other textile technologies that surpass our own. This also included a state of the art pattern-making and prototyping shop to assist in the initial phases of production. I also noted the organization of their production lines and the general cheeriness of everyone working on the line. Granted I was only on the production floor for a few hours, but I felt that the employees were well respected and cared for, and there was a good back and forth relationship between them and management.
Now that we have talked about the what and the who, let's talk about the why. Most people assume the sole purpose behind outsourcing is to make things cheaper, and while that is an important factor (although potentially not in the way you might think), it is certainly not the only reason. In an effort to try and keep this part concise I’m going to list it out below, but there are 3 main points to this: larger production volume, lower production cost, and technological advancement through partnership.
- Larger production volume - As I said earlier, we often have trouble keeping products in stock, and have limited capacity for customized gear.
- The production capacity at the factory in Vietnam will allow us to keep items in stock in our own store and allow us to send gear to more brick and mortar stores around the country and the world. This should allow us to have all gear in stock all the time, so you can order the gear you need when you need it.
- High volume production of small accessory products will allow us to move more employees up to more complicated products like SwitchPacks, Camera Bags, and Backpacks. This will enable us to have more of these higher complexity products in stock all the time and accept a greater volume of custom orders.
- Having the smaller products taken care of will free up more time for research and development of new products. We have a long list of problems and solutions that people have asked us to work on ranging from bike bags, dog gear, clothing, travel bags, climbing gear, and many others. When the team is constantly making Water Bottle Sleeves (and Austin and I are being pulled into production), it leaves very little time to develop new products along with everything else going on at CTUG.
- Lower cost of production - For a labor intensive industry like sewing, making things in the US is very hard. The margins are small, the budgets are shoestring, and it's hard to offer competitive jobs to skilled workers.
- Lower cost of production gives us more money to invest in our employees. This could include hiring more people for production in Michigan, increasing wages for those employed here, offering benefits such as retirement and healthcare, along with others. Employee benefits are something that we have always wanted for our team, but have never been able to offer. We hope that begins to change as we go down this road.
- We can also use this money to invest in better equipment allowing for faster production in Michigan as well as more advanced technology for more innovative products. Investing more in our Michigan facility will create more jobs and opportunities for our local area as we expand into different outdoor sectors. We will continue to keep custom products and specialty projects in Michigan, and we plan to keep investing in the people and community here.
- Extra profit floating around also allows us to help support other groups doing increasingly important work to try and protect the places we love. This includes groups that support our trail systems, wild areas like our parks, inclusion of all people in the outdoors, and the creatures that call our favorite places home.
- We can also pass this cost savings down to our customers. In a time where prices are increasing everywhere and corporations are taking all the profit they can get, we think that our customers should also benefit from this change in production. We realize that money is tight for a lot of folks and cost is becoming a barrier for entry into the outdoors. We feel that shouldn’t be the case, and although we can’t make our products free we think we should do what we can.
- Technological advancement through partnership - Working with a supplier like this gives us access to equipment, technology, and methods that we have always wanted to play with.
- Better technology and equipment allows for making better and more complicated products. Sewing is a very technical process and having the right machine for what you are doing is critical for creating a quality product at an obtainable price. The right equipment also allows us to think up bigger and better products to solve even more problems out there.
- This also opens up opportunities outside of conventional sewing. There are more ways to make gear than just with a needle and thread, and we are excited to partner with a company experienced in these areas. Hopefully you will see what we are cooking up in the near future.
In summary we have thought long and hard about this decision, and it has kept us up at night many times. But in the end, we think that this is the right move for our business. We think that it is in the best interest of both our employees and our customers to have these smaller items made by a full scale production partner like Vision Products. We will continue to have larger and custom products made in Michigan with our team here, and hope to expand this team more as the years go by. We will keep investing in our local team and community, and continue working hard to solve the problems out there on the trail.
If you have read this far, I want to say thank you. It’s customers like you who care and that are genuinely interested that have kept us going. We truly appreciate you all and welcome your feedback. If it wasn’t for you all, there wouldn’t be a CTUG.
