Outdoor Vitals Founder, Tayson Whittaker is Driven to Make Better Gear for Getting Outside [EP 370‪]‬ Outdoor Biz Podcast

Hey everyone, welcome back, today on episode 370 of The Outdoor Biz Podcast I’m talking with Outdoor Vitals founder, Tayson Whittaker. Growing up Tayson wanted to be outdoors every day of his life. It called him to explore, regardless of the time of year or the weather. But he didn’t have the right gear to prepare for the elements. By the time he graduated College, he had figured out how to make better gear and was selling no-name sleeping bags to his friends. We’re going to talk about all that and more.
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Show Notes How were you introduced to the outdoors?
I feel like I always was introduced to the outdoors but there's just different aspects that I learned over time. I grew up in this small town of, six or seven thousand people and was always able to get outdoors. Whether it was on my own or with friends. Every weekend it seemed like, by the time I was about 10 years old, on my parents would drag this old 1970s trailer up the mountain and we'd go camp for two days. Half the time we're sleeping outside the trailer. cause it's not like it was a big trailer. I just spent a lot of time out there with my brothers and family.
Your profile mentions you were a college student, where did you go to school?
I moved down here to Cedar City, Utah. for those who are familiar with Utah, it's the southern part of the state down here by Zion and Cedar Breaks. I came down here for college, went to college at S U combined a lot of my passions. I really enjoyed business and so I graduated in finance, but more than that, I started the entrepreneurship club here at the school. And every weekend and weekdays it seemed like I was, taking friends out to the caves and getting into ultra-light backpacking myself. And so that's really where all of this started, in my very last month of school I filed for the business name.
And how did you learn to design gear?
I really attribute all of my design skills from the time I spend outside. In retrospect it's easier to look back now than it was when you first starting, but I just always had this knack to me that I wanted to know details and specifications.
I grew up riding motorcycles and stuff on trails and whatnot around here. You could have named any Honda or Yamaha product and I could have told you how much it weighed and how much gas it could fit in its tank and how many inches of clearance it had and these weird specs, right? So I just always loved details. And then when it came to designing gear, I think it was just really natural for me. In terms of specs and what those turn into.
I grew up outdoors, but I didn't grow up backpacking and I spent a lot of time just doing exactly that. I mean, the amount of times I just slept in my backyard, right? Because we started with sleeping bags and so I was just sleeping in my backyard in the middle of winter here in, in southern Utah just to learn as much as I possibly could and really hone in and improve product.
On your website looks like the Rhyolite Pack was your first pack. Tell us a little bit about that and how it came to life.
Yeah, so the Rhyolite Pack was my first pack and really my only pack that I designed a hundred percent myself. And that was just a marriage of what I'd used and what I'd loved. Then thinking about some of the features. The side zipper access, that was one of the favorite features on that piece. Being able to get into the bottom of your pack without fully unloading the backpack. That was really, something that I had seen on other packs, had used a little bit and loved.
What was your, so your testing process back then, was it just you taking it out and testing?
Yeah, so now obviously we c