RUCKING SAIGON

If you're up anyway ... get after it

In Saigon to check in on some partners — since the pandemic, we’ve dual sourced our manufacturing in the USA and in Vietnam. It was one of the biggest decisions we’ve made, and it was the right one since the goal was to scale gear to quality. The infrastructure required is that you have to have a team who travels, and who lives permanently there, and we have both. For those of us traveling from the States, that means we’re missing a time clock so we were up long before the sun. The best way to go is not to pretend, no no no to hell with that. Just get out of the bed you weren’t sleeping in anyway and put some miles in. See the city before it comes to life, before the shops open and the traffic and the pollution take over.

8 factory visits in two days, three early morning rucks to keep us sane.

Some of the team at our offices.

Paul loves this story, it’s an OK one, worth sharing very quickly. Last time he was here, he wasn’t watching the ground (mistake!) and then low and behold it got mushy and he took another step (mistake!) and before you know it he had memorialized his Rough Runners in the soon to be dried concrete. Paul is pretty famous and he’s pretty great and pretty smart and there was once, for a while, Paul Litchfield day in Japan so you know he’s a big deal, and those are his footprints, still there memorialized for not quite forever, but probably for a long time. All you hawkeyes can spot the address in the picture and rush there to get your picture take in the spot where Paul has rucked.

Most of the factory visits are pretty hush hush in terms of pics - that said, here’s a pic of how they pattern the hide to get the best yield of leather. Waste not, want not.

Lunch dessert. Do not eat the Durian, it’s a trap.

Tai chi in the mornings, in the local park. Social fitness at its finest.

The wire soup you find all over the emerging world.

Maybe flip regular and not sweet so that regular is not sweet?

And let’s end on a high note. Paul’s footprints, memorialized.