EiBO Gear strives to place the customer, conservation, and creativity above all else.
EiBO Gear's Mission
EiBO Gear’s mission is to responsibly serve our customers, conserve outdoor spaces for all, and inspire creativity through reliable products and designs. EiBO Gear strives to create quality outdoor products consciously, and to promote a business model that places "purpose" ahead of profits by committing as much time and money as possible toward conservation and environmental education.
We are designing and fabricating custom-made recreational gear and apparel for the backyard fun-lover, the urban trekker, and the outdoor adventurer alike. Our focus on environmental sustainability and the conservation of at-risk ecosystems is second only to the production of the highest quality gear. Our flagship product, the Sky-Deck, is the first innovation to come from EiBO Gear. Think of it as an extremely safe (safe working strength ~1,200lbs), light weight (5-8 lbs), portable (5-10L volume), net/bed/platform for the outdoors. Soon, EiBO Gear will be launching a line of technical and casual apparel that will be highly functional, graphically rich, and centered around conservation (see projects for more details)
Sky-Deck Uses
Backyard family fun
Car camping
Hiking/Backpacking
Festivals
Tailgating
Kids outdoor and indoor fort (with a frame)
Indoor couch substitute (with a frame)
Garage storage (when not in use)
Safety (arrest the fall of heavy debris)
and much more...
Apparel Uses
Just about everything, but made for back country adventuring.
EiBO Gear hopes to set a new standard for small business by emphasizing land, water, and animal conservation in it's business model. Population growth threatens to choke us out of the pristine natural spaces that many of us have come to rely on for mental, physical, and economic growth. EiBO Gear will therefore work to curb this trend by investing 5% or more of it's profits in land and sea conservation (40% to EiBO Gear Land trust, 40% to chosen campaign non-profit, and 20% to the EiBO Gear outdoor and environmental education program).
“It sounds like a radical proposal for a business. Putting a “purpose” ahead of your profits is gonna set you up for failure.”
What We've Achieved
2013- Successfully designed and engineered the first two iterations of Sky-Deck. These recreational nets held over 12 people each.
2014- Re-engineered Sky-Decks to be lighter weight, just as strong, and considerably more compact than the originals (not to mention good looking).
2015- Constructed the newest version of Sky-Deck, which provide more strength, less stretching, and features for sleeping.
Began a Kickstarter campaign to help bring Sky-Deck (formerly known as Intra-net(s)) to an audience larger than my immediate friend group). Project was unsuccessful, but learnings were significant.
Began collaboration with TreeStuff- a nationally recognized tree climbing and arborist retailer. We continue to love their service!
Was awarded a provisional patent on the Sky-Deck design. Sky-Deck is now under review by the USPTO for a Utility Patent.
2017- EiBO Gear is Trademarked!!
2017- EiBO Gear begins design of both technical apparel line for hiking/outdoor recreation, as well as casual line. Purpose of this apparel is 1) to clothe you technically, and 2) to enhance global conservation efforts. Thank you The Outpost for inspiring us to grow.
2018- Established a US supply chain for the manufacturing of state-of-the-art base layers that are predominately Polartec (TM). Baselayers which, while graphically rich, stand up to any layer on the market.
2019- Baselayer completed, and market-ready products are ready for sale.
Who Created EiBO Gear, and why?
Alex Paya started EiBO Gear while in graduate school. There, he studied plant physiology, forest ecology, and biogeochemistry (a relatively young discipline that aimed to better understand how geochemical phenomenon were impacted by biological processes). Said another way, it was the science of interconnectedness on the planet. Planetary interconnectedness… sounds like a load of hippy-dippy nonsense. Replace “hippy-dippy nonsense” with “hard to understand, but defensible theories on the effect of organisms (life) on practically everything” and you have yourself a pretty fun conversation. Whether it’s the White Cliffs of dover, the peat bogs of Birmingham, or the Carlsbad caves of New Mexico, there are not only glaring examples of how organisms shape landscapes, but how landscapes shape organisms.
Take a breath. Seriously- breath deeply in and out. As you breath in, you mix oxygen (diffused within your blood) with “sugars” inside your cells. This reaction produces chemical energy (used for just about everything), and carbon dioxide (which you exhale). You, and nearly every organism on the planet, perform this reaction millions of times a day (if thought about on a cellular basis). Only autotrophs (plants, cyanobacteria, algae, etc…) can perform a similar but opposing reaction. Autotrophs use water to donate electrons to chlorophyl (the molecule of life as far as we’re concerned), which splits the H+ and the O (of H20). The H+ is used to make energy, and the oxygen is used to breath. Repeat this whole thing a billion times, across a trillion organisms each and every day (including microbes), and all of a sudden, you begin to see that the earth and it’s climate “breaths”. Oxygen in, carbon dioxide out, and repeat. Carbon dioxide in, oxygen out, and repeat. Whether you like it or not, the organisms of the earth breath in a very predictable and repeatable way, and this trend is what biogeochemistry aims to better understand (among many other things). What happens when this cycle is out of whack, you may be wondering? What happens when you produce a whole lot more CO2 than “normal”, or a whole lot more O2 than “normal”? Can it have negative effects? What about positive ones? The answer: no one really knows, but it’s going to cause change.
It is Alex's mission to ensure that EiBO Gear will grow as a business while confronting any negative changes at every possible level. By localizing supply chains, using recycled materials, minimizing packaging, and donating as much profit as is feasible toward conservation, EiBO Gear aims to do more than make and design consumer goods. Meet customer demands, conserve natural spaces, and be creative in both approach and aesthetic- that is EiBO Gear’s Mission.
