SlingFin Tour

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SlingFin lies at 5th and Gilman in Berkeley.

SlingFin is a badass outdoor industry startup. They’re located in Berkeley, California on Gilman Street (the historical epicenter of the outdoor industry) and are building ultra high quality gear. Earlier this week I dropped in for a tour of their shop and to talk tents with their young very knowledgeable crew.

SlingFin builds things for people who spend lots of time in the mountains. Not car camping lululemon wearing weekend warriors. Their team consists of ex-Mountain Hardwear founders supported by young Jedi warrior gearheads. The company’s design philosophy is expedition driven; they made durable goods. The model is simple: start with products for use at the top of the highest mountains and work down in elevation from there. Expedition style tents are ready now, down garments and backpacks are in the works, and eventually they’ll move into lighter tents. But the focus, they say, will remain on hardcore users. 

Expedition tents, down garments, and river rafts in the SlingFin showroom.

“Our methodology is purely design and quality driven. No undue influence from marketing managers, “bean counters” or “suits.” Utilizing our innovative designs and the best materials available we design and build gear for professional guides and serious users. Period.”

I spent the majority of my two hours in the shop with Martin Zemitis, the godfather of tent design and SlingFin’s headman, and Devon Brown, an ex Mountain Hardwear warranty guy and jack-of-all-trades. They showed me the Hardshell tent, which Outdoor Gear Lab will test, and a handful of other upcoming projects. Going over one of their products takes a long time. Whenever I inquired about a particular part, such as the small plastic clips that attach the tent body to the fly, Martin and Devon would dive into a passionate ten-minute lecture on the evolution of that particular part, fabric, or coating. Even a veteran New York Times reporter would have trouble taking notes fast enough. I recorded the conversation. And when it turned to plastic clips they sprayed me with a brief history of their role in tent design, the many types of plastic, and why their custom clip is the best on the market. If only marketing and public relations people could speak so eloquently about the products they promote…

Martin Zemitis helped to design the left clip, currently used on the Mountain Hardwear Trango, and improved upon its design with the right clip, used on SlingFin tents.

Reinforced stitching on the LFD tent.

On the day I visited SlingFin’s shop was both cluttered and organized at the same time. Down jackets and screen-printed shirts hung neatly on one wall while spare arts and fabric swatches lay strewn about elsewhere. The younger team members, who have no titles, huddled around a central table with what appeared to be their personal computers. SlingFin is a startup that doesn’t accept cash from corporate monsters that want to influence its products. They’re about to put an innovative backpack, codename Honey Badger, on Kickstarter. Watch for it.

Devon Brown, SlingFin's everything man, poses on a massage table inside the LFD tent, a 5 meter dome.

 Around 1:30pm, and after much debate, we settled on a location for lunch. Cheap and delicious Indian food filled our stomachs (I had the best mango lassi of my life) and we discussed gear and the outdoor industry. “What’s your favorite piece of gear?” “What’s your favorite factory tour?” They asked me. I learned, among other things, that one employee had a personal collection of sixty tents. Another is known to be so hard on gear his name is now used as a verb, meaning to abuse gear. The environment was California casual. Martin, the equivalent of the company’s CEO, was dressed in jeans and a worn grey Yeti Coolers t-shirt (Yeti makes the best coolers for fishing and river running, both of which Martin enjoys). He knows more about gear than most people alive, has worked in the industry forever, and yet was incredibly down to earth and welcoming.

Companies like SlingFin push the outdoor industry forward with progressive designs and ruthless attention to detail. Unless you’re a high altitude mountaineer hang tight for a few years until they release tents for lower elevations.