I know I know. These newsletters are way more frequent than quarterly. We have had so much in the works the past bit, I don’t think I can fit it all in a quarterly email.
In this newsletter -
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New website and product photos
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About video
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Whirlpool Mkii is officially live
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Restock alerts
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Business model changes
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Wholesale?
New Website/Photos
Well, first up… We have a new website (that is 90%) done. Go check it out and let us know what you think. Does it make more sense? Help you get to know the product better? Get you excited about what we are doing? The goal with the website was to move towards story telling through photography and video instead of long descriptions and boring text. With the move to Bellingham and the closure of our storefront in Colorado, I am trying to connect with new people in an authentic way that still communicates who we are, why we exist and how beautiful our products are becoming.
So the goal was to rebuild a website that was visual, we had our work cut out for us. The past 3 months I have had 5 photo/video shoots to cultivate all of the assets needed for such an endeavor. My buddy Harrison has been telling me to hire someone good for years and I have always come up with the “I don't have the budget” for that excuse. That still stands, but I figured out how to make it work and we hired Anthony Smith. Working with Anthony was a massive learning curve, but such a delight. He made everything so easy and set us up for success from our first meeting. The thing he kept nailing into my head was that we needed to be organized and systematic about what photos we wanted. What was the style and look we were going for? Where would these photos be placed? What colors were going to be featured and what angles and features did we need to show. I built a massive 7 page spreadsheet and we were off to the races. In classic fashion, we didn't have all the bags made that were making up the 2026/27 catalog. Marissa and I spent the past month jumping back and forth between custom work and building our catalog out. Our first day of shooting ended up taking nearly 10 hours and we worked through the entire catalog of bags. I couldn't believe how much work it was and how tired I was by the end of the week. The next week we had set up another shoot for outdoor lifestyle riding photos. With all of the photos taken, the next project was….
Video
The second half of the equation was the video portion of the website. This is going to be a work in progress, but to start it off we made an “about” video that lives on the main page and the about page of the website. The other video was a product walkthrough of our Saguaro Vest. I have a lot to learn with video creation and I leaned on our friend and videographer Andy Ford a lot on these projects.
The Whirlpool Mkii
Over the past 5 years or so we have built more Whirlpool hip packs than any other bag. By a lot. In my mind that is mostly due to what the product is. It's a pretty simple bag that carries well, is overstuffable and you don’t think about while riding. I believe that the Whirlpool is one of the bags that lives up to the San Util Design Philosophy more than any other bag.
About 2 years ago I started thinking about an update to the classic design. If I could do anything I wanted and we were not limited by the time it take to make something, what would I make. The answer to that prompt is the Whirlpool Mkii. It’s still got the same roll top design. The same simple yet pleasing shape and the same daisy chains and utility of the first bag. Where it changes is in the features we added on it. It now has zipper hip pockets, a dedicated phone pocket, a spine channel for support, and way more internal organization. We still offer the now dubbed “classic” for people that like the look and simplicity of the first version. For the people that want all the bells and whistles, the Mkii is for them.
Stock Alerts -
If you have been following along with our story the past few years, you have probably noticed that the website is almost always 50% out of stock. We have been growing and trying to figure out how to keep a clean and positive cash flow while transition has been everywhere. This is long overdue, but I finally have “stock alerts” set up on the website. Instead of filling out our pesky long form for every product you are interested in, you can now fill out a short form on the color variant you want and the website will auto email you when the products go back in stock. YAY!
Business Model Changes -
This is a topic a lot of you already know has been happening, but here are the latest updates.
We are deep in it trying to get all of our products set up with local cut and sew partners. Our Colorado cut and sew ended up not working out and we had to terminate the project with them which has set us back about 5 months on quite a few products. We have gotten all of our product in from Vietnam over the past month (also about 5 months late). Knowing what I know now, I am not sure how I feel about working overseas. It has the potential of saving up front cost of a product and it allows for more complex designs (like the Mkii), but it comes with so many unexpected hurdles and costs that have been such a time suck. I think I am going to continue to lean into USA made goods mixing sewing in house with sewing in Seattle and Portland.
Issues?
Now that we are stocking so much more and doing larger runs, I am needing to figure out how to come up with significantly more cash. I hate being in debt, but took a pretty large (for me) loan to pay for the product from Vietnam and originally from Denver. Now that we have some of that product, it is selling and slowly paying back those loans, but we have more products to purchase to continue filling out the website. I am 100% confident that we will be able to sell everything and pay it all back, but the banks are less confident. Because I already have an existing loan, they are not wanting to give me a second one to pay for the remainder of our goods that will be finished in a couple weeks. Any ideas on how to come up with a quick 30k if bank financing isn’t an option and you can’t pay credit for these orders?
Friend of the shop Alex Shultz just won the AZT 300 and 800. Read his recap on the last blog here.
Finally Wholesale -
We are trying to get into some bike shops around the USA and maybe a couple internationally in key cultural zones. I am new to building out a wholesale program. If you have any advice on how to sell a shop on San Util goods or if you know any shops that could be a good partner for us, let us know. The goal is to partner with shops that are genuinely stocked on what we are doing. I want to stoke up shops and have them move and profit off our bags.
CLOSING and DISCOUNT
If you made it all the way down here, we are going to be doing a 15% off for the next 3 days to try to get some cash for this order. If you are able to send this email to 1 friend that would be all time. If we have 50% of you send it to a couple people, over 10,000 should receive this email and we can keep growing our little discord and hopefully keep the dream going.
And if you feel passionate about anything in this email, or like you could help in any way, please let me know what you think! I am learning every day and trying my best to make this the best that I can.