Wood is Cool March 12 2012

As you might imagine or, just as likely, haven't really considered, I have spent a lot of time on marketing, like any business.  In doing so there are many paths to explore and one chooses the adventure that calls to them most.  I spend time taking opportunities to talk with others who I feel have taken on developing projects/products similar to mine because a part of me knows that is where wisdom and beautiful secrets will always exist.

So when I have been trying to develop my message about this product and ones I hope to develop some of the choices included gear and art.  I myself talk often about the helmets as 'functional art' highlighting what are the two attributes that seem most clear or interpretable.  

And also, there is this third thing that is obvious to my gut or my heart and yet harder to share and explain .  I know its not just me though.  I've been able to take that away from conversations with a few folks who have had the chance to examine things from an inside out sort of perspective.  How to boil it down?

Well, wood is cool.  That's often how it begins in my mind, or how I break the ice with another as I try to explain it.  But of course that is a careful and tepid attempt at describing it.  

We all want connection, as humans its just a part of us.  We are awed by the sun after a long winter or are drawn to (or fear) the water long before we know of kayaking or surfing or fishing.  There is something about a true friend and a forest that is the same (and yet some of us have never even fully experience either of those things).  And while we may feel amazed and grateful for our smartphone (like we did for microwave ovens) or the latest carbon fiber reinforced version of bike ( the way we felt about aluminum when it was new) we, as did our grandparents from so many years and decades and centuries and millenia back, have always been in awe of the same changing but unchanged natural world that we were built for, or to take a chance here and offer, that we were meant for.

So, and in a somewhat less than entirely concious way, what really inspired me to create this product and I believe is always at least a part of what inspires others to take interest in it is that it is connection.  Wood is a creation of life and it is kin in that sense.  It is beautiful and, if it can be manipulated to “do the job” it is also inspiring.  And yet it is nature, life...  just as we are.  

Sometimes it seems that nature is becoming the underdog, that things like the oceans and rivers, endangered animals and plants and the air we breathe are fighting for their place.  So are we.  It is the part of us that feels that connection that is, along with the rest of our natural world, fighting for its place as the amazing things we create need more and more space and time in the world, both from the natural world and from our natural selves.  That is the balance we are charged with creating in our times.

Even though most people who take interest will not ultimately buy these helmets they still serve as an attempt to bring the natural world back into our 'everyday' a little.  Fill our world up with just a little more connection than it had when the only options were plastic or composite.  You will buy what works best for you I'm sure and whether or not that is wood these helmets will still be yours to appreciate and connect to.  We always own the connection.  And it makes life a little richer.

Thanks.