About The Founder + 10 Ways We Cut Costs to Save You $ on High Quality Outdoor Gear

Hey Crew Member! It's Daniel and I'm one of the founders of Hyke & Byke.

I just wanted to thank you for entering our continuous monthly gear giveaways, tell you a short story about me, and let you know 10 ways we have cut non-product related costs so that you can buy from Hyke & Byke knowing that you are getting top quality gear for the best possible price.

My Story and How Hyke & Byke was Born

I worked as an engineer for 5 years before starting Hyke & Byke. In fact, the other 2 owners are both engineers as well. Two of us were civil engineers and one was an aerospace engineer.

We loved outdoor recreation and spent our summers taking trips to Colorado to try and summit all of the 14ers (+14,000' mountains). In fact, many of our sleeping bags are named after 14ers that we have hiked. 

We spent thousands of dollars acquiring our gear for these adventures and we questioned if high quality gear really cost that much to make?  We began contacting the manufacturers that make the gear for many big brands and found that the actual cost for the products was waaay less than what we were paying for in the store or even online.

That led us to wonder if we could start a company selling high quality outdoor gear for a better price than the big brands.  Our next question was: Why do the big brands charge so much? The answer to this question is what led us to believe it was truly possible for a small group of engineers to start an outdoor gear company.

Basically, there are many non-product related costs as well as profit margin that have to be accounted for in the cost of the product. Some of these costs include marketing and advertising, shipping, warehousing, commercial and product liability insurance, professional and legal fees, rent, utilities, payroll, accounting, tax filing, product design, retail markup, distributor commission, media design, building maintenance, computer equipment, servers, IT, etc. (the list goes on ... plus, you have to make a profit).

So, for us, the question became: Can we cut down on these costs so that we can sell gear at a price closer to the actual cost of the raw materials and manufacturing for the product and still make enough profit to live off of and to allow the company to grow? 

And the answer is ... YES!  

Here's How We Did It...

1)  We partner with Amazon to store and ship our products. (Saves us almost 50% on logistics to do this)

2)  We have a small team that hustles each day so our payroll is low.

3)  As a team of ex-engineers, we've automated as many systems as possible.

4)  We design our own gear.

5)  We cut out the middle-man and sell direct-to-consumer via the internet.

6)  We keep customer service in-house.

7)  We do most of our own media design.

8)  We avoid retail markups and MAP Pricing because we don't sell to retailers, wholesalers, and distributors.

9)  We don't have to meet shareholder earnings expectations and can grow at a comfortable and healthy rate.

10)  We don't have a warehouse and run all of our computer software through the cloud so we don't have to pay for hardware and servers.


Bonus)  We don't spend much on advertising compared to the big brands which means we don't have to charge more for our products to cover that cost.

Instead, we rely primarily on word of mouth, so please tell your friends about us as that is the best way for us to grow and offer more high quality products at much lower prices than our competitors.

That's the story of Hyke & Byke! Just a couple of guys trying to make things better for our community.

Thanks for reading, I'm really glad you're with us.

Sincerely,
Daniel | Founder
Hyke & Byke #GearThatGives