With so much recent attention on products made in the USA, I was excited to get an invitation to tour the Cascade Designs Factory in Reno, Nevada, to see how gear is made and meet the people who make it.
Cascade Designs is the parent company that owns many outdoor brands, including SealLine, Platypus, Therm-a-Rest, MSR, and PackTowl. These brands are housed in two giant factory buildings where they come to life very differently than I expected.
The Reno factories produce 1.25 million individual pieces of gear each year, with an emphasis on shortening the distance that gear and raw materials travel before getting to you. Cascade Designs also has a repair shop in Reno where they strive to fix gear to keep it out of landfills and get it back out on the trails where it can be used.
Read the article.