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Flying With Fish To Join Mountainsmith’s Design Board

Web: www.thetravelstrategist.com — E-Mail: fish@flyingwithfish.com

7/11/2008 – Flying With Fish To Join Mountainsmith’s Design Board

Since very early on in my writing on Flying With Fish I have written about my enjoyment of using Mountainsmith’s products. I have been using Mountainsmith gear for years. Along the way I have modified their gear to meet my needs, and packed their bags well beyond their intended design specifications.

Earlier in 2008 Mountainsmith recognized my completely unaffiliated, non-endorsed and unsolicited promotion of their gear and sponsored a contest on Flying With Fish. While I kept in touch with Mountainsmith over the past year, I assumed at most they would maybe sponsor another contest at some point.

Well at this time Mountainsmith is not sponsoring another contest I know of (although they are welcome to), what they have done is asked me if I’d like to join their Design Board.

It took me all of 3 seconds to accept the invitation to be a part of the process of helping design bags that make life easier for photographers. I have been involved with other companies in the past in the testing of bags, but this should be a whole different process.

So now I’ll not only be a happy, long time, loyal customer of Mountainsmith products, I’ll also have a hand in helping creative process of designing the bags I choose to use. It is great that Mountainsmith looks outside its own internal design team to incorporate those who use their products in the field. As my background and use of their bags is different that many of those who use their gear for hiking, climbing and working outdoors, I hope to bring a unique perspective to the table.

My joining Mountainsmith‘s Design Board does not prohibit me from using other bags, traveling with other bags, discussing other bags or reviewing other bags. I have many bags for many different purposes and will continue to use the other bags in my closet. I’ll also continue to use whatever bag is best for each specific job…….and should the opportunity come up to work with a non-competing company, work with them as well.

My goals in working with Mountainsmith, as well as maintaining Flying With Fish, are similar. My goal is to make life easier for those who travel and put those on the road at the forefront of everything I put into these projects.

…………what else may be in the future for Flying With Fish and Mountainsmith? Keep your eyes open for some retooled workshops in the near future.

Happy Flying!

5 Comments

  1. congrats! can’t wait to see a new design! i love mountainsmith and their camera bags! can you focus on a laptop+camera bag combo? πŸ˜‰ just for me.. *wink*

  2. I’m with magdalena. Congratulations, and I too am in search of the perfect laptop camera bag (with room for a few other small items like an MP3 player, novel, etc.)

    Great job.

    Rick

  3. Great job Fish! Because of your blog and review of certain products I have purchased several Mountainsmith products. I look forward to hearing about your input into their designs and for a Mountainsmith FWF edition. πŸ™‚

  4. Magdalena,

    Keep your eyes open for a possible messenger style bag for a quick day out shooting.

    No promises, but I have some ideas up my sleeves (not that I envision having an incredible amount of influence). I plan on helping create bags that I know would be useful to a wide range of shooters if given the opportunity.

    Happy Flying!

    -Fish

  5. Scott,

    I am happy to hear that my reviews on Flying With Fish have provided you with useful information when selecting gear for travel.

    While my bags are in no way limited to Mountainsmith (the 30+ bags in my closet are proof of that), and there will always be niche’ bags that are made by a limited number of manufacturers, I have found enough bags in the Mountainsmith line-up over the years to keep me happy.

    Even my 8 year old daughter has been sporting pink mini-Mountainsmith messenger bag (fits her Canon 10D + 1 lens….or a few books, a teddy bear, etc etc, for the past two years and my wife heads off to school daily with a Mountainsmith Traverse backpack. So overall the majority of my family has enjoyed their products for quite some time (the two boys, almost 4 and almost 2 don’t have much use for bags yet).

    ……..anyway, not sure if we’ll see an FWF limited edition bag. If we did I suspect it migh be a modified Tour or Day pack though :0)

    Happy Flying!

    -Fish

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