From Jason, based on hundreds of your emails on the USA price increase
I’m through over half of the 500+ emails you’ve sent me in the last week. It’s been incredible to get so many nice notes and feedback of all kinds that I can never get from spreadsheets, THANK YOU.
Some important clarification up front. The 10-40% price increase applies only to USA Built Gear and Apparel. It does not apply to our gear or footwear that we build overseas, primarily in Saigon.
- GR1 USA will move to $395
- GR1 Heritage (with Red Wing Leather) moves to $525 (we have 149 units on hand right now, with no restock until Q4)
Rucking Gear
Everything comes with our Scars Lifetime Guarantee because quality is a matter of life or death to us and this is just how we do things.
The reason I’m writing this now: several of you have said our pricing is out of touch, almost all of you have been very kind in saying this, too, and I’m grateful for that. Some of you seemed to think this increase was on everything. But it’s not. I messed up and did not make this pricing change absolutely clear. Only USA prices are going up. It’s a longer narrative how we got to this kind of a break between GR1 and the Rucker, between USA Manufacturing and what we build in Saigon, which is an important one for us internally, too. If you want some of that story, keep reading.
To be clear, I love black or white, yes or no answers — but this is a lot more nuanced by the fact that we believe we can build the best and make it more accessible, and still remain true to our USA Manufacturing roots and intense high quality approach across the board. There is no textbook for brand or marketing or price segmentation that will work in this case. We’re building the airplane in flight, as we must sometimes, and you are always a part of that conversation. Here’s more of that.
THE BACK STORY
Starting in 2010, we had one primary driver for the whole company, and that was GR1. Built exclusively in America and without it we would not exist. You used it for rucking (stuffed with bricks), and travel (with a laptop), and every day carry (of everything). My buddies took it to war. Mark Webb forgot he had a laptop in it at the start of his GORUCK Challenge and we all got a good story out of that one. It still makes me laugh!
The first rule of Special Forces is “Always Look Cool” and the company and the brand were well on their way, emerging from literally nothing and no revenue to having some energy all over the country. More events, more energy. My favorite word was MORE. The manufacturing started crushing the business operationally (lead times, costs, controls, you name it — inventory is very thirsty for cash), and my heart was in this for the events and the community building, so we just kept launching more events. What happened was, launch more events and we sell more gear. More GR1’s to be specific. These are good problems, sort of, other than that my heart was not in this for the business. I wanted to keep Building Better Americans all over the country, “let’s just grow that forever”, I thought. Growth can solve most problems, but not forever.
It seems obvious enough now, but we pivoted everything to put the company’s weight behind the newly launched Rucker, and less so behind GR1. The Rucker is better for rucking. Yes, you can ruck GR1, but it’s not purpose-built in the same way for Ruck Plates. This is now about 12 years ago, and we had to begin to pivot our inventory and pricing and everything was still all built in the USA. Rucking started to become more of a thing, and we were driving that with 1,000+ Rucking Events a year. Prices kept going up for all of us, and the number one priority of the company: Make rucking bigger than running — it was increasingly out of touch, price-wise. To be clear, that’s bad.
To be more clear, it would have gotten worse. USA manufacturing (until machines do ~everything and that will be someone else’s world, not ours) will never decrease in cost. It will only go up and up and up. So we had to diversify manufacturing, and we found a great, high-quality partner in Saigon that we still have. We have scaled a lot of quality rucks and gear with them, and you use it really hard, which we love.
GR1 and other gear and apparel remain in the USA, and they cost a LOT more because they cost us a LOT more. We build fewer, but still a LOT more than we ever planned to build way back in 2008. It means something to me at a very deep level to support the American Dream by building gear at home, and we do.
But we cannot scale rucking to everyone on the back of USA Manufacturing alone. It’s completely out of touch, price-wise. To increase value enough, we would have to talk exclusively about USA Manufacturing (some companies do this well), but we also want to spearhead this “new” activity called rucking. We have some voice in the universe, but not enough to fight every war, on every front. We have to focus on what matters most to the mission at hand.
So there’s a middle ground of dual sourced manufacturing, which I typically hate because the middle of the road is the best place to get run over. I’ve made my peace with it, though, mostly because quality unites everything, and if we didn’t do this, we would simply price nearly everyone out from an activity that we believe can change and will continue to change so many lives and communities for the better.
Our approach allows us to scale quality in all gear we build, remain loyal to USA Manufacturing, scale high quality rucking and training gear, and continue to have a direct relationship with you, with our Ruck Clubs, with the people who have built this company and this literal movement.
If we can’t build a good business around that movement, the movement withers or dies. And we want the movement to grow in the hearts of people all over this country, and the world.
Thank you for getting this far, and for the support!
—Jason
