//
Today’s gear world is full of stuff designed to help people go further outside. But the folks at RUX wanted to craft a better way to get gear to the adventure. Because it’s not just about efficiency, the outdoors are really about a feeling.
Tony Richardson is a hacker and natural born inventor. As a descendant of generations of problem solvers (his grandfather saved bits of string, bent nails, and barbed wire to repurpose around the farm), Tony never stops thinking and rethinking, testing and retesting, ways to build things better.
They know the best moments in life—the moments of play, of friendship, of family, of flow state—are maximized with sharp gear-design thinking.
His family skied, climbed, kayaked, and camped throughout his upbringing and he found the gear as fascinating as the activities themselves. He stayed up late into the night studying gear catalogs to see what design evolutions brands were making, and, as the inspiration bubbled up, he made his own creative improvements to his clothing and equipment.
Then, a girlfriend taught him how to sew. Suddenly, Tony’s voracious appetite as a “concepteur” had a new medium.
“I got a little obsessed,” he admits. He’d forego sleep to conjure nocturnal inventions from tech fabric—jackets with multiple hoods, long shorts, practical adaptations to hat designs. Soon he made his way to design school then an internship at Arc’teryx, which turned into a career. He earned an informal masters of design under the tutelage of the greats in the design department, who were responsible for many of the gear innovations Tony had studied as a kid.
He had yet to meet his future collaborator and company co-founder Andre Charland.
Andre was a fellow relisher of the outdoors, running a bustling Bay Area tech company by day and high-tailing it to the woods every hour he was free. He always felt at his best in the no-man’s land between jobs or projects, where his mind could wander. Andre channeled his inventive energy during those times into building complex and purposeful software—and applying the same iterative refinements to his gear organization.
“When the weather lined up for a few days of skiing, I had to be dialed and ready to roll at a moment’s notice—I didn’t want to spend the time I could be in flow state messing around with getting my gear together,” he says. He developed a surgically precise approach to gear storage, packing, and transport. (Asked if he’s ever screwed up and forgotten a crucial piece of gear on an adventure, he responds, with dead seriousness, “I’d never do that.”)
So it was a match made in heaven—or, more accurately, Squamish—when Andre and Tony met on a ski trip with friends. Tony complimented Andre’s choice of ice axe. They started talking gear, design, and the boundless swaths of possibility where the two overlap. Years later, those possibilities brought them back together for a shared mission—to elevate personal gear organization and transport to a level of quality and efficiency that satisfied their obsessions. Andre’s long-time ski buddy (and admitted gear head), Jamie Bond, got wind of the project and he had to get in on it. With three young kids in tow, he climbed aboard. In under a year they were launching their new invention: RUX, a container that serves as a storage bin, organizing system, and transportable tote at the same time.
Today’s gear world is full of stuff designed to help people go further outside. But they wanted to craft a better way to get gear to the adventure. Because it’s not just about efficiency to them—sure, Andre, Tony, Jamie, and the RUX crew value it. The outdoors are really about a feeling. The simple yet rich feeling of sheer stoke—to step up to an ice pitch in prime conditions, to seek the perfect swell, to load up the fam for a take-no-prisoners powder morning.
They know the best moments in life—the moments of play, of friendship, of family, of flow state—are maximized with sharp gear-design thinking. The fleeting moments could happen more often and last longer if gear was pre-packed, pre-organized, ready to rock.
“If you get into a flow state quickly, we’re doing our job as a company,” says Tony.
So they set about creating a way to store and move gear in a whole new category of vessel. The invention was one that could only come from the minds of this particular group of individuals—people with a penchant for pre-thinking every detail. They called the invention a RUX: a semi-rigid storage bin that could collapse when not in use or pop open with a simple shake. A see-through panel would make it possible to see what was inside. It would be near-waterproof.
It could be carried like a tote bag or a cross-body bag or a backpack. It could be checked as luggage, lashed to a snowmobile, tethered to a car rack, tossed in a trunk, schlepped in a sled. Its contents could be organized using a custom-made app and QR-code system. And it could seal shut without any fiddling.
“We wanted to make the thing as tough as a shipping container,” says Tony, who has seen the impacts of gear failures in the mountains. (Ask him about the time he spent the night on Mt. Waddington, British Columbia’s highest summit, partially wrapped in the tattered remnants of a cheap bivvy blanket that shredded to pieces in the wind.)
During the process of experimenting with ways to make the RUX compressible yet capable of holding its shape in use, Tony used a snap-bracelet-type cuff to keep his pant leg away from the chain of his bicycle. It dawned on him: “this could work.” Soon, the RUX had the rigid yet foldable structure it needed, born of spring steel (think of a measuring tape that wants to stay straight but bends as needed).
Andre brought his own tech background to the process, building an app and QR code system that would let the RUX owner track exactly what checklist of items are in the RUX without opening and unpacking everything. And, just as software is improved and updated over time, the RUX is continually refined and relaunched with the updates incorporated. No need to name the latest model anything new—rather, the latest RUX is the very best RUX on the ongoing continuum of RUXing.
Meanwhile Jamie kept a laser focus on the launch date, and his brood of kids and gear provided ample excuses to test prototypes along the way.
While they build each RUX for long-term use, they can’t stop tinkering with each new release, which has taught them a lot about large-scale invention and themselves.
“To be honest, tinkering is mostly a solitary activity. And ideas are cheap—everybody has them, especially when it comes to their gear,” says Tony. “It’s relatively easy to create one of something. But the real work in being an outdoor gear company is the ongoing testing, sourcing of materials, communicating with manufacturing partners, taking customer feedback, and bringing a quality product to market.”
“The RUX looks relatively simple, but you could hardly have picked a more complex way to enter the outdoor market from a manufacturing perspective. Timelines require that you plan really far out to make a great product—you can never make last-minute decisions,” adds Andre.
It’s a methodical, exacting process. But it’s one they relish. As makers and flow state seekers, they know the drill. Tend to details, lay the groundwork, get dialed in. And by doing so, make more of life’s best moments possible—the view from the top pitch, the post powder-turn whoop, the clink of glasses with old friends.
“If you’re always ready to roll,” says Andre, “you can get right to the experience.”
Tony Richardson is a hacker and natural born inventor. As a descendant of generations of problem solvers (his grandfather saved bits of string, bent nails, and barbed wire to repurpose around the farm), Tony never stops thinking and rethinking, testing and retesting, ways to build things better.
They know the best moments in life—the moments of play, of friendship, of family, of flow state—are maximized with sharp gear-design thinking.
His family skied, climbed, kayaked, and camped throughout his upbringing and he found the gear as fascinating as the activities themselves. He stayed up late into the night studying gear catalogs to see what design evolutions brands were making, and, as the inspiration bubbled up, he made his own creative improvements to his clothing and equipment.
Then, a girlfriend taught him how to sew. Suddenly, Tony’s voracious appetite as a “concepteur” had a new medium.
“I got a little obsessed,” he admits. He’d forego sleep to conjure nocturnal inventions from tech fabric—jackets with multiple hoods, long shorts, practical adaptations to hat designs. Soon he made his way to design school then an internship at Arc’teryx, which turned into a career. He earned an informal masters of design under the tutelage of the greats in the design department, who were responsible for many of the gear innovations Tony had studied as a kid.
He had yet to meet his future collaborator and company co-founder Andre Charland.
Andre was a fellow relisher of the outdoors, running a bustling Bay Area tech company by day and high-tailing it to the woods every hour he was free. He always felt at his best in the no-man’s land between jobs or projects, where his mind could wander. Andre channeled his inventive energy during those times into building complex and purposeful software—and applying the same iterative refinements to his gear organization.
“When the weather lined up for a few days of skiing, I had to be dialed and ready to roll at a moment’s notice—I didn’t want to spend the time I could be in flow state messing around with getting my gear together,” he says. He developed a surgically precise approach to gear storage, packing, and transport. (Asked if he’s ever screwed up and forgotten a crucial piece of gear on an adventure, he responds, with dead seriousness, “I’d never do that.”)
So it was a match made in heaven—or, more accurately, Squamish—when Andre and Tony met on a ski trip with friends. Tony complimented Andre’s choice of ice axe. They started talking gear, design, and the boundless swaths of possibility where the two overlap. Years later, those possibilities brought them back together for a shared mission—to elevate personal gear organization and transport to a level of quality and efficiency that satisfied their obsessions. Andre’s long-time ski buddy (and admitted gear head), Jamie Bond, got wind of the project and he had to get in on it. With three young kids in tow, he climbed aboard. In under a year they were launching their new invention: RUX, a container that serves as a storage bin, organizing system, and transportable tote at the same time.
Today’s gear world is full of stuff designed to help people go further outside. But they wanted to craft a better way to get gear to the adventure. Because it’s not just about efficiency to them—sure, Andre, Tony, Jamie, and the RUX crew value it. The outdoors are really about a feeling. The simple yet rich feeling of sheer stoke—to step up to an ice pitch in prime conditions, to seek the perfect swell, to load up the fam for a take-no-prisoners powder morning.
They know the best moments in life—the moments of play, of friendship, of family, of flow state—are maximized with sharp gear-design thinking. The fleeting moments could happen more often and last longer if gear was pre-packed, pre-organized, ready to rock.
“If you get into a flow state quickly, we’re doing our job as a company,” says Tony.
So they set about creating a way to store and move gear in a whole new category of vessel. The invention was one that could only come from the minds of this particular group of individuals—people with a penchant for pre-thinking every detail. They called the invention a RUX: a semi-rigid storage bin that could collapse when not in use or pop open with a simple shake. A see-through panel would make it possible to see what was inside. It would be near-waterproof.
It could be carried like a tote bag or a cross-body bag or a backpack. It could be checked as luggage, lashed to a snowmobile, tethered to a car rack, tossed in a trunk, schlepped in a sled. Its contents could be organized using a custom-made app and QR-code system. And it could seal shut without any fiddling.
“We wanted to make the thing as tough as a shipping container,” says Tony, who has seen the impacts of gear failures in the mountains. (Ask him about the time he spent the night on Mt. Waddington, British Columbia’s highest summit, partially wrapped in the tattered remnants of a cheap bivvy blanket that shredded to pieces in the wind.)
During the process of experimenting with ways to make the RUX compressible yet capable of holding its shape in use, Tony used a snap-bracelet-type cuff to keep his pant leg away from the chain of his bicycle. It dawned on him: “this could work.” Soon, the RUX had the rigid yet foldable structure it needed, born of spring steel (think of a measuring tape that wants to stay straight but bends as needed).
Andre brought his own tech background to the process, building an app and QR code system that would let the RUX owner track exactly what checklist of items are in the RUX without opening and unpacking everything. And, just as software is improved and updated over time, the RUX is continually refined and relaunched with the updates incorporated. No need to name the latest model anything new—rather, the latest RUX is the very best RUX on the ongoing continuum of RUXing.
Meanwhile Jamie kept a laser focus on the launch date, and his brood of kids and gear provided ample excuses to test prototypes along the way.
While they build each RUX for long-term use, they can’t stop tinkering with each new release, which has taught them a lot about large-scale invention and themselves.
“To be honest, tinkering is mostly a solitary activity. And ideas are cheap—everybody has them, especially when it comes to their gear,” says Tony. “It’s relatively easy to create one of something. But the real work in being an outdoor gear company is the ongoing testing, sourcing of materials, communicating with manufacturing partners, taking customer feedback, and bringing a quality product to market.”
“The RUX looks relatively simple, but you could hardly have picked a more complex way to enter the outdoor market from a manufacturing perspective. Timelines require that you plan really far out to make a great product—you can never make last-minute decisions,” adds Andre.
It’s a methodical, exacting process. But it’s one they relish. As makers and flow state seekers, they know the drill. Tend to details, lay the groundwork, get dialed in. And by doing so, make more of life’s best moments possible—the view from the top pitch, the post powder-turn whoop, the clink of glasses with old friends.
“If you’re always ready to roll,” says Andre, “you can get right to the experience.”
BETH LOPEZ
Beth Lopez spent her formative years reading Dickens in a treehouse and negotiating with her teachers to catch the ski bus after the third period. Decades later, little has changed. Now a seasoned mountain athlete with skills, summits, and descents under her belt, Beth relishes any chance to get outside—and to make the outdoor world more inclusive and welcoming.
BETH LOPEZ
Beth spent her formative years reading Dickens in a treehouse and negotiating with her teachers to catch the ski bus after the third period. Decades later, little has changed. Now a seasoned mountain athlete with skills, summits, and descents under her belt, Beth relishes any chance to get outside—and to make the outdoor world more inclusive and welcoming.
info@HenceSupply.co
Park City, Utah 84098