Timmermade became a business on it’s own. I was originally inspired by some friends who hiked the Appalachian Trail with some simple gear they had made on their own. From there I pulled apart an old sleeping bag I had to see how it was made and re-make it into a new one. I also ordered up some materials and tried my hand at a super basic synthetic sleeping bag. All went well with those, but I didn’t go much further till later on in life when I started looking for good wool clothing. I found that the prices for what I was looking for were excessive and I decided to make my own wool jackets, hoodies, and pants out of old surplus army wool blankets. These are some of my favorite clothing items to this day, but this led me down a path of gear making where the ultimate test of skill was to make super ultralight stuff. At the time I wasn’t overly interested in this genre, but it was a challenge and I had a friend who was very interested. He became Timmermade’s first customer with an early jacket and quilt. I eventually came around to the ways of the ultralight community (weight is pain!) and started making more of the stuff for myself. It wasn’t long before it was proposed that I try to sell my items. I posted a picture on social media of something I made with a little hint about how I should “take orders” and that is exactly what happened. Timmermade went on like that for a while where I would make some gear, post pictures of it and that would bring in some orders, which I would then post and so on. There started to be a word-of-mouth going around that kept some business coming in too. However, I realized that even though it was going along on it’s own, I really liked where it was going. Making shelter. It’s the number 1 item on the primitive skills to-do list and our most primitive need as humans. Yeah, it’s a lot of high tech stuff, but in the end it’s the same basic goal. To stay warm and dry. I’m a big fan of spending the day pushing the limits, but then being cozy and comfy, almost luxurious, at camp and I spend many hours thinking about how to do this in an ultralight package.