The Equipt Story

Video Transcript

Hi, Paul here with Equipt. I thought I'd take a couple minutes and answer some questions that I usually get at different times and different points through this career about how Equipt started, where we've come since we started, and the things that I've seen in this industry of the overlanding world.

It was kind of interesting how I ended up in this overlanding space. It was a chance meeting with a gentleman from South Africa who was traveling with his girlfriend from South America to Alaska. He was traveling in a 79 Series Troopy Land Cruiser, and this was 2005. This was a while ago, so it's been 18 years.

I was part of the Wasatch Cruisers Land Cruiser club here in Utah and was part of the presidency in that. I asked the guy to stop and say hi to the club because we didn't see a whole lot of Troopies at that time. It was a very unique vehicle for us fanatical types about Land Cruiser stuff.

He was nice enough to stop on his way back from Alaska. We missed him on the way up there, but on the way back he was nice enough to stop. We went to dinner with him, my wife and I. His name is Jack Stoer. He's one of the founders of Eezi-Awn, and his girlfriend Margaret. They stopped, and we hit it off wonderfully. Wonderful folks, very sincere, honest folks, that's for sure.

He had on his Land Cruiser a bunch of things that I had never seen before. Quite honestly, I just simply hadn't been experienced in the products that he was showing me. He had this thing they called a rooftop tent on the top of his vehicle, and the funniest thing: in the back there was a fridge built into the truck. I was just blown away by the ideas that he had there.

I didn't realize it at the time that I met him, but he was the founder of Eezi-Awn, and they had been building the products that he had on his vehicle for, oh shoot, two decades prior to me ever seeing them. He asked me that day if I knew anybody in the United States that might be interested in offering something like what he had on his vehicle here in the United States.

After a sleepless night, I decided that I was going to start a company, and I was off on a fateful chance meeting with a fine gentleman on his travels. It was a slow burn, a slow start, and we started out by bringing some rooftop tents in to start with. That was an interesting experience, importing product from the other side of the planet.

Our first show was in 2006, and this was at Easter Jeep Safari. From the look on the faces of the people there at that show, you would have thought I had a second head. I was so far out and away from anything that anybody at that show had ever seen—having a rooftop tent on top of a Land Cruiser, of all things, at a Jeep Safari, of all things. That was a very interesting experience.

I spent a lot of time educating people about what the concept and the purpose and the premise is behind some of these products that we were starting to bring into the United States. It's been a long, interesting trip.

I've had the opportunity to meet some incredible people along the way, folks that are pioneers of this industry. Scott Brady with Expedition Portal and Overland Journal magazine—we hit it off as pals, and he showed me this idea he had about starting a magazine. I thought what a wonderful opportunity that was to be a part of that and to be one of the first people that Jonathan and Roseann Hanson called when they were starting up this little gathering called Overland Expo, and to be one of the first vendors to help out on those kinds of things.

There was this young, enterprising couple who came to me early on in their advancement, Clay and Michelle Croft, and they were thinking about making this video series online back in the day. When we started to help them, it was just wonderful to see where we've come over the last 17–18 years.

To see the expansion of the market, to see the expansion of the possibilities of people taking these wonderful concepts and ideas of the overlanding industry and traveling the planet, traveling and learning more about themselves and the country that they live in, or the world that we all live in, and to put smiles on faces day in and day out—it's just been a pleasure of mine to be involved with that.

So it's a long, strange trip, and we're far from done. I'm just excited to be a part of it—to work alongside people like Mario Donovan at Overland, to work with National Luna and with Eezi-Awn and the Escape Gear guys out of Cape Town, and Sauron from Alubox out of Denmark, and to travel the world and see places that I never would have had an opportunity to see with groups like Expedition 7 and my other friends in the Land Cruiser racing community.

What a wonderful life I've had to go and do these things. I find myself just pinching myself sometimes at how blessed I am to be a part of that select bunch.

So thank you, everybody out there that's been a part of that journey with me, and let's keep it going. Very excited to keep going. Take care.

End Transcript