Back in July 2008 Ryan Powell set off to hitch-hike across America with the goal of creating a documentary of the people he met along the way. And nearly two years later, he’s still at it. The term ‘hitch-hike‘ is relative in this situation as he has only allowed himself to accept rides when drivers voluntarily stop to ask if he needs one. So, in turn, Ryan has seen most of America on foot. How does this story relate to Gregory?
Well, when you’re carrying everything you own on your back across amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesties, you better have a comfortable, yet functional pack. Ryan chose the Gregory Palisade 80 to accompany him on his journey and, unfortunately, Ryan had some initial difficulties with the hip-belt. While we’re very proud of our quality control in general here at Gregory, it’s difficult to achieve a perfect track record, and Ryan’s problem stemmed from an isolated batch of defective plastic material from one of our suppliers that caused the waist belt frame to crack. This was a problem for a limited number of other Gregory customers who unfortunately also got a pack with one of these defective hip belt frames.
In our mind, the measure of a company is not whether you have the occasional problem, but how you deal with that problem to keep the trust of a loyal customer. We proactively communicated with our customers concerning this topic, and we also tried to help customers directly, rather than having them go through a retailer. In this case, John Sears from Gregory’s R&D contacted Ryan to explain the problem and offered to send him the newest Whitney 95.
After much use, Ryan was extremely pleased with the quality and functionality of the pack. So last month, while he was ‘on the road,’ Ryan 
stopped by the Gregory headquarters in Sacramento to meet the crew and thank them for their help. During his visit he met with John Sears, Director of R&D and Nick Kelso, Sample Maker who beefed up his pack by replacing worn out and dirty parts on his pack as well as reinforcing seams. Here’s what he had to say about his visit:
‘The people at Gregory are awesome. I was there for five hours, talking pretty extensively to almost everyone in the building. The also fed me, an act that always wins major points with me, But mostly it was just cool meeting them and seeing a little bit of their operation. It’s clear that they spend a lot of time working to make their products the best they can be, largely listening to feedback from people like me.’ -Ryan Powell via his blog
It’s people like Ryan who really get to know our packs and without people like him, we wouldn’t have the quite the same insight about our packs as we do. So, we sincerely appreciate their feedback and always enjoy hearing their stories.
Thanks, Ryan and good luck with Aimless.
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