From beating Facebook to the internet to a UK factory floor: the story behind Alpkit, repairs and April Fools included, for anyone who joined us more recently.
This isn't a blind date. A lot of you buying Alpkit gear this week weren't around when we started... but some of you were. Hello, let's get familiar. You might not know an Alpkit repair service exists, what the Foundation is or where Foundation grants actually go, or why some of our products say "made in the UK." Here are 6.5 things about Alpkit to distract you from more important things going on in your life.
1. We were online before Facebook and YouTube existed
Nice one grandad, bet you had a MySpace page as well. Actually no we didn't, we weren't that cool. We did have UKC profiles though, does that count?
Alpkit popped into existence in 2004. We were 4 friends - Nick, Col, Jim and myself - who climbed, paddled, hiked and camped and saw an opportunity to make the kit we wanted. For this to work we bet that we would find enough people who felt the same. We didn't have many resources but we had bags of imagination. Crucial to the plot was our theory that having a direct relationship with our customers was far too important to leave to someone we didn't know.
£72 for some cart software, £50 for hosting and £14 for a domain name later - the first merch we ever sold was a t-shirt, through a website we built ourselves. No distributor, no middleman. Sell direct, keep the price honest: that idea is still how we work today. Our Gourdon rucksack is a good example: no pockets, no internal frame, just a waterproof roll-top dry bag with straps that does the job and just gets out of the way.
2. We don't have a call centre, we have people
We get more customer contact than most companies. It's a fascinating source of insight and one we guard jealously. When you contact us you are no more than a single point of contact away from any of the team. This is why some of your more involved equipment questions might be answered by Joel personally, or Emily in clothing, Neil in bike.
Our team is small and expert. Product testing means playing with our kit in the field, doing silly things with it because we know you will too. Jumping off bouldering mats to see how they land, and snapping trekking poles to find out exactly how much load they take before they fail.
It's a small thing, but it means the person answering your question has usually stood in the rain wearing the jacket you're asking about. Read more about who we are.
3. We repair your broken kit
Holly, Lizzie, Viri, Di, Alex and Cal and the rest of the Repair Station team have fixed 7,122 zips, buckles and rips in one year. Throw in some custom kit mods and 1,200 garments washed and reproofed in the last year and we reckon that makes us the UK's biggest instore repair service. They love fixing so much they will fix kit from any brand, not just ours. These Repair Heroes - there is no better way to describe them - have saved rucksacks, reproofed jackets, and turned at least one old coat into a Mountain Rescue dog's winter coat.
4. We run our own outdoor festival
Big Shakeout is back at Thornbridge Outdoors, 25 to 27 September, with a full speaker lineup and programme of guided walks, rides, and instructor-led climbing and paddling courses.
Why would little old Alpkit choose to put itself through the trials of organising an annual festival? Well, glad you asked. It started because we were going to some great events in Europe. TAB and MelloBlocco were favourites, mixing outdoor activity with live talks, films, food and music. We didn't see anything like this happening in the UK so we thought, we can do that.
And so this festival has run, on and off, ever since. An event organised and run by Alpkit staff for our customers. In the years to come it would lead to a programme of store events called the School of Adventure, supported by the Alpkit Foundation (more on that in a mo). It's an outdoor skills programme offering hands-on training, workshops, and guided activities, such as navigation, bikepacking, climbing, and caving, led by qualified instructors to help people build confidence in the outdoors.
5. 3000 grassroots grants, funded by a slice of every sale
We set up the Alpkit Foundation in 2015 to break down the barriers people face getting outdoors. The Alpkit Foundation receives most of its funding from Alpkit sales (that's where you come in) as well as individual donations. It provides small grants to grassroots outdoor projects: kids' climbing clubs, mountain rescue teams, local access schemes. It's gone to well over 3000 of them so far, and keeps growing every year.
Continuum works alongside it: donate kit you're no longer using, and we get it to youth groups, charities, and people who need it, instead of it sitting in an attic or heading to landfill. It's the same instinct as the repair service, just aimed outwards. Read more about why repair and reuse beats recycling.
6. We are makers
We're proud to make our own kit right here in the UK - it's the first thing you see when you visit Alpkit campus. Open the door and there's Margaret overseeing production of your new bag. That workshop is what spawned our bouldering mats and bike luggage: tried and trusted products made in-house, by hand, accompanied by the daily drone of sewing machines whirring and makers hooting with laughter. It started small: the first UK-made batch was just 20 mats, cut from over 400 bits of webbing and 80 metres of shock cord.
In 2026 the factory's busier than ever, now making Trakke bags too - gorgeous waxed canvas travel and adventure bags, sewn by the same team.
6.5. We have a tradition that may surprise you
Every April Fools' Day, for as long as most of us can remember, we've announced something that defies reality. A fully automated, robot-run customer service team (who knew that was going to be an actual thing!), half the product for half the price, a backstroke-only swim goggle, a spoof deal website, a major retrospective exhibition of Alpkit's own back catalogue at a London gallery.
We like to have a bit of fun, that's why we love this industry so much.
So there you have it, a few things that you may or may not have known about us. If you knew it all, congratulations, you have spent too much time with us - we truly appreciate it.
A side note on the main image. There were a lot of images I could have chosen, so why did I land on this one? It is me from 2011 on the way to MelloBlocco. It captures a real exciting time of innovation for us and aligns nicely with my ramblings above. You can see some product concepts that are raw, but which would play an important part of our future. It started from a personal quest - how can you go to bouldering festival on a bike with everything you need. Self supported, multiple activities, rolled into a single adventure. It shows early iterations of our bike luggage, bouldering mats, ultra-lightweight camping kit and of course our interest in 2 wheels.