Field Journal

Stories Behind the Gear: NEMO Equipment
Written by Harriet Osborne // Photography Courtesy of NEMO Equipment

We chat with NEMO Equipment’s CEO and Founder, Cam Brensinger, about Endless Promise, a circular collection designed to keep products out of landfill and on the trails.

It was during a sleepless night in 2002, in a poorly designed bivvy bag on the side of Mount Washington, New Hampshire, USA, that Cam Brensinger decided to build a brand dedicated to enhancing the outdoor experience.

He was 25 years old at the time; a Rhode Island School of Design student looking for a project for his finals. Cam began creating a logo, filing the brand’s first trademarks, building a business plan, and sketching the first product ideas.

Entering a competitive market wasn’t going to be easy – but he was driven by a belief that the hardest routes are often the most rewarding. ‘I learnt from outdoor adventures that the most enduring memories and meaningful experiences always seem to come from choosing the more ambitious route,’ he says.

After graduating, Cam set up operations in a restored textile mill in New Hampshire with a team of designers and engineers. They worked for two years patterning and building prototypes for his first patented air-beam-supported tents.

He publicly launched NEMO, and it quickly began winning awards for design and innovation. NEMO was the overall winner of the ISPO Brand New award in 2005, and its designs were among the 100 best inventions of the year awarded by TIME and Popular Science.

But there was a problem. ‘I remember bringing our products to one of our most important customers very early in the business. After doing our line showing, the buyer said, “These are the coolest, most innovative tents I’ve ever seen, but they’re also overpriced and designed for our least significant customer segments.” He was right. I was steering the product team to make products that appealed to me and my outdoor interests without really understanding or empathising with our potential customers. It was a tremendous wake-up call.’

‘The most enduring memories and meaningful experiences always seem to come from choosing the more ambitious route’ —NEMO CEO and Founder Cam Brensinger

Cam listened carefully to the brand’s retail partners and discerning outdoor customers who – like him – demand more from their gear. ‘If customers are going to invest their money in a new, expensive piece of gear, they look for companies with strong values who create products that will last a long time and enhance their experience outdoors.’

Cam distilled his values into three commitments: to make the best gear for adventure, play an important role in creating a diverse and thriving outdoor community, and lead the way in tackling the hard problems of how the company and industry impact the environment.

These commitments were never more apparent than when Covid hit in 2020. While many businesses were forced to lay off or furlough employees, temporarily or permanently shut down, NEMO took a different approach. ‘We committed not to lay off anyone or stop investing in product innovation. Instead, we doubled down on the two things most vital to our company: people and product.’

The goal was not just to get through the pandemic but to come out the other side stronger. It was during this time he asked the team to consider: ‘What would it look like to skip the halfway steps and go straight to building a fully recyclable product?’

To meet most textile recycling requirements, at least 90 per cent of a product must be made from the same material or polymer – including the fabrics, buckles, cushioning, and zippers.

‘We choose different materials for different components based on their properties to achieve optimal strength and weight. For example, a typical sleeping bag might use anywhere from 5–10 polymers in its fibres and trims. Streamlining the materials meant developing entirely new fabrics and hardware backed by extensive testing and validation.’

The team wasn’t willing to sacrifice performance, even in the pursuit of sustainability. So they developed construction changes, material substitutions, and multiple rounds of testing – amounting to more than 15 designs and prototypes.

To launch Endless Promise, an ambitious collection committed to circularity, they took their top-selling Forte synthetic sleeping bag and re-engineered it to be fully recyclable. The outer shell and inner lining are now made from 100 per cent recycled materials, and the synthetic fill is crafted from 100 per cent post-consumer recycled content.

All products in the Endless Promise collection can be repaired for further use, either at home or with the help of NEMO’s warranty team. Items can be recycled in the US through partnerships with
Unifi, Ambercycle, and Allied Feather + Down. Repair and recycling is being launched with new partners in mainland EU in 2024; UK options are also in the works.

Another example of innovation is within NEMO’s core backpacking tents, now made with NEMO’s proprietary OSMO fabric. ‘Before we began the OSMO project, we could see that some other tent fabrics did a better job of beading water and resisting wet-out than our fabrics. We couldn’t be the best tent brand without unequivocally having the best fabrics, and the team quickly rallied around this mission.’

Two years of development and hundreds of iterations later, they developed the OSMO fabrics – 100 per cent recycled and PFAS-free, with four times longer-lasting water repellency than comparable tent fabrics, three times less stretch when wet, and exceptional strength at a lower weight.

Since announcing its commitment to cut its carbon intensity in half by 2030, NEMO has achieved a 22 percent reduction in emissions; by the end of 2024, the brand will have produced over 100,000 items with circularity pathways. ‘There’s much more to learn and accomplish, but we are committed to taking full responsibility for our impacts.’

When Cam started the company at 25 years old, his perspective on leading a business was worlds apart from what it is today. ‘I imagined I was supposed to be always charging ahead, never showing fear, always having the right answers. My own maturing, the social progress of the last two decades, and some good reading and advice have given me a fuller view of leadership.’

Now, his greatest satisfaction is seeing the people around him succeed. ‘It didn’t take me long to figure out that the key to accomplishing our mission was building a great team of people. It gives me the same feeling I had prior to NEMO when I learned to rock climb with college friends – we’d climb a big route together and get to the top, even though we barely knew what we were doing and were unguided. We just figured it out as we went.’