Outdoor Vitals is a camping and overland brand founded in Cedar City, Utah, in 2014.
The first Outdoor Vitals test lab was a backyard in southern Utah. Founder Tayson Whittaker told the Outdoor Biz Podcast that when the Cedar City company started with sleeping bags, he slept out there in the middle of winter to learn as much as he could. "What we publicly like to claim," he said, "is that we sleep in every sleeping bag down to within five degrees of its rating."
At Southern Utah University Whittaker graduated in finance and started the entrepreneurship club. By graduation he was selling no-name sleeping bags to his friends. He filed for the business name in his last month of school. In 2014 he put $500 of his own money into the company.
Outdoor Vitals sells direct, which it says takes 40 to 50 percent off retail prices. In 2018 its first apparel piece, a jacket, went to Kickstarter, and Whittaker said it presold a million dollars' worth. It says it is still investor free.
Whittaker has said some of the "biggest horror stories" he hears come from people who froze on one camping trip as kids and swore off the outdoors. He did his freezing in the backyard, on purpose.
Outdoor Vitals' founder once wore 50 gallon trash bags, with holes cut for his head and arms, as rain jackets.
New from Outdoor Vitals
Resolve Down Anorak
Outdoor Vitals introduced the Resolve Down Anorak on September 25 as the first piece in a limited Special Projects line. The podcast says the jacket holds about 13 ounces of down and weighs about 24 ounces in a men's large.
