I ran into this guy tucked way back in some corner of the Outdoor Retailer show dedicated to fabrics. It’s the place product designers find colors and patterns for next year, and you have to work hard to find this part of the show. A lot of new business owners end up back there since it’s cheap and they don’t know any better. These people can be extremely aggressive in their sales pitch since a lot of them have sunk life savings or maxed-out credit cards into their Organic Dog Food business. My friend Brian explained to me the first time I came to the show that the key is to keep your eyes ahead and not make contact otherwise you’ll end up listening to 10 minute sales pitches on LED earrings. But some of them it doesn’t matter. They yell as you walk by and start talking anyway. Maybe it’s the Midwest in me but I’ve never had it in my heart to just keep walking. Unfortunately for them I have no buying power at Backcountry.com.

This guy shouted at me in the materials room and I prepared to be underwhelmed by some kind of water-based bike grease or sunscreen-soaked towel. Instead he showed me a zipper pull. You know, the things that say YKK on your fly. He makes them in three sizes, but here’s the thing–they can screw apart and break into two pieces so you can add them to any zipper anywhere on the zipper. Seems lame at first until you see it in action. He drops the same one in the middle of plastic backpack zipper and then on a metal-zip broken fly. It screws on-and-off and can go either way on the zipper, and it can somehow work on zipper that have several broken teeth. Basically, if every backpack replaced one of their pulls with one of these Flip and Zip Pulls, you could use it to fix broken zippers on your tent, pack or pants while you’re in the backcountry. A pretty good idea that’s insanely simple in its design. Hopefully a couple designers pick up on it while they’re back in the materials part of the Outdoor Retailer show.

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