Philosophy

ARCTOS PACKS DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

We are guided by a first principles design philosophy. When it comes to packs for mountain biking, those first principles are:

  1. COMFORT. A pack must be comfortable to wear for hours while carrying your water/gear/food. This is why waist-based carry is always our starting point for a pack. Your upper back and shoulders, an area that needs to move (and that contains your aerobic engine!), should be as free as possible from weight, heat, and restriction.
  2. STABILITY. Mountain bike packs shouldn't flop, rotate, or shift while riding. This can happen two ways: movement of the pack on the body, or movement of your water/gear/food within the pack. Most manufacturers try to deal with these issues separately with cinches or elastic on the waist/shoulder straps and separate cinches on the pack body. Since this is such an important basic function, we accomplish both types of cinching with the front waist straps so your pack doesn't move on your body and your pack's contents don't move within the pack.
  3. ACCESS. Items that need to be used during a ride should be as accessible as possible. Many manufacturers' wing pocket design seems like an afterthought (too small for important items, not secure enough, not one-hand operable). Some competitor packs don't even have wing pockets. Our wing pockets are built as large as possible to carry most items you could need while riding: the largest phones, multiple food items, ear buds, bell, etc. Our zipper pulls are easy to find with gloves on and are easy to operate with one hand.
  4. DURABILITY. Dirt, sun, sweat, crashes, branches. For a mountain biking pack to last a long time, it needs to deal with those 5 things well for years. Where possible, we avoid elastics (which degrade in the sun), mesh (which catches and rips), and small cheap no-name zippers (which sweat and dirt cause to separate and fail). Our packs are designed to endure years of real-world use on a mountain bike.

ARCTOS PACKS SERVICE PHILOSOPHY

Pack manufacturers owned by sports-conglomerate investment companies know they can cut corners on construction/materials and rely on the majority of their users not using the pack frequently enough, or hard enough, to ever need service.

This leaves customers who ride hard and ride often needing to send packs in for warranty service/replacement frequently. 

That's not how we do things. We're more of a "make people happy" company, not a "maximize shareholder value" company. We build our packs tough enough for heavy users, and if you do damage one of our packs, we'll get you a replacement one just as fast (or faster) than the big guys.