I wanted to have a rucksack large enough to carry a camera and lenses on a plane and jumped at the chance to back this Peak Design project. They have an excellent track record of delivering projects in Kickstarter. Last year I backed the Everyday Messenger Bag and the bag was delivered as promised before Christmas. I had also added field pouches and from Backerkit straps for my camera.
This Kickstarter campaign was as well run as the one last year with all queries answered quickly. During the campaign PD took on-board suggestions and concerns from backers. The team at PD also ran Google Hangouts where they showed prototypes and answered the questions and concerns of backers. The designs of some of the bags were changed and extra dividers added to the 20L backpack by request.
This was my 14th Kickstarter project.
This project was successfully funded on September 10th 2016 with a total pledge of $6,565,782 against a target of $500,000 with 26,359 backers.
Everyday 30L Backpack
As the campaign progressed I decided to alter my pledge to the larger 30L backpack but unusually for PD only the first orders for bags were at a lower price. I arranged with a fellow backer (from Australia) to simultaneously cancel our pledges and to pick up the others’ released pledge. I was now ordering a 30L backpack.
Everyday Tote
After much discussion we added an Everyday Tote bag to our order by simply adding a dollar amount to my pledge. This was at the slightly higher price.
All through August a debate was going on about the size of the Everyday Sling – would it be big enough to carry a slightly bigger Mac lapptop. So a vote was taken – should the Sling be increased slightly or not. PD decided to increase the size and made a couple of other adjustments. Plus PD had by then removed the limits on pledging for the slightly cheaper ‘early bird’ bags, so everyone could now switch their single bag pledges and buy the bag at the same ‘early price’.
Range Pouch
During the hangouts PD showed another new product – the Range Pouch. This would be perfect for protecting lenses and as per all the other PD products it had extra features such as the ability to stack lenses safely inside the pouch. I added another few dollars to my pledge for these too!
Everyday Sling
While I was away on a trip I managed to snag some free fast wi-fi and discovered that PD had added a new option to buy all three bags, all at the ‘early bird’ prices. It was with some trepidation that I cancelled my pledge and then re-pledged for the new option remembering to add the dollars for the three different size pouches.
All I have to do now is decide what else to order from the rest of PD’s range when the Backerkit email arrives. This is when we decide on the colours of the bags and assign those extra dollars and perhaps add more to the order.