Can you believe that summer’s already half over?
Now is the time to plan your next camping trip!
And here’s an extra incentive from Go CampKit.
We’re offering a special, mid-summer promo on our Go CampKit totes and footlockers. Order now at $75 for our totes, $99 for our footlocker model. These are our lowest prices ever. Limited availability.
Buy one for yourself. Or as a gift for a lucky new graduate or someone on your Xmas list. Tell a friend.
If this post seems uncharacteristically salesy, well, we started Go CampKit because we are so enthusiastic about getting more people outdoors. We hope you are planning a wonderful camping trip!
Order online at www.gocampkit.com.
What’s camping got to do with “True Grit”?
Can camping promote confidence and true grit?
In the blockbuster film “True Grit,” a tough U .S. marshal scoffs at 14-year-old farm girl Mattie Ross when she tells him she intends to accompany him into Indian territory to track her father’s murderer. Undeterred, she proudly cites this evidence of her ability to handle such a trip: an overnite trip she took with her father where they happily told stories around a campfire and slept outdoors.
Anyone would question Mattie’s assumption that her single camping trip is in anyway comparable to the dangers and difficulties of her proposed journey. But you’ve also got to admire her confidence and “grit.” And, as a parent, you may wonder how to inspire such resourcefulness and self-confidence in your own children?
Although I wouldn’t dare suggest that taking your kids camping will lead to future acts of heroism and resilience of screenplay dimensions, I will point to “True Grit” in making these observations about the benefits of camping.
Camping creates happy memories. Recounting her single camping experience is one of the very few times Mattie shares a happy memory from her past and shows herself to be so young. Now, just as then, camping can lead to enduring memories of family fun.
Camping makes the outdoors a more friendly place. Because of her happy memories camping, Mattie does not regard the wilderness as a frightening and dangerous place to be avoided. Studies today indicate many kids spend little or no time appreciating nature and are, in fact, both unfamiliar with and scared of the outdoors. There’s nothing like camping to create opportunities for kids to discover and enjoy nature. By doing so, you can begin to nurture a lifelong long of the outdoors.
Camping builds confidence and an adventurous spirit. Call it naivete, but Mattie is more confident of her ability to adapt to rugged conditions and to embark on a dangerous adventure because she has left her farm before, and enjoyed it. Kids who leave their usual suburban/urban“comfort zone” for a camping trip outdoors gain the opportunity to experience new surroundings, be adventurous, and think of themselves as “outdoorsy.”
Thinking about going camping soon? I think Mattie Ross would say, “Just do it.”
It’s never the wrong season or too early (or late) to think about your next camping trips.
If you’re thinking of going to a very popular campground on a holiday or summer weekend, don’t wait to make plans! Prime campsites can get snapped up within hours, even minutes, of when reservations can first be made online or by phone.
Here’s a simple but helpful tip: to make sure you remember to put camping on your “to do list” and get the best campsite selection, we suggest that campers enter reminders on their calendars (online, cell phone or print) for the first day that reservations can be made for their preferred campground. Even better, add additional reminder notes for several days leading up to that date so that they don’t forget to make reservations at the earliest time (often 8 a.m.) and can remind camping buddies to do the same.
Don’t put off making a reservation because of uncertainty. In most cases, campground cancellation fees are low, and well worth the risk of incurring in exchange for securing just the place for a perfect camping getaway.
Visit the resource page at our website www.gocampkit.com for information on camping and camping reservations. Also, we’d like to share a helpful article we found that includes California camping reservation information, including reservation availability and contact information and options: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2011/01/26/1744755/adam-blauert-how-and-when-to-save
Cool outdoor products galore for outdoor enthusiasts
In search of ideas, contacts and marketing/sales partners for Go CampKit, last week, we hopped on a very early flight to Salt Lake City for this year’s Outdoor Retailer Winter Market. The trade show– along with its summer counterpart–are North America’s largest gatherings of their kind. Over 16000 retailers, manufacturers, buyers attended this packed gathering of the lifestyle/sports industry.
What did we find? Outdoor sports equipment is a huge industry with well-known, big players but also an inspiring and varied assortment of entrepreneurs with products that are quirky, cool, fun, useful, nice to have and need to have! We’ll feature some of these in our blog in the coming months.
We also found that the industry is competitive, that finding ways to distribute our camping kits is a major challenge, and that word-of-mouth customer referrals and reviews and a robust online presence are invaluable. Please help us spread the word about Go CampKit. Feedback and suggestions are always welcomed.
Teaching others how to camp!
For those who’ve never camped before, planning a first trip can seem daunting. What to bring? How to cook? What to buy? where to go?
At Go CampKit, we’re passionate about “spreading the word” about the benefits and joys of camping. That’s why we decided to launch Go CampKit — to encourage more people to camp more often by creating products that make it easy to camp.
Now, we’ve taken an extra step. Although our website www.gocampkit.com includes information resources on how to prepare for a camping trip, we’ve developed a short course to give those who want to camp but would like a helping hand to preparing.
Our 2.5 hour course is called “Camping Made Easy”, and we’re offering it through our local adult community education center.
We hope that our students will leave our class equipped with the know-how and confidence to embark on the first of many camping trips. We’ll cover a lot of the basics that are already familiar to experienced campers, but are new and not-so-obvious to the uninitiated.
Here’s a link to our course description: http://ace.fuhsd.org/classcatalog/pdf/q42010.pdf The full catalog is at www.ace.fuhsd.org
We welcome suggestions about course content, and we welcome guest speakers. Do you have a valuable tip or other advice for new campers that you’d like to share? What do you wish you knew before you went on your first camping trip.
We’d love to hear from you.
New look to our Go CampKit website
Go CampKit is in our second (camping) season.
One of our biggest challenges: figuring out how to cost-effectively let more people know about our products.
A small business, we don’t have a big budget for advertising, collateral or in-store promotions. Internet marketing is vital.
This winter, we took a step back from our Go CampKit website, got some feedback and decided to embark on a total redesign.
Our goal: to make it easier for people to understand the benefits of our camping kits and to take a look at the different models and contents inside.
How did we do?
We invite you to provide feedback, and tell a friend about our website.
America’s best idea
Ken Burns’ 12-hour documentary series on America’s National Parks, “America’s best idea,” tells the story of how National Parks came to being and urges us to preserve and love them.
There’s much to admire about John Muir and others, past and present, who have championed the preservation of nature. The series’ cinematography treats viewers to drop-dead beautiful landscapes.
I hope that the series will inspire more people to visit the Parks and safeguard their future.
If you’ve been thinking about visiting a National Park, we hope you will.
We welcome you to write to this blog. Tell us about your favorite park, your ideal camping trip, and what you would say to those why say they don’t camp!
Know Thy (Camping) Customer
Know your customer–it’s one of the basic laws of good marketing. We’d certainly like to reach out more to campers who are our target customers, listen to their feedback and suggestions, find out about their camping needs. Please, don’t be a mystery, reader. Drop us a line. We want to talk!
Cyberspace can be a mysterious place to do business. Our website traffic statistics tell us that people visit our website, but few visits result in a purchase. Why?
We’re working on revamping our website to make it more welcoming, and put our best cyberfoot forward. In the meantime, we’d love to hear from you.
Backpacking Made Easy, With 4-Footed Friends
They say a picture is worth a 1000 words, and that sometimes, “You’ve got to see it to believe it!” With these sayings in mind, plus knowing of the popularity of online video sharing site YouTube, we decided to check out YouTube for camping-related videos.
Check out the Resources page of the www.GoCampKit.com website to find “how to videos” plus cartoons for kids on the joys of camping.
Have you got a recipe, activity or tip to share? Please write to our blog or create a short video on the subject. You’re only one step away from being a published writer and/or short film producer!
