New Brand in Store: ORTLIEB
We've just started stocking a new brand in our European stores: German baggage maestros ORTLIEB. If you haven't come across their products before then read on, and if you have then you'll know they make some of the best waterproof bags and packs in Europe.
They are very well known and respected in Continental Europe, but are sometimes overlooked in the UK. Do that at your peril as they produce some very good quality reliable bags. We're currently stocking a wide range of their dry-bags and other camp accessories including the eminently practical waterproof toilet roll holder.
ORTLIEB have been in business for 30 years with all manufacturing still based in Germany. Like all the best outdoor brands keen climber and cyclist Hartmut Ortlieb founded the company after developing his own waterproof dry bags and bicycle panniers in his garage when he couldn't find what he needed on the market already.
Inspiration hit when he was being soaked on his bicycle on a tour around southern England in an (unsurprisingly) wet spring in 1981. The teenager noted that trucks covered their goods with tarps to keep them dry and decided that that's what he'd use for making a pannier for his next tour.
Using his mum's sewing machine, he got down to developing it on his return. Friends and people who see his panniers start asking him where they can source them, and soon enough demand is outstripping his ability to run them up himself. A company is born as he's about to leave school in 1982.
Magazines and reviewers are constantly impressed by the products and it's rare a month goes past without one of ORTLIEB's products being recommended to consumers by industry insiders. Their products are guaranteed for five years and with an almost pathological fixation on the reliability of waterproof seams and seals, you can be confident you'll get a good quality product when you invest in ORTLIEB.
Take a look at all the products we've got in store from ORTLIEB's line.
