Tank Bags: Your Input Needed!

December 31, 2014

Up next on the development agenda: tank bags.

Tank bags are tricky.  It’s a crowded category with a lot of similar offerings and a lot of opposing viewpoints on everything from how big/small they should be, to what kind of features they should incorporate, to whether they should even be used at all.  For the Mosko tank bag, we want to do something really cool and different.  Something that stands out.  We already have a few ideas going but we’re still waiting for that ah-ha moment to strike.

For illustrative purposes and for getting the dialog started, here are some tank bags offered by other soft luggage companies.  We’ve seen some of these in person but not all of them, and only briefly at rallies and gatherings.  Hopefully some of you might have some personal experiences to share.

Enduristan Sandstorm – this is a unique looking bag.  Looks like some good welding work, nice zippers.  A relatively new company?

Wolfman Expedition – I have one of these.  Great little bag.  Simple, tough, good price.

Giant Loop Fandango

Wolfman Timberwolf – This is Wolfmans top of the line offering, in terms of cost anyway.

Ortlieb – this looks kind of interesting.  Ortlieb does some cool welded-seam waterproof stuff.

Touratech – I have an old Touratech bag.  This looks like an update on their classic design with some extra bells and whistles.

For me personally, my tank bag is always a total mess.  Crap accumulates in there: batteries, lighters, tangled cables, sun lotion, toll change, wallet, cell phone, receipts, garbage, passport/paperwork, lens cloth, spot locator, maps, tire gauge, headlamp, leatherman, etc.  I hate digging through all that stuff, but at the same time it’s a totally necessary storage spot, and I’m not sure if the things I put in there are consistent enough to have “custom made” storage spots.  I interact with my tank bag more throughout the day/night than any other bag on the bike.  It’s always in reach no matter where I am: restaurant, fire, tent, hotel, wherever.  For me it’s a really important piece of kit.

Here’s my wish list on tank bags:

–  Truly 100% waterproof.  No rain cover.

– Electronics integration: charging cable pass-through.

– A waterproof but visible way to view a cell phone, with a way to run a headphone cable and charging cable, but that won’t make an iphone overheat on a hot day like most of the clear map pockets do.

– Map pocket for paper maps.  I would love to not need this, but it does come in handy sometimes.

– Quick & easy on/off the bike.

– Easy to switch between bikes.

– Easy gas-fill access.

– Compartmentalized internal/external storage.  I don’t really know how I want that structured though, because it’s always a different mix of stuff.  Ideas:

– cable storage

– loose change/money storage

– map storage

– small round item storage: chap stick, lighers, pens, batteries

– document storage

– sunglass/goggle storage (i.e. felt pocket)

– goggle/glass wipe/shammy on hand

– easy access phone/wallet compartment

– Comfortable off-bike carry option (i.e. backpack straps).  It would be cool if it turned into a real backpack that actually looks and functions like a backpack instead of looking/feeling like a tank bag that’s hanging off my back.  Like something I would actually use to go hiking, run errands, or trek around a city on foot if I’m on a long cross-border trip.

– Easily removable integrated tank pannier option

– Doesn’t get in the way when I’m up on the pegs

– Won’t dump my phone and other stuff on the side of the road if the bottom of the map pocket doesn’t close right.

– Tool storage (maybe, I don’t store tools in there now, but I would consider it)

– Hydration/water storage (same with this, I don’t store water there now, but would consider it)

– Expands/contracts

– Would be cool if there was an option to use the same bag as a tail bag as well for day rides.

Not sure if there’s anything out there that currently does all of the above.   Certainly there are some bags that do some of it.  That’s part of what make this such a tough category to enter.  I keep thinking of my Dakine Nomad pack for mountain biking and my Dakine Heli Pro pack for backcountry skiing:

I’ve been using both these packs for years and they’re awesome. Both are Andrew’s designs, back when he worked for DaKine.  They have all the features I want, none I don’t, in a compact easy to access package.  For the Nomad there’s a pouch for sunglasses, a spot for a spare tube, spot for an air pump, helmet carrier, spot for bike tool, hydration bag, etc.  Same on the heli pro: hydration bladder, backcountry shovel storage, ski/board carriers, space for avalanche probe/saw, padded goggle pocket, etc.  I feel like our tank bags should be something along these lines, but for a moto.

I currently have a Wolfman expedition tank bag, which has held up great over a lot of miles and many crashes.  It’s simple, strong, and goes on/off easily.  Not fully waterproof but water resistant enough that I don’t worry about it too much, especially since the aerodynamics of the bike tend to keep it sheltered from direct rain.  The map pocket is really small, and my cell phone often slides out of the map pocket if the velcro isn’t closed all the way, which is easy to do, especially if there’s a map in there too.   My favorite things about this bag are the simplicity, easy on/off, and adaptability to different bikes.  It looks like this.

My other tank bag is made by Touratech.  It looks like the pic below, except that the side panniers got torn off a long time ago.  Then repaired, then torn off again.  They don’t survive crashes very well.  Also the harness is kind of a PITA to get on/off.  And this bag is not waterproof at all, but it does come with one of those rain condoms.  Also, because the map pocket opening is at the bottom of the pocket, and the velcro closure is getting old, things slide out.  Maps, cell phone, etc.  Despite all that, for long-distance pavement touring, it’s a pretty good bag.  Really expensive though.

These two bags are at totally opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of size, features, and cost.  Whichever one I have it’s always a total mess inside, and it seems to fill up quickly.

We think there’s an opportunity to step up the game on tank bags and do something radically different.  But because there are already so many features out there spread out over so many different makes/models, plus so many opposing opinions on what is/isn’t useful, it’s hard to figure out where to start.  Every one of my riding buddies uses a different tank bag and there’s no obvious consensus on which is best.

We’re reaching out for help on this.  We have shop-time reserved with Chip over the next couple months.  This is a window of time where we can incorporate and test a bunch of ideas.  Here are some questions to help get the ideas going:

– Who is making the best tank bag out there right now and why is it the best?

– What are some of the best/worst features of the tank bags you’ve used?

– What are some things that you store in your tank bag all the time (things that we can make special pockets/carriers for)?

– Do you have a preference for a zippered mounting harness vs a clip-on style bag without a harness?

– How do you feel about tank panniers?  Why don’t more people use them?

– Do you use the map pocket as it was designed (ie for maps), for something else, or not at all?

– Have you ever had a truly waterproof tank bag?  If so, was it the “rain condom” type or was the design innately waterproof (ie welded seams)?

We want to develop three tank bag designs to cover the full range of bikes, from big adventure bikes to smaller enduros.  We’ll start with the middle size and then scale/feature up/down from there.

We’ll be monitoring the Mosko Moto advrider.com thread really closely for feedback on all of the above.  Chip and Andrew will be developing the tank bag concepts while I’m in Asia riding with the Reckless bags.  We want to collect as many viewpoints as possible.

Thanks in advance for your input!

New Website & Growing Team

Our new website is up and running!  Check it out: www.moskomoto.com.  If you spot any typos or if something doesn’t work right, please let us know.

We’re really excited to welcome Nicole Crites to the Mosko Moto team!  She’ll be our Customer Service Representative and all-around helper going forward.  Last Friday was her first day on the job.  She’s busily getting up to speed on all our products and the many different kinds of bike/rack combos out there, as well as familiarizing herself with our business and getting caught up on web inquiries.  Nicole is an Oregon native.  She lived in Brazil for a year, speaks fluent Portuguese, and has backpacked solo through places like Qatar, Turkey, Nicaragua, and Portugal.  Nicole: welcome aboard!

Product Development

Steve from the factory was in Portland last week visiting with Nike.  We met with him to review our 2015 restock order, discuss product development projects, and get an update on the Reckless designs.  Looks like everything is on track for 2015.  We placed a “rush” order for more MOLLE pouches (the large MOLLE is currently backordered) and the Reckless should be here for the 2015 riding season.  Good news all around.

Andrew remains ensconced in metal adapter-plate development.  We got our latest version of the F800GSA adapters and they look great:

Mounted them up on the BMW racks in our shop.

A few small changes to be made but nothing too material.  We’ll order a small batch of maybe 5 sets for the next round.   Those will go to a handful of early customers who have been patiently waiting.  We’ll get their feedback, confirm that everything fits, and then place a larger production order in January.

Our prototype of the new Mosko-compatible faceplate for the Jesse Luggage Soft Plate tool box arrived last week as well.  It works!  Which is great news.  Just like the F800 adapter we’re going to place a small production order, confirm everything works, and then follow up with a production order for Spring.

R1200GSA adapter plates are still in progress.  We expect to see prototypes later this week.

Chip – the seamster who builds our cut & sew prototypes – has reserved some shop time for Mosko in the January-April timeframe.  We’ll work with him to develop our tank bag concepts — which still have a long way to go — and also create a variety of new MOLLE pouches and accessory bags for 2016 introduction.  Lately the “business” side of the business has been taking up a lot of time.  With Dusty helping on the IMS shows and Nicole handling customer service/admin, we’ll be freed up for another big soft-bag development push this Spring.  We’ll be looking for lots of input on that in the new year.

Apparel prototypes were stalled while we waited on fabric from the Schoeller mill in Switzerland.  Sample yardage is done and on its way to the factory.  We’re expecting second-round prototypes in the next few weeks.  Maybe even in time for SE Asia.

Winter Motorcycle Shows

Last weekend was the International Motorcycle Show in New York City.  Dusty flew out and setup a Mosko booth.  We sold lots of duffles, but not nearly as many panniers as we did at the west coast IMS shows, which was interesting.  Dusty said the NYC show leaned heavily toward cruisers/sport bikes as opposed to dualsport.  I noticed a lot of the orders coming in were for non-dualsport bikes.  Happy to get the orders though!

Big thanks to Dusty for working the show and also Marcus for loaning us his bike.  Dusty will be representing Mosko at the Washington DC, Dallas, and Chicago shows as well.  Here’s a pic he sent of the booth in NYC.

Here’s another pic Dusty sent of our “mailable” trade show booth being rolled through the streets of Manhattan en-route to the fedex office.  Man those husky rolling boxes we got for the Long Beach show have really been useful.

Mosko Moto World Headquarters

The Mosko shop is coming along nicely.  A big rainstorm came through the Northwest last weekend, so Amarett and I holed up in the shop, got the walls painted, and put down some new flooring.

Here’s a “Before” pic from a few weeks ago:

And an “After” pic with the walls finished and insulated and the new floor covering.

Amarett had a creative idea to use some of my old road maps as wall decorations.  We even found a map of the Mosquito Coast (source of the name “Mosko”) with my travel notes scribbled all over it.  Now it’s art.  Thanks for all the help Amarett!!  A fun way to spend a rainy winter weekend.

SE Asia Trip

Hard to believe we’re headed to Asia in two weeks.  Vietnam visas just arrived.  Things are so busy with Mosko it feels a little weird to be leaving on a moto trip but hey, someone’s got to do the bag testing 🙂

Reckless Testing & Help Wanted

December 11, 2014

Another Southeast Asia trip is taking shape for January, this time a combination of work, vacation, and bag testing.  My girlfriend Amarett will be in Bangkok, so the idea is to meet her there, then fly together to Ho Chi Minh City.  In HCMC we’ll pickup revised protos of the Reckless 80/40 bags from David and Anton, buy some inexpensive local bikes for a few hundred dollars apiece, and ride them up through Cambodia and Laos.  I wanted a Minsk like the one I rode last time, but Minsks are getting old and they weren’t all that reliable even when they were new, so we’ll probably end up on something newer and more reliable, like a Honda Win:

Last time I did a moto trip in SE Asia I stayed along the coast.  That route has gotten pretty heavily-traveled and we want to do something different.  We’re thinking we’d cross into Cambodia immediately, ride through northeastern Cambodia into Laos — where neither of us has been before — and then cross back into Northern Vietnam to finish the trip in Hanoi.  Something like this:

We’d love to do the trip on bigger bikes, but bigger bikes aren’t in the budget.  Plus bigger bikes with legal paperwork are harder to find and harder to service in this part of the world.  A cool thing about the Reckless bags is that although they were designed for offroad/dualsport, they can be strapped to just about any bike.  I think a lot of the add-on features – like external pockets for tools/tubes, MOLLE bags for fuel, and beavertails for quick-stash – will really come in handy on the tiny bikes.  So it’s a good opportunity for bag testing and photography, and a fun/inexpensive way to explore this interesting little corner of the world.  Really looking forward to it.

Help Wanted

With this trip on the horizon, and with Andrew and I already running at full capacity, we need to find some help.  We were expecting a winter lull – and indeed that’s probably still coming after the new year – but so far it hasn’t happened.  Between voicemail, email, facebook, website contacts, and advrider posts/PMs – plus daily business tasks, ongoing development projects, winter motorcycle shows, and travel – it’s clearly time to expand our two-man team.  Apologies to anyone who’s been waiting for a response from us, and thanks to everyone on advrider who has been answering questions in the meantime.

We posted a job listing on craigslist for help with some of the marketing and administrative workload.  It’s starting as part-time but will go to full-time soon.  Here’s a link (as re-posted on advrider.com): JOB POSTING.  We’ll begin reviewing applications next week.

On the sales front, we reached out to our friend Dusty Wessels who we met at the rallies last summer.  Among other projects, Dusty is an offroad guide/instructor through his business Dusty Roads Motoventures in Colorado.  Dusty was an early adopter of Mosko bags and he agreed to fly out to New York City and work the IMS show there, and probably attend a bunch of the other IMS shows after that as well.  Last week we spent a few hours on Skype going through all the bag features.  Here’s Dusty saying hi from Colorado via Skype.

Just to get in the right mindset, Dusty took his Mosko bags out last week with the new mounting plates he designed for the big GS racks, and went for a 200 mile ride.  He sent us these pics:

In the meantime, I got all our trade show stuff packed up and sent to the hotel in NYC.

The Mosko trade show kit ready to go via fedex @ the Postal Connection in White Salmon, WA

If you’re at the show, please stop by and say hi.  Oh yeah, and be sure to ask Dusty how his accommodations in NYC are working out, it’s a really funny story.  Good luck Dusty!

BMW & Jesse Brackets

The metal BMW brackets are getting closer.  Here’s where things currently stand:

F800GS Adventure – we’re waiting on what we hope will be the final prototype/production sample.  It is supposed to arrive this week.  There’s a right side and a left side.  The latest versions look like this:

Left

Right

2013-15 R1200GS Liquid Cooled:  We’re waiting on the first round proto, so it’s a little behind the F800GSA.  It’s only one side and it looks like this.

Old-Style R1200GS: This is very similar to the LC, and it’s also at the shop for prototyping.  It’s one sided and it looks like this:

Jesse Odyssey II: For these racks, we designed a new front plate for the tool box that goes behind the Jesse Soft Plate.  We want to talk to Al Jesse about this (I think he’s riding through Africa right now?) once we get a prototype done.  We’re hoping he’ll be ok with us offering these for sale, or maybe he’d even be interested in making them himself.

Andrew’s daughter Sparrow had some creative ideas for decorating the adapters, which she shared.

New Washers

The new wedge-mount washers are done.  They’re shipping-out with all the new hardware packs going forward.  We ordered 30 sets, tested them, and they work, so now there’s a larger production run currently under way.  To get the washers we visited the finishing shop where they add the black oxide coating, which is the final manufacturing step.  This was pretty cool to see.

The oxidation tub for mild steel.  Looks like some seriously toxic stuff.  And boiling hot.

This tub is for oxidizing stainless, it’s just starting to boil.

Some other parts in for treatment.  Leatherman tool for military gun scopes.

Kershaw knife pocket clips.

They do a lot of military work in this shop.  These are rifle barrels, with threads on the end for suppressors/silencers.  There were some other unusual-looking, short, high-caliber gun barrels in there as well.

These are huge springs the military uses for lifting heavy equipment and transporting vehicles by helicopter in the field.

Final cleaning of our washers.

With the first small batch of washers done, we headed to the warehouse to add them to the puck saks.

The Shop

We also made some progress on the shop last week, adding insulation and finishing off the walls with plywood.  Andrew and I both work from home when we’re on our computers, and our inventory is housed at the warehouse in Portland, so this shop will serve mainly as a workspace where we can focus on bikes, racks, and bag fitment.

Andrew had this receiver/speaker system that wasn’t being used.  Man, it’s loud.

New Boxes

It recently came to our attention that orders were arriving in boxes which look like this (thanks for the pic Robert, and for highlighting this issue):

We originally ordered pre-creased boxes that could be cut-down for different size orders.  But when we arrived at the warehouse to pack up the first pre-order shipments, the boxes sitting there were not the ones we’d ordered.  At the time, it was urgent to get those orders shipped, so we went ahead and cut the boxes down to size anyway.  After we left, the warehouse kept using the same boxes, thinking that we’d want to work through our existing box inventory before switching to something new.  We requested new boxes over a month ago, but that request never made it to the appropriate desk.  So finally last week we worked with Mark at the warehouse to figure out final sizing and order up some new boxes.

New Website

There’s a new Mosko Moto website in the works.  Nothing fancy, but something a lot more scaleable than the current site, and a little more professional and less homemade as well.  With the new items coming up for Spring, plus the impending addition of the MSR camping items and riding apparel, we need a site that can scale to accommodate a broader range of products, more orders, and easier updates.  We built the current site ourselves using an online WYSIWYG builder.  The price was right ($0) but now it’s time for an upgrade.  Hoping to have a new site live within the next few weeks.  Our buddy Karl in Hood River is working on it.

Other Stuff

We’ve been brainstorming some new ideas for MOLLE pouches for the 2016 launch, which we’ll start working on in the new year, as soon as the metal adapters are done.  We like the idea of a totally waterproof MOLLE bag that has a variety of different inserts for things like maps and tools.  Maybe even an insulated bag for perishable items.

Here’s a tool/first aid bag combination Andrew designed for a trail-building kit a few years ago.  Something like this could be redesigned for dualsport, and would easily slide in/out of a waterproof MOLLE pouch.

The idea is that we could store our tools on the very bottom of the pannier, at the lowest spot on the bike, to keep the weight down low.

Then when we need tool access, the bag would have hooks that connect to the front of the pannier like this, for ready-access to tools without laying them out on mud/sand.

Just something we’re messing around with.  Much more to follow.