Nemo is an outdoor gear company located in Dover, NH that offers premium camping and backpacking solutions. They specialize in tents and sleeping innovations and are pushing the boundaries of design within the industry. Fun fact, their first product to market was an inflatable “airbeam” tent featured in TIME and Popular Science as one of the best inventions in 2003. Since then, they have been building out their product lines and expanding and refining their production capabilities. TOOL partnered up with Nemo to focus on tent hardware that could reduce their sourcing limitations and cost structures. Believe it or not, most tent brands utilize OEM parts and are reliant on their vendors for this portion of the product and the cost of goods are largely driven by these components. Nemo hoped to change that dynamic and thus our collaborative relationship was born.

There are several hardware elements required to pitch a tent – the anchors at the base, the hubs that tension the poles, and the clips that connect the softwoods to the rest of the system architecture. Each component needs to be minimal, durable, lightweight, and intuitive to use. Leveraging our material and manufacturing knowledge, TOOL developed parts that combined stamped, cast, and over-molded processes to offer clever connectivity experiences and unique branding opportunities. 

After conceptualization phases, TOOL utilized 3d printing to rapidly explore interactions at each hardware point, ensuring that the touch-points were easy to engage with at every angle. The designs were further refined and minimized to reduce any extraneous material through FDA analysis and rigorous lab testing – ensuring the system was as robust and lightweight as humanly possible.