Matador | The Story

18th September 2024 | Words by Matt Jones @ WildBounds HQ

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Matador’s mantra is simple: ‘Pack less, experience more’. After all, travel is about freedom. And it’s hard to get too far off the beaten track if you’re weighed down with luggage.

In essence, that’s the fundamental starting point for all the brand’s products. From packs and bags to travel essentials, the entire range is built to be properly adventure-ready. The ultimate grail is featherweight indestructibility, whilst catering to the needs of the boldest explorers. It’s a demanding brief, but it’s one to which the brand is resolutely committed.

In some ways, this approach is just another espousal of the ‘fast and light’ ethos that has increasingly permeated almost every aspect of modern outdoor gear design, from alpine climbing to ultralight backpacking to adventure travel. But when it comes to the latter, Matador is a brand that has pushed things further than most. Indeed, you could argue that they’ve turned the concept of ‘travelling light’ into an art form.

It began with a blanket…

Take their first ever product, for example – the Pocket Blanket, which remains a staple of the Matador range today, and is consistently one of their best-selling lines. Deceptively simple, it’s a palm-sized camp blanket that stashes easily into a coat pocket. It weighs under 4oz or about 100g – roughly the same as a bar of soap. For such a seemingly simple product, it’s incredibly well thought-out, with a sleek and distinctive aesthetic. These are qualities that would become a hallmark of Matador’s entire product range.

The original concept came straight from the mind of Matador’s founder, Chris Clearman. Back in 2014, he was working as a product designer for GoPro in California. But he was seeking a side-hustle; a learning exercise in building a brand. He knew how to design, develop and manufacture great products – but he didn’t know the first thing about fulfilment, or retail, or wholesaling, or ecommerce.

His entrepreneurial urge had been sparked by his exposure to Nick Woodman, the charismatic founder of GoPro – a businessman whose net worth, according to Forbes magazine, now stands at 1.1 billion US dollars. “He’s a great guy – very smart,” says Chris today. “But ultimately you realise that these founders aren’t supermen. You know, if they can do it, I can do it.”

He remembers: “I basically asked myself: what’s the simplest idea in my notebook?” As a product person and an inventor by personality, he had hundreds of potentially viable ideas jotted down or sketched out in its dog-eared pages. But the pocket blanket stood out as the one that he could feasibly bring to market with the scant resources that were available to him at that time – about $11,000 in savings.

His inspiration had come from watching people sitting outside on their coats or lugging bulky blankets across town to enjoy San Francisco’s parks and the Bay Area’s beaches. A pocket blanket was also ideally suited to watching open-air live music gigs and concerts, being more packable than a camp chair and less likely to get confiscated by security.

Moreover, he quickly realised that a sewn product was the way to go, since unlike hard goods, they require no expensive moulding or tooling. Provided he could sell it in decent quantities, the blanket had a viable margin. And because it was light and packable, it wouldn’t cost a fortune in freight and warehousing costs either.

Still, its design was technically advanced enough to pose a few challenges. “I remember having to get the fabric for making the prototypes from Japan, since that was the only place you could buy it. Later, the production fabric was ordered from Korea, since the Chinese factories weren't really making fabric of this weight or tenacity at that time”.

Starting small, dreaming big

Chris would work during the day for GoPro then go home and work an eight-hour day on Matador, then sleep eight hours and do it all again. “It was pretty non-stop for a year and a half,” he says. “I mean, it paid off, so I guess it was all worth, but yeah, it's a lot.”

Iterative design further improved the product. Adding water-repellent coatings added to the blanket’s utility, as did the realisation that providing stitched (or later, printed) fold lines to the topside made it easier to pack away again, which was far more space-efficient than just scrunching it up and stuffing it back in its pouch. “It basically folds back into the perfect proportions to store it,” explains Chris. “So instead of being a wad of fabric the size of a basketball, you get a nice, folded package the size of a small men’s wallet.” Next, he added built-in metal corner stakes and triangular pockets you could fill with sand or gravel, so it wouldn’t blow away in the wind.

The finished Pocket Blanket was everything he’d hoped it would be. It was lightweight, space-saving, and freedom-enabling. Working out of a 10ft square San Francisco bedroom, Chris launched it to the world. It was a slow start. “I had this product stacked up all the walls in our little house outside San Francisco, and out on the back deck on pallets under tarps. My partner Jamie was like: ‘You're never gonna sell all these! We're going to have this forever! What are we going to do?”

Chris turned to the world he knew best: the design world. “I used the only real resource that I knew at the time: design blogs like Uncrate, Gear Patrol, Awesomer and The Coolector. I picked out a couple of the most influential ones and sent them lists I’d compiled of new and innovative products – which, of course, included a cool blanket from this new brand called Matador”. From there it got featured on a couple of the big tech sites, which get millions of unique hits per day. Sales went through the roof. “Hundreds of orders poured in overnight”, he recalls.

Chris soon relocated his fledgling company to Boulder, Colorado – arguably, the adventure capital of the USA. Initially he based himself out of a converted camper van, acquired a small warehouse, and got to work. “Then I had to ask myself what I actually wanted this company to be. Obviously, it was more than a blanket company – that’s not very exciting. My passion then and still now was travel, in particular, adventure travel, and it was a market that felt underserved. So, we took the brand in that direction”.

Matador has evolved a lot over the subsequent decade, but the essence of that first product – harnessing radically simple yet innovative design that enables unconstrained travel – still permeates everything it makes. Today, it remains an employee-owned company with zero outside investment and a relatively small but close-knit, highly driven team of about 15 full-time staff. “I'm not inherently a good manager of people,” confesses Chris. “I'm more of a doer, so it's a very flat company structure”. But it seems to work. There is minimal third-party outsourcing. And while that poses some challenges, it also permits total control of every business decision, plus unbridled creative freedom and far greater agility, especially compared to the lumbering, corporate-owned behemoths of the travel luggage sector.

Take risks, fail fast, repeat

If there’s a secret to Matador’s success, it’s perhaps the brand’s willingness to embrace the unconventional. As the brand statement puts it: “We reject the notion that the conventional way is the only way. In an industry largely content with disguising the same old products beneath an overflow of unnecessary features, we’re keeping the dying art of ground-up design alive – because we’re confident that superior equipment emerges from smarter, simpler, problem-solving design”.

Chris remains closely involved. “I still lead the product group directly. We have a handful of designers back there: hard goods and soft goods, as well as product marketers. There are a lot of people that help, but I'm still very involved in the nitty-gritty, day-to-day of the product.”

In fact, everything is still designed entirely in-house. Matador’s product designers and materials experts sketch, sew, prototype, and test a range of solutions from their Colorado HQ. It’s fitted with everything they need: a prototyping lab, 3D printing lab, in-house waterproof test chamber and air pressure testing. Innovations like the Speed Stash’s HDPE stiffener bars, the ultralight Beast Series’ spring-steel bar stock hoop frames and the pioneering ‘segmentation’ architecture of bags like the SEG 28, 42 and 45 all came out of this design studio. A continual process of iteration refines each product from prototype to sample to production model. And if that occasionally means returning to the drawing board to try again, then so be it.

They’re also using technology to push the envelope. Chris is particularly excited by the possibilities of harnessing AI in the product design process. “Chat GPT has a function now where it’ll generate images for you,” he says. “So, you can say, ‘Hey, show me what a luggage tag would look like if the Black Diamond climbing company made it,’ and it'll spit out four visuals. It really gets the designers’ heads going in a bunch of different directions and it’s improved our design significantly”.

Despite its all-American roots, the brand also embraces the design ethos and language of many different cultures and disciplines. The hallmarks of elegant simplicity and functional minimalism borrow from movements like German Bauhaus and Dutch De Stijl, as well as Scandinavian and Japanese design. The end goal is to create products that do exactly what they’re designed to do, with everything you need, but just as importantly, nothing you don’t.

But although Matador are undoubtedly respecters of tradition, they are also forward-thinking, especially when it comes to materials. Grab one of the brand’s technical backpacks, and you’ll find cutting edge fabrics and components, from high tenacity Robic nylon to Hypalon synthetic rubber. These are materials that have been adopted by the most advanced ultralight gear manufacturers, but they aren’t typically found in travel luggage. They’ve also worked closely with industry giants like YKK and Dimension Polyant on developing custom hardware and fabrics, because they often found that ‘off the shelf’ components just didn’t cut it.

Sustainable sourcing

Of course, there’s another key consideration. As the brand is keen to stress: “For us, sustainability isn’t just a marketing tactic – it’s a non-negotiable responsibility”.

Now, that’s an easy claim to make, and indeed, you’ll find similar statements on the CSR pages of most brands, including some that have been accused of so-called ‘greenwashing’. But Matador pays more than mere lip service to the environment. Its business is guided and shaped by several impressive commitments.

The first is that since 2019, it has offset all carbon emissions on shipments from manufacturers to its U.S. distribution network through a longstanding relationship with CarbonFund.org. Matador’s headquarters are powered by WindSource renewable wind energy and certified by Green-e Energy. It upcycles materials at its design studio and builds products to be long-lasting and repairable – with an active in-house repair program to help breathe new life into used gear.

When it comes to harmful DWR (durable water-repellent) finishes – those containing perfluorinated compounds or PFCs, the non-biodegradable ‘forever chemicals’ that accumulate in the environment and in ecosystems – Matador is also keeping pace with the most progressive brands in the outdoor industry. In fact, as of 2024, all Matador products are fully PFC-free. Increasingly, products are also built with recycled materials and/or materials that meet the stringent Bluesign criteria, ensuring minimal environmental impact throughout the production line.

Adventure seekers

Authenticity is also vital. Matador’s products appeal to adventure travellers because they have been developed by designers and marketers who are also out there, doing it, for real. Of course, this starts from the top down, which means it includes founder Chris. “I'm progressively riding a motorcycle across all of Europe and Asia,” he says. “I shipped a motorcycle over to Europe, and whenever I get the chance, I go over and head out for a few weeks at a time. It's a 1250 GS BMW W, and it's set up for off-road use, so we'll ride about 50% off-road and 50% on-road. We just finished going across Spain, right through the Pyrenees mountains, which was really fun.”

Other Matador staff members have years of similarly deep experience in both the travel and outdoor industries. From airport terminal to remote trailhead, urban escape to off-grid expedition, they’re passionate about adventure travel and exploration – and, like all lovers of the great outdoors, energized by fresh experiences, unfamiliar locales, and the sense of connection that comes with frequent escapes among dirt, rock, and sky. It’s all part of the brand’s secret sauce. And the result is streamlined, durable gear that not only works but thrives in demanding environments.

Industry accolades

Evidently, Matador is doing things right. It’s built a dedicated and passionate customer base that is enthusiastic to the point of evangelism about many of the brand’s products. Just reading customer reviews about a best-seller like the GlobeRider 45 travel pack gives you a sense of how the product delivers for customers: “Outstanding”… “I can live out of this for a month at a time”… “Best travel pack out there”. The superlatives keep mounting.

Matador has also garnered plenty of industry recognition. The first big award came in 2020, when Carryology, the leading website dedicated to bags, luggage, wallets and everyday carry goods, named the Matador SEG42 the best travel bag in its category. Three years later, it crowned Matador as its Brand of the Year. The judges’ verdict? “They know who they are and what they do best, and they bring a consistency and cohesion to their ever-growing line, and an unrelenting dedication to innovation and the evolution of carry”. This was followed by a slot in Outside Magazine’s prestigious 2023 Gear Guide “Best Travel Luggage of 2023” and a finalist nod in the IHA Global Innovation Awards at the 2023 Inspired Home Show.

Matador isn’t resting on its laurels though. The American brand is continually looking to leverage new opportunities and explore new markets. Chris reveals: “The US is still our top market, but Japan is our second and the EU is also growing really, really fast right now. It may even surpass Japan next year”.

It’s easy to see why Matador appeals to the Japanese market though, given its clean, minimalist design. “Yeah, I think the Japanese just really like our products,” agrees Chris. “They're very specific about what they like: small, high-quality products that are executed very well. The aesthetic also just resonates with them, as well as the problem-solving nature of the products”.

Matador’s most recent launches are cases in point: a range of accessories designed to make global travel easier, safer, more efficient, and more pleasurable. On the program: ultra-slick packing cubes, indestructible luggage tags, travel earplugs that’ll block out sound up to 32 decibels, a locking carabiner crafted from machined aluminium and an ergonomic, packable blackout sleep mask made from super-soft, breathable bamboo fibre.

Again, it’s all deceptively simple stuff. But they’re the sort of products that make you say: “I can’t believe no one’s thought of this before!” or “Man, why didn’t I buy this sooner?” And making a difference to your travel adventures in small but significant ways is really what spurs the brand onwards. In that regard, whether you’re a weary world traveller, a bright-eyed young backpacker, or a committed expeditioner, it’s reassuring to know that Matador has truly got your back.