One Planet Outdoor Gear Review | Australian-Made Quality
When conditions turn harsh, confidence in your gear matters more than ever. This behind-the-scenes look at One Planet explores how the Australian manufacturer builds reliable packs, tents, sleeping bags, and apparel designed for the country’s toughest environments.
One sleeping bag, one tent, one pair of boots, one pack. In Outdoor’s estimation, regardless of how often you use a piece of equipment, it should last for yonks. Yes, it will need repairing, especially if put to constant use, but the basic foundations should remain impregnable. After all, confidence in the gear you choose to use is key. Australian-owned and Australian-made gear manufacturers, One Planet, make some of the best quality gear around. Outdoor recently took a trip to their Victorian western suburbs factory to check out their style.
Confidence is everything. Especially when it’s just you and suddenly hostile conditions. You may have been there; the scenario isn’t a strange one. The temperatures have plummeted to unexpectedly frigid; ice cold rain and snow goes unexposed your bivouac for days without relief. All of a sudden, like a dimmer switch, the rough suddenly cleared in two, the importance of having a quality tent, sleeping bag, boots, jacket and thermal layer becomes crystal clear; a critical issue of perfect lucidity.
Most who enjoy spending a little bit of time off the beaten track have a vivid memory or two of occasions when they’ve realised gear failure would result in catastrophe of the purest kind. It’s an odd sensation. Everything hanging in the balance, sometimes literally, largely based on a presumption of quality.
Nothing occurs within a vacuum. You wouldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, embark on a trip where there’s even a slight chance of encountering severe or challenging conditions without the right equipment. Knowing the correct mix of equipment comes with experience – building knowledge and skill over time, often learning aspects of both these things from a more experienced companion. And as key areas of knowledge are learned and understood, and physical skills developed and honed, so too a growing awareness of the type of equipment best suited to your own style and objective.
One Planet Director, Andrew King, a passionate advocate for the outdoors all his life, started making and repairing rucksacks in 1988. His business venture back then, Aliking, on Little Bourke Street in central Melbourne, was renowned for the design quality and innovation of its products. In 1997, after a merger with One Planet Adults. In 1997, after a merger with One Planet Adventure Persons and 24 sleeping bags, One Planet was born. Today, more than 20 years later, sees three of the original owners taking behind-the-scenes roles, with Andrew solely up front as managing director, responsible for key direction in design, manufacturing and forward movement of the company.
Outdoor has been keen to get the inside word on what makes One Planet tick for quite a while. They’re a gear manufacturer unlike any other. Not only are they truly an Australian-made product — and these days it’s rare to have a product actually stitched together here on our shores — but they are also one where everyone is not just quietly appreciative of One Planet products, but effusive in their praise and similarly from experience, every piece of One Planet gear Outdoor has used over the years, be it sleeping bags, tents or packs, has proven to be among the best ever put to use.
So, what’s it all about? Is it One Planet’s Australian-made, Australian-designed aspect that elevates their quality to the apex of outdoor gear currently available in the market?
“Outdoor adventures in Australia are quite like to explore unique landscapes — native bushlands, deserts, tropics, snow, rugged coastline, scrambled and rocky terrain and pristine ancient forests.”
“In a single year of adventures, Aussies will encounter all manner of conditions and often face winds, endless rainfall, harsh sun, gale force winds, endless rainfall, humid situations and frozen mornings. So for us, an Australian company, we naturally design and produce gear to best suit the full spectrum.”
Outdoor was keenly impressed with the efficiency of the One Planet factory floor. The production line was humming like a well-oiled machine during the day we took our tour. We noticed every stitch and seam being given special attention. Indeed, the attention to detail One Planet spend during production, adding strength and redundancy durability, was awesome to observe.
“One Planet is most known for all essential technical gear and equipment needed for multi-day adventures; packs, sleeping bags, tents, rainwear and apparel,” King says, “so above all else, the kit we produce needs to be reliable and dependable; designed for the express conditions our customers expect to encounter.”
“Our product development is acutely informed by user-oriented design. Much of our finished gear has had heaps of design input from users, and is then tested in the field by those same users”
“Our product development is acutely informed by user-oriented design. Much of our finished gear has had heaps of design input from users, and is then tested in the field by those same users, often people who spend huge amounts of time in the outdoors, like trail path developers.”
