THIS IS AN ONGOING PROJECT.
The Velocity 1 & 2 person backpacking tents have been a staple of the Eastern Mountain Sports lineup for years. How do you improve on a classic? Strip it back to its essence, add headroom and floorspace, all while delivering a lighter weight for the consumer and lower unit cost for the brand.
Velocity 1, circa 2016
The previous generation of the Velocity provided customers with a lightweight and functional tent at a great price, but it had a few pain points. The door on the inner tent is tiny and awkwardly shaped, making entry and exit a struggle. The foot end of the inner tent is severely sloped, leading to condensation brushing against your sleeping bag throughout the night, and the usable length of the tent is entirely too short for anyone over 6’ tall.
The rain fly also had its quirks. The zipper placement along the side of the vestibule rather than down the center meant it took an acrobatic stretch to fully zip the fly from inside the tent.
Hands on prototyping is my favorite part of the design process. To refine the Velocity poleset I gathered the polesets from every tent sample we have at EMS headquarters and broke them down to piece together a useable shape, a process that was very similar to building with LEGO.
With the poleset defined, I designed the interior mesh by using string to place seams and pole connections - this was a vital step that allowed me to sit and lay in the space and get a true feeling for the shape I was after. I then put together a tech pack with measurements pulled from the real world prototypes to send out to our factory’s sample room.
While the poleset keeps the same basic shape to its predecessor, it’s been simplified and adjusted to create more livable space inside. The inner tent has been completely redesigned to minimize seams and maximize floor space and headroom and accommodate taller users. By reducing the number of seams, the weight is also reduced, and the overall construction is simplified for the production line.
A key feature I introduced, inspired by another classic EMS tent, the SugarShack, is a clip to tension the center of the head and foot out tight with the fly guylines - it pulls the inner tent away from the user’s head and feet, extending the usable space and keeping condensation away from down bags.
The Velocity 1 & 2 person tents are currently being sampled by our factory partner. We are also exploring new materials, potentially moving to a silpoly to avoid the sagging of wet silnylon.
