The RaveRunner®: Designing The Best Festival Hydration Pack!
I am an avid festival goer. I love them all and attend as many as I can. There is something about the community and live music that resonates with me. Then at one festival someone stole my iPhone out of my hydration pack. “Welp, there goes another $500,” I thought. Although I try to not let outside factors ruin my mood, this one was hard to overcome.
This sparked the idea of making the best festival hydration pack. That desire burned in me to where I made launching GenZ my 2018 New Year’s Resolution.
I wanted to design a pack to combat theft, be extremely comfortable, customizable with custom printed skins, and lights to show off my personality.
I have been an avid ultramarathon runner for years; I am the youngest person to run 200+ consecutive miles in the Moab 240 at the age of 20. The hydration packs I use for these long-distance runs offer so much more functionality, and more importantly comfort, than hydration packs you typically see. These packs are lightweight, have comfortable straps, and tons of utility. There seems to be a hook for everything you could ever need or a pocket within a short reach.
Knowing that functionality and comfort were vital (running 8 hours is very similar to 8 hours of dancing at a festival), I needed to solve the glaring issue of festival theft.
Festival theft happens far too frequently. A study conducted by Cooney & Conway found that 1 in 7 festival goers get stolen from. Its no surprise, cell phones aren’t cheap and even a basic craigslist scan shows people willing to buy stolen/locked phones for hundreds of dollars. This has lead to thieves working in groups. One will distract you, the other will block nearby peoples views and the last one will steal your phone. Some are even so bold as to slash open backpacks and grab whatever falls out. They are so successful that they can steal over hundreds of phones a day and make several thousands of dollars in profit.
Knowing the problems that face athletes and festival goers we sought solutions and materials to make the RaveRunner® the best hydration pack available.
- Stealing from a standard backpack/hydration pack is relatively easy for thieves. The zippers face away from the wearer. Someone with a delicate trained touch could simply unzip the backpack and reach their arm in grabbing whatever they can get their hands on. Meanwhile the more experienced could take their keys and use the teeth to quickly slash open your pack grabbing whatever they can and then disappearing into a sea of people.
- Knowing these tactics from various blogs, news headlines, and forms we designed our hydration pack with inverted zippers. Meaning that the point of access is securely against your back. This eliminates someone from being able to access your packs storage without you knowing.
- To combat the slash and dash method we constructed the RaveRunner® with ripstop nylon. Its effective against knives, keys, and scissors. If the fabric were able to be punctured it is made in a way that the puncture does not continue to rip easily, keeping your valuables inside.
- We have taken the final designed packs to over a dozen festivals and observed a thieve actually trying to get into someone’s RaveRunner®.
- Being an ultra-runner, I wanted a hydration pack that had a ton of functionality. One of the desired functions was to be able to change its aesthetic. The pack had to be able to go from the gym to the festival. And express who I am, the hottest meme, or my favorite artist at the festival.
- We developed a removable skin that can be custom printed. You go to livegenz.com and select custom skin in the shop. It takes you a builder that allows you to upload your own pictures and designs to print on a surface that is roughly 8 inches wide by 12 inches tall. Once you get your skin in the mail you can attach and remove it from your RaveRunner® with zippers. This allows you to have several skins with one hydration pack. It makes matching to your outfit really easy. The best part is that without the skin the pack has a really athletic design, it is one of the best-looking packs in the gym!
- We also added some really cool light up accessories that integrate with your pack. We use 2 meters of EL Wire with multiple strobe features and what we like to call UnderGlow. When the sun sets you really stand out and the UnderGlow is sound reactive to the music. It also makes it extremely easy to find your friends in the crowd.
- We developed a removable skin that can be custom printed. You go to livegenz.com and select custom skin in the shop. It takes you a builder that allows you to upload your own pictures and designs to print on a surface that is roughly 8 inches wide by 12 inches tall. Once you get your skin in the mail you can attach and remove it from your RaveRunner® with zippers. This allows you to have several skins with one hydration pack. It makes matching to your outfit really easy. The best part is that without the skin the pack has a really athletic design, it is one of the best-looking packs in the gym!
- We also added some really cool light up accessories that integrate with your pack. We use 2 meters of EL Wire with multiple strobe features and what we like to call UnderGlow. When the sun sets you really stand out and the UnderGlow is sound reactive to the music. It also makes it extremely easy to find your friends in the crowd.
- The ergonomics of the bag was developed with athletics in mind. So, the fit is extremely comfortable and light weight. The shoulder straps are positioned in a similar way to the packs that I use for long distance marathons. So, you don’t have to worry about it bouncing around while you jump up and down. These ultrarunning hydration packs always had pockets on the shoulder straps to store water and nutrition. We found them to be useful for storing sunglasses, chapstick and your phone when at a festival.
- The bladder is also a big comfort feature. In traditional hydration packs refilling is a nightmare. You have to fumble with taking out and reinserting the hydration bladder. Our system is a quick fill where you just unscrew the reservoir cap and fill directly into the pack. It is replaceable as well! We typically fill up and get back to the music long before others who must remove their hydration bladder.
When designing the RaveRunner® we set out to make a hydration pack for Generation Z. However, we hit something far bigger. We feel that we made a no compromise hydration pack along the way. Its perfect for anyone who likes well designed and convenient products. If you are into to customization or the stealth look, it checks both boxes. The turn out and support has been tremendous. In fact, we reached our KickStarter goal in less than 4 hours. We are extremely excited to get our first run of packs to our supporters! We are receiving them in the next week and will be immediately shipping them out, we are approximately 50% sold out and selling fast!
You can shop the RaveRunner® by Clicking Here