MEC
MEC Trail Daypack
A versatile, honestly-priced daypack with an integrated RECCO reflector, a safety-first design shaped by North Shore Search and Rescue's work in MEC's backyard.
- Client
- MEC
- Year
- 2020
- Role
- Technical Developer
Challenge
My role on the MEC Trail Daypack was Technical Developer. The brief was to build an entry-level, first-price-point day pack for hiking. The biggest challenge was cost optimization while still delivering the level of quality people expected from MEC. At the time, MEC's Rocksolid Guarantee was a huge part of the brand, so even though this was an affordable backpack, it still needed to be built to last.
Research
One of the more interesting parts of this project was introducing the RECCO reflector into MEC's hardgoods line for the first time. That came out of a broader initiative with North Shore Search and Rescue: encourage more people to get outside while making them easier to locate if they get lost. As more search and rescue organizations adopted RECCO detectors, the technology became a genuinely meaningful safety feature to build into everyday outdoor products, not just a marketing line.
Design Direction
The design was led by Joel Forsyth. The direction was straightforward: a clean, simple day pack with enough organization and capacity for a day on the trail. The stretch bottle pockets were a small detail that turned out to be a real design problem: they had to balance durability, retention, and cost, which is often harder to get right than it sounds.
Development
Compared to the projects I work on today, this role leaned much more on technical documentation than physical prototyping. It gave me a lot of experience building detailed tech packs, managing specifications, and communicating design intent through documentation rather than by building something first. That workflow is still valuable: a clear tech pack is often the difference between getting the product you actually designed and getting something close to it.
Manufacturing
The pack was manufactured in Vietnam, so a big part of the job was working across time zones and communicating technical detail with factory partners whose first language wasn't English. Learning to write clear specifications, anticipate questions, and remove ambiguity mattered just as much as the technical design work itself.
Final Product
What shipped was an affordable, durable day pack built to MEC's Rocksolid Guarantee standard, and the first hardgoods product to carry MEC's RECCO reflector into the line.
Reflection
This project shaped how I think about documentation as a design tool in its own right, not just a record of decisions already made. Learning to communicate intent clearly enough that a factory on the other side of the world builds exactly what you meant, on the first try, is its own discipline, and it's one I still lean on.