We’ve all been there: during a long day on the water you’ve managed to lose some of your gear. It’s a nightmare scenario considering the cost of equipment and the time and effort put into building the perfect fly box. Fortunately, there is a solution: Karmik Outdoors. After speaking with
Robert Gillingham, the owner of Karmik Outdoors, we cooked up a
little experiment to put their decals to the test.
Our staff at ALT Fly Fishing were first introduced to this ingenious solution via social media. We asked ourselves, “could this really work?” Skeptical, we reached out to the owners at Karmik Outdoors to tell us a little more about their product:
Karmik Outdoors is a Boise based company and our goal is to bridge the gap between Lost and Found. Our name, Karmik Outdoors, is derived from karma, the act of doing a good or bad deed.
As avid fishermen the idea of river karma is very real. If you clean up trash or help someone at the boat ramp you will inherit good, fishy karma and will be blessed with a great day of fishing. Other outdoor cultures share a similar paradigm.
We give people the opportunity to inherit good karma by ensuring lost gear is identifiable for finders. People want to return found items. They do. They just needed a reliable mechanism in order to be able to do so. That’s where we come in. Karmik Outdoors is a cool new innovative product that is here to help the outdoor community.
The idea sprang up because we found a fly rod and wanted to return it. To try and locate the owner we posted on social media and craigslist and received many inquiries asking if it was X rod or Z rod but it was none of them. We really wanted to get this rod to the owner but were never able to return it. If there was only a simple way to have our gear identifiable and returnable!
Enter the idea of durable stickers equipped with unique IDs and QR codes that allow people to safely and securely store their information and ensure their gear is identifiable. After the fly rod incident, it made us wonder how much gear is lost and found. So we made a google survey and asked everyone we knew, their friends, and people we didn’t even know. After we received over 100 responses, 86% had lost something of value in the outdoors and 76% had found something of value.
Because we ran an initial trail we learned from our mistakes and created new badges that are scratch proof, waterproof, salt/acid proof, temperature resistant , UV resistant and to put it simply, one badass decal.
Problem #1 of paper QR codes, solved. Problem #2 of incorrect contact info, it was just adding a simple 2 times verification and a 10 digit phone number was added. Problem #2 Solved.
Some surprises that came up: There was a concern that people wouldn’t know how to use QR codes. Surprisingly, people know and understand how to use QR codes but just in case we put our website on our badges and the website has a place to manually enter the unique IDs on each badge.
Everything about Karmik Outdoors was designed with the outdoorsmen and outdoors women in mind.
We chose QR codes very deliberately, we chose a decal manufacturer very deliberately, we made our processes very deliberately. We understand there are high tech options out there with GPS location and beeping and using your smartphone to track items, but those wont work when you leave your net in the grass near the 3 Dollar Bridge on the Madison River.
Every badge has a unique QR code and unique ID. They are just the right amount of technology for the avid outdoor enthusiast. Way better than a sharpie, way more durable than a battery powered GPS tracking device.
When you get a Karmik Outdoors lost and found badge you’ll notice the QR code. You can either scan the QR code with your phone or go to our website. Here is how the process works-
Step one: create an account. You will need an account to connect you to the gear and the decal. Do not enter your junk email account. If you lose your gear the contact info entered will be how the finder communicates with you.
Step two: slap the decal on an item and activate the decal by connecting it to that piece of gear.
If you put it on a MFC fly box filled with your favorite patterns, the registration process is going to ask for brand, make, model, serial number, estimated value etc. BAM! You are connected to that piece of gear.
Now, if you ever lose it the finder can either scan the QR code or go to our site and enter the unique ID number on the badge. They enter their contact information and immediately you get an email at the address you provided with the finders contact information. You contact them and agree to meet up at your local pub, get your flies back, give them a few secret patterns you tie, buy them a pint then look each other in the eye and ask, “Did we just become best friends?” Everyone is happy.
After reading Karmik Outdoors’ reply, their claim of experiencing a 75-90% rate of return stood out to us. Our editor, Mike Ippolito, worked at a fly shop close to the Davidson River in North Carolina and didn’t seem the least bit surprised, “people were always dropping stuff they found on the river off at the shop- fly boxes, boots, nets- hoping to get it to their owners. I see it on message boards and Facebook pages all the time too.”
“I can’t tell you how successful their efforts were, maybe a handful of people got their gear back, but the desire was there.” He continued, “I think in that scenario, message boards and fly shops, are too many middlemen, too many variables. If there was a way, like Karmik Outdoors, to be able to contact the owner directly, then I think they might be onto something.”
With our interest piqued, we decided to put Karmik Outdoors to the ultimate test.
Our idea was simple: grab some boxes, slap some Karmik decals on them, and “lose” them at a few rivers. We would have to make sure the boxes were full with the appropriate flies as there would be a great gravitas to return them.
As a thank you to those who found our boxes, and to keep in the karmic spirit of Karmik Outdoors, we wanted to reward the “finders” by allowing them to keep the box they found.
But how would we get our hands on enough boxes, flies, and decals?
We shared our desires with Robert Gillingham, the owner of Karmik Outdoors, and he immediately jumped on the idea. Within a few quick emails and phone calls we managed to partner with Karmik for their decals, Montana Fly Company who supplied the test fly boxes and Anglers of Idaho who helped us secure a prodigious amount of flies to fill the boxes. Without their help, this idea may have never come to fruition.
Over the course of two years, and two different states, we managed to drop fifteen boxes along the banks of seven rivers, making sure to hit multiple spots covering heavily trafficked areas and a few out of the way venues privy to fly fishermen only.
The results were astounding. We found a return rate of 80% for the state of Colorado. Of the boxes not returned, they were dropped in areas heavily trafficked by non-fishermen, but that doesn’t mean non-anglers didn’t recognize the importance that fly boxes have. One hiker believing the box could belong to a fly fisherman on the river handed it off to one to report.
For areas heavily trafficked by anglers in Colorado, such as the Colorado River, we saw a return rate of 100%!
Our results in Western North Carolina were not as conclusive as only one box out of four was “found” for a return rate of 25%. We can point to several variables to try and account for this- high tourist traffic thinking they would not be able to return the box before they left, one area had transient encampments close to where the box was dropped, and possible inclement weather proceeding drops.
Of fifteen boxes dropped, we only excluded one from our final numbers due to being in a remote location with very little foot traffic before a snowstorm. In good conscience we could not include this against our numbers.
With all the variables- weather, traffic in and to the area, time- to manage a return rate of 80% in a single location is impeccable and proved their initial return rates during their own test to be extremely accurate.
The purpose of experiments is to test a hypothesis inorder to reach a conclusion, and accurate ones survive testing for robustness. What we found was exactly that.
Well done Karmik Outdoors.
Karmik offers a bit of a white-label if you will, where they work with your brand to offer their lost and found service on your products for your customers. They are working with Montana Fly Company, Sawyer Paddles and Oars, Kestrel Glassing Systems, Col Mountain Technologies and many others. Of if you wish to purchase your own decals for your own gear and get it back 80% of the time like we did, head over to KarmikOutdoors.com .
