| However, the attitude at Rakaia Designs is when one door shuts 10 more will open. As one of our great customers, Chris said to me: “This is a great time to reinvent yourselves”. We could not agree more with Chris and our new name speaks volume to this. Actually it yells to the mountaintop both literally and metaphorically. Firstly, the new name (Rakaia Designs) has such a profound meaning. Che (my cofounder) has been going on an annual “pilgrimage” to the Rakaia region of New Zealand with his father and two mates for over a decade hiking and hunting the tributaries in the region, It was also a popular change with customers (after some Facebook surveys), so we hope that you like it too. For me, I was fortunate to experience a “South Island trip” in 2016 and words just do not do it justice. I’ve hiked in four (4) continents including the Inca Trail (Machu Picchu), Colorado and British Columbia. The South Island just blew me away and to combine that with the tradition of going into the Rakaia region with Che, it is really special to us as a company. Secondly, the word “Designs” is a huge part of our new identity moving forward. We have made some horrible (and painful) product mistakes since starting out. However, the greatest “failures” have been turned into our greatest lessons, and made us stronger moving forward. Over the past 12 months,Che and I alone have invested over 1,000 hours on our new product development process that has focused on: - Discovering customer needs (your needs) before we start.
- Quality control, “no holes in the Swiss cheese” and closing the gaps on quality control.
- Test, feedback, test, feedback and repeat until we get it right with our physical prototypes.
Are well still learning? Yes. Are we still hungry? Yes. Do we need your help? Absolutely. Rakaia Designs was born to get people outside. I would like to thank you in advance for your patience and understanding if there are any transition issues. Here is to the future with Rakaia Designs. | 
