Vendors and Products You're Excited About at Overland Expo East 2018

[Hourless Life]

Would love to hear what others are pumped about when it comes to vendors and products that will be at Expo East this year.

So far I'm looking forward to

Overland Bound (of course)
Patriot Campers - Amazing trailers my wife is obsessed with.
Goose Gear - Cool guys I've spoken with on social that seem to have a great rep.
Earth Roamer (just because I want to drool on their rig)
Blue Ridge Overland Gear - I need their tool bags in my life.
Meeting @Lifestyle Overland they are doing it right. Love following their adventures. Inspiring.

There is a full list at https://www.overlandexpo.com/exhibitors-2018-east/ and honestly I'm so new to overlanding that I'm sure many of the other vendors and exhibitors are worth seeing but I'm not familiar with them yet.

So if anyone else is excited about a vendor or a specific product please comment. I'd love to check out what others are looking forward to the most.

Eric AKA Jeepsies

 

[sabjku]

Well, for starters, I'm excited to meet as many of you as possible. Will be awesome to meet everyone and share stories, places traveled, setups, etc. I'm curious to see what others, especially JKU folks, use for suspension once they've added all of the weight that most of us carry around(you and I have discussed this Eric). New suspension is next on my list. Also interested in looking at different fridge slides that people use-ARB, tilt slides, etc. Also want to check out comm setups, GPS, etc. that others use.

I'm excited to check out:

Blue Ridge Overland Gear - I'm sure there's something from them that I can't live without!
Tembo Tusk skottles being used in the wild! - maybe a purchase for the future.
FSR - interested in seeing their tents in action.
Tepui - seeing what might be new from them.
ARB - seeing product for the new JL
Meeting Christ Shontz-I'm sure he'll be there. Love his videos!
And of course, Overland Bound!

More than anything, just excited to be able to participate in this great event, with great people. Should really be an awesome time!

 

[Hourless Life]

I haven't seen that MSR is going to be there. I sure hope so! Also SeaToSummit would be really nice.

But I agree with you @sabjku it's just going to be great to hang out and meet so many awesome folks!

I wonder if Turtleback Expeditions will be there. I'll have to look at the list again. A friend just let me know about them... and now I'm all up in their videos.

 

[brien]

I haven't seen that MSR is going to be there. I sure hope so! Also SeaToSummit would be really nice.

But I agree with you @sabjku it's just going to be great to hang out and meet so many awesome folks!

I wonder if Turtleback Expeditions will be there. I'll have to look at the list again. A friend just let me know about them... and now I'm all up in their videos.

Turtleback will be there, I see them listed as a "Special Area Sponsor". SeaToSummit was at Expo WEST and it was fun looking around at all the cool gear at their tent. I couldn't justify the prices enough for me to pick any of it up though. Really great gear, especially if you have to get every square inch out of your cargo space.

Hanging out and "talking shop" and comparing setups with others is my absolute favorite part of Expo every year, this past Expo we were camped on site all four days and I didn't even make it over to walk through the vendors until Sunday, hah.

 

[sabjku]

I haven't seen that MSR is going to be there. I sure hope so! Also SeaToSummit would be really nice.

But I agree with you @sabjku it's just going to be great to hang out and meet so many awesome folks!

I wonder if Turtleback Expeditions will be there. I'll have to look at the list again. A friend just let me know about them... and now I'm all up in their videos.

MSR, or FSR? I see FSR on the list. I want to see how much easier their RTT's are to deploy and pack down over the more conventional setups.

 

[brien]

Hopefully i'm not derailing the thread too much by posting this, but @Let's Get Dirty runs an FSR tent on top of his Disco, so maybe he can bob in here and give some feedback, but from what I've seen , it's way faster to deploy and pack up. He literally just pulls the ladder down and pushes a button. The thing just pops right open on it's own and is ready to go aside from a few quick "buttoning down the hatches" steps.

Here's his quick walkaround video from a while back:

For any continued conversation we can start a new FSR specific thread if desired

 

[sabjku]

Hopefully i'm not derailing the thread too much by posting this, but @Let's Get Dirty runs an FSR tent on top of his Disco, so maybe he can bob in here and give some feedback, but from what I've seen , it's way faster to deploy and pack up. He literally just pulls the ladder down and pushes a button. The thing just pops right open on it's own and is ready to go aside from a few quick "buttoning down the hatches" steps.

Here's his quick walkaround video from a while back:

For any continued conversation we can start a new FSR specific thread if desired

Yep, we'll keep this one on the topic of Overland East, but I appreciate that! I have seen Marco's(OVRLNDX on IG) after he switched out as well. Thanks Brien!

 

[brien]

@Jeepsies If you guys end up looking at trailers in a serious way, you will be in heaven if East is anything like West was this year. There was probably no less than 12 different trailer manufacturers there this year. Like I mentioned on FB this morning, Patriot and Turtleback topped our list for our specific needs. Conqueror was there again this year, but those trailers were just a little more weight and size than we wanted to haul, and there was another south african company that was my wife's absolute top pick until i started asking the sales rep how long it takes him to set it up at camp... he started talking about "when you get good at it you can probably do it in 45 minutes" and we immediately lost all interest. I wish I could remember the company name, they were awesome trailers, but for our use cases, where we typically camp at a different spot every night on most trips, the setup time would have been a killer.

EDIT: I dug through the flyers i grabbed at Expo and found it. The company is called Bushwakka out of ZA, although there's a US distributor in California. I think we were looking at the Bhoma, so the other models might have a faster setup time: https://bushwakkausa.com