This episode of Pop Bear Hikes has been brought to you by Avalon Publicity.

Avalon Publicity, increasing the digital footprint of content creators and

skilled professionals via website development and social media services.

For more information about Avalon Publicity, go to their website www.AvalonBusiness.org

as www.AvalonBusiness.org

Hello, welcome to another episode of Pop Bear Hikes.

Today I'm taking advantage of an opportunity on a work and play vacation here in Florida

and I decided why not stop in and visit a company that was, I think, at the forefront

of a lot of the ultra-light equipment for backpackers.

I want to welcome Matt from ZPACS here in West Melbourne, Florida to Pop Bear Hikes.

Matt, welcome to the podcast.

It would be very good to be here.

Matt, why don't you start off by giving us a little bit of background on ZPACS as a company?

ZPACS is really kind of like the American dream, entrepreneurial spirit story.

It's a very typical kind of story.

So our owner, Joe Valesco, he was going to have to write the Appalachian Trail only

finished college.

He started preparing, he started looking for gear and he went to all these outfathers and

everything he found was really heavy.

He had all these extra buckles and webbing and pockets and zippers.

Tons of stuff that could potentially fail getting away and it was really heavy.

And he was like, you know, I think I can do better, right?

...