When can we say that a product category has lost the plot, versus “evolving?”
The EDC movement has long fascinated me. Not because I’m a proponent—I only carry a single thing that could be called a multitool, and I rarely use it outside of my house—but because of the sheer size of the market, the resources poured into it, and the fanatic level of both design attention and consumer attention poured into their products.
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But I do think, as a category, they’ve lost the plot. Initially, the entire point of EDC was that there were one or two things you carried every day that might come in handy in a jam. These things fit in a pocket. Now, however, the amount of objects to be carried so far exceeds normal pocket count, that supporting industries have popped up to provide vessels for it all. Thus we have objects like this Vault 2.0 carrying case, for when you want to tote 120-plus objects:
This Storm Jacket, with 18 pockets:
A company called Viperade, who self-describes as “pioneers in redefining EDC storage platforms,” offers a dizzying array of pouches, slings, sheathes, holsters, organizers, fanny packs, zipper cases etc., “to serve different environments:”
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To be clear, I don’t hate on any of these companies; they’re selling pickaxes to the miners. My question is: What is the gold that EDC fanatics are seeking to mine? Is it just about collecting, like with Star Wars figures? Is it about peace-of-mind for a hypothetical apocalypse? Or is the goal to actually get into all of the jams that would necessitate using these tools?
Source: core77