About

Tom in Rio - ULT Gear Founder

 

Hi, I’m Tom, a full-time traveler, part-time blogger, and founder of ULT Gear - currently traveling the world and living out of a 24L laptop bag. 

I created ULT gear with two goals, 1) to educate people on minimalist and one-bag travel, and 2) to create products for the one-bag community where I thought existing tools were lacking.

Education

In regards to education, our blog is split into a few high-level categories:

  • Packing Tips - tips for minimizing your pack for long or short-term travel
  • How-To Guides - how-to guides related to one-bag products and daily routines
  • Buyer’s Guides - highlights and recommendations for one-bag travel products
  • Creation Journey - more on this later - i.e. coming soon!

If you’re new to one-bag travel and trying to figure out where to start, our Getting Started with One-Bag Travel (2024 Edition) is a good starting point.

If you're planning a trip and looking for ways to optimize your pack, check out our Packing Tips and How-To Guides for real-world, minimalist packing advice.

And if you’re a seasoned one-bag traveler looking to optimize your one-bag layout, you may find our Buyer’s Guides to be a useful resource.

Product Development

ULT Gear, short for ultralight travel gear, represents an ambitious goal to create ultralight, packable travel gear specifically designed for minimalist and one-bag travelers. 

There are many great travel products that I’m eternally thankful for… Darn Tough socks, Exofficio underwear, Scrubba Wash Bags, Merino wool everything, etc., and then there are things that just don't exist, so I decided to do something about it, and.... it's a work in progress.

We have a few things in development, thanks to many helping hands across different industries (and continents!), but we hope to launch our first product soon!

And while we don't have production-ready products yet, you can follow our Creation Journey here (Hint: it’s lots of failures, false starts, and creative destruction!).

Lastly, if you’re interested in helping build one-bag products, I would love to hear from you! Shoot me a note at tom@ultgear.co - let’s connect and build something useful. :)

A Quick Note About Our Listed Products

In complete transparency, when I first started ULT Gear, I wanted it to be the store I wished I had before I started traveling, so I started researching, testing, buying, and sourcing products from Alibaba; all the products you see on ULT Gear come directly from the manufacturers.

In the evolution of this store and website, I’ve removed 90% of the inventory, choosing to keep just a few products that are either difficult to find, out of production, or ubiquitously overpriced on other marketplaces.

I do not make a profit on the items I sell here!

Why keep them listed? Two reasons, 1) they’re good products that I’ve tested and used, and 2) I wanted placeholders for future ULT Gear-developed products.

As always, I encourage you to do your research before making any purchase, but if you’re looking for inexpensive, pre-vetted travel products, this is a good place to start.

Looking Forward

Today, it’s just a blog with a few hard-to-find products, aiming to be a useful resource for minimalist and one-bag travelers. In the future, I hope to see this grow into a thriving community of one-bag travel enthusiasts, along with some very specific (and currently missing!) travel products.

The ultimate goal with ULT Gear, is to make it easy for anyone to travel anywhere, at any time; it’s going to take a lot of work, but I’d love your input and for you to join me on this journey!

Thanks for reading, and as always, happy travels.

Tom