Hey there, Camp Shoppers!

We’ve been hard at work over the winter season to make your shopping experience the best it can be. Among plenty of new products, including our innovative and awesome new Designer Trunks with hundreds of available options, our Customer Service crew has made some excellent changes to our website to give our customer a more convenient and considerate store. At the beginning of the month, I announced that we launched our Mobile Site.

Today, I introduce our new Shop-by-Brand feature.
Find this handy feature directly below our ‘Most Popular Picks’ on the homepage of our website or under the main menu options in the top left corner of our mobile site. When you want to shop just a single brand, click the Shop-by-Brand feature for direct access to a page that lists our brands.

Our online store is laid out by departments—our selections of ‘Camping Gear’, ‘Name Labels’, ‘Travel Accessories’ and five others. But the Shop-by-Brand feature is for times that you only want to look through Columbia clothing or Kelty sleeping bags as opposed to perusing our entire selection of boys and girls apparel or our plethora of sleeping bags.

Please note that not all of the brands we carry at Everything Summer Camp are represented in our Shop-by-Brand feature. Criteria to meet for Shop-by-Brand membership relies on A) how many products we carry of a particular brand B) how popular they are among our customers. We included a lot, featuring just shy of 70 brands in this new website feature.

In closing, I invite you to check out our Shop-by-Brand feature to shop exclusively the brand you’re interested in and read our brief summaries of our brand overviews and histories. Enjoy your shopping our website and, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey there, Camp Shoppers!

Fairly often, I post about new products and new deals on the Blog. And have I got news for you today! Overdue news as it may be, we’re very excited about it, nevertheless. Our Customer Service has recently launched the Everything Summer Camp mobile site so you can shop our site on your phone now.

We know, we know—better late than never, though. Right?

Now that’s not to say you couldn’t visit our online shop on your phone previously—many did, in fact. But our site wasn’t designed for phones which led to a ridiculous amount of frustrations when trying to navigate the site. You never knew if you were accurately tapping the right button and the setup was sloppy.

Now check out our mobile site! Pages load faster. Tapping is much more accurate. Our menu buttons are much easier to access. All around, it’s a much more pleasant handheld shopping experience!

As happy as we are with our mobile site, it’s not perfect. There are some things to bring to your attention—things that are not available when shopping on your phone.

1.    The mobile site is not setup for wishlists
2.    There are no product reviews on our mobile site

That’s it. We plan on adding these features to the mobile site in the near future.

Our website is sure to LOOK different on your phone, but practically everything aside from our lack of wishlists and product reviews is the same. You can still search the site on your phone, you can view your camper’s packing list, and you can enter camp codes.

We hope that you enjoy the new, smooth, and improved shopping experience on your phone. 

- John

Hey, Gift-Givers!

There’s a lot of effort that goes into gift-giving this time of year; when the time comes for our loved ones to open their gifts from us, we want that moment to be perfect. This moment can be blown, however, through no fault of the gift-giver. It’s crummy, but it happens: orders sometimes aren’t delivered until after it’s too late.

Everyone here at Everything Summer Camp, appreciates the importance of gift-giving and wants to help make sure that your gifting goes off without a hitch this year. There’s nothing more irritating than making sure that you’ve placed your online order well-enough in advance and not receiving it by the time you need it!

You can make sure that this doesn’t happen to you by ordering from Everything Summer Camp!

To ensure no confusion, I’d like to call your attention to the handy-dandy holiday map that we refer to this time of year. Thanks to this helpfully color-coded map, there won’t be any confusion about how early you need to place your order with Everything Summer Camp so you can receive it in time.    Of course delivery times will vary based on where you live in the country. We like the old adage, ‘Better Safe Than Sorry’. That’s why I’m giving you the magic numbers of 1:00pm on December 17. That’s the time and date that everybody in the contiguous United States can go off of for guaranteed delivery by December 24.

This time and date may be early for some of you. Everything Summer Camp is based in northwestern Wisconsin, so if you live in Wisconsin, most parts of Minnesota, or another nearby area, you can get away with placing your order as late as 1:00pm on December 21.

Happy holidays, Everyone. And, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Trail Mixers!

If this ultimate treat for the road is one of your favorites, then today’s Blog is definitely right up your alley. I’m posting about ‘Trail Mix Day’ in advance today in order to give you enough preparation time before August 31 arrives. Be sure to get to the store for all your ingredients ahead of time so you can have your trail mix made up and ready to enjoy ON National Trail Mix Day.

You might hear a bunch about when it was invented or who gave trail mix its name. You might see dates that go back to 1968 or even 1910, but, truthfully, trail mix is ANCIENT!

Ideal for any outing, from hikers to soldiers, this lightweight, long-lasting, easy-to-store, protein-packed, nutritious, and tasty snack has been a popular favorite among nomadic tribes thousands of years ago. It wasn’t called Trail Mix back then, but it was essentially the same thing. From scouts to pioneers, hunters and cowboys, people have always put their own spin on this ancient high-energy Travel Snack.

Requiring no special storage nor cooking preparation, many different cultures resorted to this snack as it was the easiest method of storing food for long periods of time. Native Americans had an interesting spin on this snack. They called it pemmican: dried buffalo, moose, and caribou meat along with berries. It lasted the Natives months and delivered lots of energy in a tasty and satisfying, little snack.

You’ll find a wide range of trail mix variations. The snack has gathered a number of names as well. Here are just a few:

Scroggin
If you wanted trail mix and you lived somewhere like New Zealand or the United Kingdom, you would ask for some ‘Scroggin’.

Studentenfutter
German for ‘student feed,’ this snack is not only popular for hikers, it’s also known to be a cheap snack among on-the-go students who are looking for an affordable, yet nutritional, snack.

GORP
It’s been called GORP by many, which according to some, stands for Good Ol’ Raisins and Peanuts—OR—Granola Oats, Raisins, and Peanuts—OR—Gobs Of Raw Protein. But then, it’s also been said that Scroggin stands for Sultanas, Carob, Raisins, Orange peel, Grains, Glucose, Imagination, and Nuts.

However, trail mix likely gets its name Gorp from the verb listed in The Oxford English Dictionary which means, ‘to eat greedily.’

No matter what you call it, be sure you to find some for yourself whether you get creative and make your own or if you just enjoy a packaged mix from the store. Click here for the creative inspiration of over 80 trail mix recipes! And, as always, thanks for reading.

- John

Hey, Everything Summer Camp Fans!

While our competitors will have you ordering for camp a whole month in advance or emptying your wallet to get your stuff on time, we ship your order out in days, not weeks. When your order is placed at Everything Summer Camp, it goes through our system and, after any personalized items on the order are made, the order goes to shipping.

When the camp season hits, we have to be ready for it in multiple ways which is why we either stock all our products or make them in-house. This way, we ship your order fast. It’s certainly a team effort among departments, but in the end, every single order goes through the shipping department. The season inevitably gives these guys a workout every year!

Welcome to shipping.

This giant warehouse where we stock all of our camp trunks and other products (aside from our customizable graphics and camp clothing) is where the magic happens.

An extremely busy place—this time of year especially—the summer shipping crew works methodically thanks to shipping manager, Ryan’s, careful orchestration and execution of the day. These guys get your quality camp gear from Everything Summer Camp out to you on time every time!

The details of each order is printed and all the orders that need to ship that day are pushed out the door first. The crew goes to work “picking orders”. Orders without customizable products get “picked” from our stocked products. The order is then looked over to make sure that it’s complete and ready to be shipped out to you.

Each order is boxed up then. The shipping labels are printed and the order is seen into the back of a UPS truck and delivered to you. A fun and moving work environment, the shipping department is great at what they do! As always, thanks for reading!

- John