made for saturdays, not just summer

Summer is a season. A saturday is a habit.

People ask us when the beach season starts, and we never quite know how to answer. In Newport, the water is coldest in late winter and the light is best in the fall. The crowds thin out in October and the locals quietly take the sand back. If you wait for summer, you miss most of the year.

So we stopped building things for summer. We started building for saturdays.

the test of a good thing is whether you bring it

Most beach gear fails one quiet test: you leave it at home. It is too heavy, too awkward, too much of a production to load and unload, so it lives in the garage and you go to the beach empty-handed and sit on a sweatshirt. The gear was fine. It just asked too much of you.

A 7.5 pound chair changes that math. It goes on your back, your hands stay free for the towel, the coffee, the kid who needs holding. You stop deciding whether the trip is worth the haul, because there is no haul. That is the whole idea: lower the cost of going, and you go more.

the chair lives in the car

Here is the honest test we use. A good beach chair is one you forget is in your car until you need it. Ours folds down small enough to leave in the back of the SUV from January to December. It weighs about as much as a full grocery bag. So when a saturday turns out warmer than the forecast, or a meeting cancels, or someone says let's just go, there is nothing to plan. The chair is already there.

That is what we mean by made for saturdays. Not the two weeks you take off in July. The ordinary saturday in March when the marine layer burns off by noon and you have three free hours. The gear that earns its keep is the gear that is ready when you are.

built to last more than a season

A chair you keep in the car year-round has to survive being kept in the car year-round. So the frame is 6061 aluminum, the kind that does not mind salt air or a hot trunk. The armrests are beechwood. It holds up to 250 pounds and reclines through four positions, enough to sit up and read or lean back and close your eyes. It does not lay flat, and we left it that way on purpose, because a chair that lays flat needs a longer, heavier frame, and the point was to keep it light enough that you never think twice about bringing it.

The chair is also made from 19 recycled ocean bound plastic bottles, which is its own small argument for using it more than a few weeks a year. A thing built from rescued plastic should not sit in a garage. It should be out, getting sand on it, earning the second life it was given. You can read more about how that works on our ocean impact page.

the rest of the kit follows the same rule

The towel is waffle microfiber on both sides and lets the sand fall off instead of clinging, so it is ready for the next saturday without a wash every time. The full pouch clips to the back of the chair and holds the towel plus whatever else you carry, with a cup holder built in. None of it asks much of you. That is the point.

Beach more, worry less is not a slogan about summer. It is about the long ordinary stretch of the year when the beach is right there and the only thing standing between you and it is whether the gear is ready. Ours is. Keep the chair in the car, and let a regular saturday surprise you.