Superior Hammock started with a bad night's sleep and a heavy pack.
Danny Warnock, a software engineer from Woodbury, enjoyed his backpacking and wilderness canoe outings, but not the quality of rest he was getting in his tent, sleeping (or trying to) on hard ground in bumpy campsites — or the 90 pounds of gear he found himself carrying on a solo paddling trip.
Lugging that much weight in a state of sleep deprivation was no way to enjoy the outdoors, Warnock concluded.
"I realized the heaviest thing I had was my tent, which weighed 6 ½ pounds," he said. "I was carrying a hammock too, just to hang out in, and it was a lot lighter. I wondered: Can I just sleep in the hammock?"
Warnock found he could. His sleep improved, and he loved cutting pounds. But when he went looking for a rig more suitable to backpacking than his day hammock, which had no bug net or what's called an underquilt necessary to block the cold, he couldn't find anything he liked. So, with his mother-in-law teaching him how to sew, he made his own, haunting thrift stores for old winter jackets he used to supply the down feathers he needed for his insulation layer.
At the time, four years ago, Warnock had no intention of stitching together more than just his own hammock. But that just changed — dramatically. During a Kickstarter campaign that ended in mid-November, 111 backers pledged more than $42,000 (almost three times the goal) to buy gear from Warnock's fledgling company, dubbed Superior Hammock. The merchandise is being made in a small warehouse in an Osseo business park, with the first hammocks scheduled to be delivered to customers before the end of the year. A second crowdfunding effort, through Indiegogo, is now in progress. One Kickstarter package — "a launch special" — is $479 for a hammock, suspension, tarp, ridgeline (used to suspend a tarp), bug net and stuff sack.
Warnock attributes the interest in his product largely to what seems like a contradiction. Conventional wisdom is that hammocks and underquilts should be separate parts sold separately. Warnock's first hammock, and those he is now selling under the Superior brand, combine the hammock and the underquilt into one piece.
"I just found, from the very beginning, that I really wanted the insulation to be built into the hammock," he said. "I didn't want to mess with all the different parts."