It’s one thing to design gear that stands up to the demands of overlanders from around the world. It’s another to design gear good enough for your own team.
Dometic product manager Reed Frick is set on doing both.
“We have a really high bar,” Frick said. “If it’s not good enough for us, then it’s not good enough for consumers.”
From weekend outings in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado to extended journeys into Oregon’s Owyhee Canyonlands, the Dometic product, sales, and marketing team is passionate about vehicle-based adventure. It’s a passion that lends itself to an obsession with quality gear—and which makes innovation the standard when it comes to new products.
“It really ups our game as product developers when we know how many experienced people within the company are going to use our gear,” Frick said. “It’s got to be really good.”
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Innovation has been at the core of Dometic since the company’s origins 100 years ago when two Swedish engineers invented absorption technology—technology that created the entire refrigeration industry. And in the 1950s, Dometic was the first to take that technology mobile, supplying a booming leisure market with refrigerators designed for RVs.
Today, that culture of innovation is as strong as ever: From powered coolers to portable batteries, Dometic builds game-changing gear that makes mobile living simpler—and more comfortable.
Innovation, said Frick, emerges from days spent on the road and evenings spent at camp, tossing ideas around the fire. (The concept for the ice-making Rapid Freeze Plate in the CFX3 55 IM powered cooler, for example, came out of one such campfire session, over barbecue and beers, with other overlanders.)
The Dometic team doesn’t just use the gear they make—they depend on it: When product manager Owen Mesdag isn’t showing off water storage solutions or powered coolers out of his 1964 Series 2a Land Rover at overlanding events, he’s often far off the grid with his family, crawling up rocky switchbacks to access alpine lakes in Washington, or roaming the ultra-remote, no-resupply reaches of Eastern Oregon.
And for sales rep Bryan Rush, Dometic gear makes it possible to escape for weeks at a time into the Utah desert or Southern Sierra.
“My daughter is one year old, and when we go camping, she loses her mind—it’s her favorite thing to do,” Rush said. “And that’s not possible to do without a fridge to put breast milk in. So really, it gives us the access and ability to do things we normally wouldn’t have been able to do.”
During events, the entire team converges to share Dometic gear with the wider community, said brand manager Amanda Goad, who first fell in love with overlanding—and high-quality gear—on a 6-month trip to Alaska via the ALCAN Highway.
“Despite being scattered from Oregon to Colorado to Indiana, we all meet up to camp out with each other and with other overlanders—to share meals, swap stories and experiences, unplug, and connect,” Goad said. “We’re genuinely excited to share all the products that make it easier for us to get outside.”
Most recently, the team launched Dometic Go, a line-up of easy-to-pack gear which versatile camp furniture, hard and soft storage, and an ingenious rechargeable water faucet that cleanly solves an age-old problem: no running water at camp.
At Dometic, innovation isn’t just a gimmick, and “new” means something.
“Just as we invented a new product category with powered coolers, we’re doing the same thing with water,” Frick said. “And it’s kind of refreshing—especially when a lot of ‘new’ outdoor gear is really just a new color or a new size.”
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It’s a clear indication of where Dometic is headed. Keeping food fresh and drinks cold while on the road will always be a crucial part of a well-lived outdoor life: As Rush put it, the CFX3 “singlehandedly made what I was already doing way, way easier.” But the Dometic team is excited to expand beyond mobile refrigeration and into other areas that will be similarly game-changing when it comes to outdoor comfort.
“It all comes down to being excited to get outside and wanting to share that excitement with everyone,” Goad said. “And if we can design more ways to make being outside more comfortable, more like home, we can all focus on the reasons we’re outside in the first place—whether that be for singletrack, a fresh evening catch, or a campfire sunset.”
Disclaimer: This paid story was produced in partnership with Dometic
