Posts about Tom Bihn
Just before the pandemic (and I mean literally like less than a month before), word from Tom Bihn came out about a new bag that would be an update to the popular Western Flyer and Tri-Star line in the same way that the Synik updated the Synapse backpacks. Obviously covid stopped everything in its tracks, including new designs, and we were told on the forums that design on the Trinity had been shelved about a year ago.
Well, now it's actually a product and boy am I whelmed.
What a weird, eyewateringly expensive design. It's stupidly heavy, has really weird pockets (hope you don't want to have a water bottle when it's in backpack mode because it'll be horizontal) and just looks...weird even for Tom Bihn. It's also weirdly small, I mean how does this thing only have 21L of volume when it has so many pockets? I mean, that's just my opinion, but even on the forums (which are usually waaaay too positive), people are like "ehh I don't know if this is for me".
What do you guys think? Is it worth the price for you? What are some decent use cases? Do any bags fill a similar role, but for cheaper?
About a month ago I made a post about stuff I'd noticed with Tom Bihn and how I was worried about what that meant for its future. Since then, they've continued doing things that kind of worry me-most notably, continuing their new restock policy in a way that seems to maximize FOMO, and a "refresh" of the Aeronaut line that seems to be cutting corners by doing things like getting rid of much of the Halcyon interior of the bag.
This past weekend, someone on the Tom Bihn BST Facebook group (shoutout to them, all credit for finding all of this stuff goes to them) posted this article saying that Tom Bihn had been sold back in late 2021 to Snow Hill Capital. This came as a surprise to a lot of people, since the company as a whole is somewhat renowned for its communication-or at least, it was. However, people started noticing that people from Tom Bihn (most notably Darcy, the former CEO) haven't been active at all since the New Year. More digging was done, and yesterday a post was made that showed that there had been a bunch of new hires recently, with senior designers leaving quietly and joining other companies.
Today, a blog post on Tom Bihn was made, introducing the new CEO Cindy. Tom Bihn, Darcy and Nik (designer of the popular Synik) were quoted as well, each saying how they're more or less retiring from daily operations at Tom Bihn. There was no mention of the sale.
Not really sure how to feel about this. I've had a feeling something was up there for a while, and this certainly would explain pretty much everything. The lack of transparency, even now, is something that I'm a bit worried about. The blog post especially reeks of "Oh we were caught trying to hide this reorganization, we need to give them something", which doesn't (in my opinion) bode well for the future.
EDIT: u/JKBFree posted a response from the new CEO Cindy here that's definitely worth taking a look at.