Our Story

 

OHMI started as an extension of the personal MYOG (Make Your Own Gear) project back in 2023.

Just like any other MOYGer, we started our journey by ordering some sample fabric from Ripstop by the Roll and putting our hands on the fabric with an entry-level sewing machine. It was a $100 Janome sewing machine. Just good enough for us to get started back then. No one in our team knew how to sew things properly and we had no idea if we would ever create our own brand in the future. It was purely an experimental project for ourselves as hikers.

The first gear we worked on was Tyvek bivy, which later became our iconic product MT Bivy. We laid down multiple pieces of Tyvek in a tiny bedroom, somehow sewed them together with lots of mistakes, and added a zipper to make entry to the bivy. The prototype was very rough around the edges but it was usable for us to test-drive it on the trail and in the mountain.

We kept iterating on the prototype and made changes to it based on the feedback we gathered in the field. We made many versions of prototypes until we were satisfied with the result. It was still a $100 Janome sewing machine doing all the jobs we needed. Around the same time, we started hearing from other hikers asking if the bivy was available for sale. Although we never thought this could be a product, we decided to spend some time seeking a way to mass-produce it so that we could make it available to other hikers.

Later we made a little investment into the equipment and purchased a second-hand JUKI sewing machine. It was our first industrial-grade sewing machine, which had the horsepower and precision we were looking for. The whole purpose of upgrading the equipment was to create a production-ready prototype of the bivy.

We learned how to operate this new machine, and weeks later, we came up with what we thought was a production-ready model. However, it took months to finish polishing the product and find the right partner who could help us mass-manufacture it. This required a lot of back-and-forth communication between the two parties. From that moment onward, we started calling ourselves OHMI Equipment.

The name OHMI (近江) refers to our origin, which is Shiga prefecture in Japan, and we thought this would be the perfect brand to present our philosophy and products. We are a Japanese cottage brand with a global mindset. We design multi-functional ultralight gear for you to explore trails, wilderness and mother nature.