Before they were stitching apparel in Lincoln, New Hampshire, Matt Boothby and Eric Blanche were hiking across the country.
Between them: the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, Vermont's Long Trail, and more than 15,000 miles on foot.
Now they're helping build gear at Burgeon Outdoor in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
When you've spent thousands of miles carrying everything you own through rain, heat, snow, and exhaustion, you develop strong opinions about what actually matters in gear. What works. What fails. What disappears on your body.
That perspective now shows up at the sewing machines inside Burgeon.
From the White Mountains to the Triple Crown
For Matt, long-distance hiking started close to home.
Before thru-hiking, he was already working through rounds of New Hampshire's 48 four-thousand-footers. Then came his first overnight backpacking trip.
"I was kind of hooked on the notion of long-distance backpacking," he said. "Committing to walking thousands of miles makes you strip everything down to what actually matters."
After leaving his job and apartment in Portland, Maine, Matt headed west to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. The experience changed him enough that the Continental Divide Trail and Appalachian Trail eventually followed.
By the end of it, the miles stopped being about completion.
"It wasn't really about collecting completions anymore but rather about who I became and how I feel out there."
For Eric, the path unfolded differently.
The Appalachian Trail came first. Years later, the Continental Divide Trail started calling.
"At that point, I had not considered the PCT at all," Eric said. "Not until I completed the CDT did I know I was eventually going to hike the PCT. It was inevitable."
Despite hiking the same three iconic trails, they never crossed paths out there.
"The trails are long, and the timing never lined up," Matt said. "But there's a shorthand you develop with someone when you've both done serious mileage. You don't have to explain why something matters."
That shorthand shows up in how they think about gear.
Not in trends. In practice.
What Thousands of Miles Teach You About Gear
For Eric, the issue most outdoor apparel gets wrong is overcomplication.
"Most outdoor gear is too complicated in both design and intention."
For Matt, it's fit and construction, particularly for women.
"So much gear is still made on a male default and then scaled down or slightly tweaked and called women's specific," he said. "Wearing ill-fitting gear out on the trail day after day isn't just uncomfortable, it causes real problems."
And then there are the details most people never notice.
"Seam location," Matt said when asked what people underestimate. "Where a seam is placed on your body under a loaded pack, or at a point of repeated motion can make the difference between a garment that performs, and one that fails you."
Those aren't opinions formed in a product meeting. They come from thousands of miles of wearing gear through long climbs, cold mornings, and days when comfort matters more than almost anything else.
From Wearing Gear to Making It
For both of them, working at Burgeon felt less like a career change and more like a continuation of the same path.
"I wanted to be closer to the making of outdoor gear and apparel," Matt said. "When the opportunity came up to work on the production side, it felt like a natural next step rather than a detour."
Eric had already spent years modifying and building his own gear before joining the team.
"My desire to modify and build my own gear brought me from the trail to sewing machines," he said.
Made Here by People Who Live It
And for both of them, the location is part of the story.
Burgeon's production spaces in Lincoln and Gorham sit in the shadow of the same White Mountains trails that shaped both of them in the first place.
"The trails I've hiked for years are the same trails the people buying this gear are going to hike," Matt said. "There's a real satisfaction in knowing that what we build here is going to be tested on terrain so many of us know so well."
Eric feels that connection too.
"I enjoy the opportunity to interact with customers using the gear, especially fun when this happens on trail."
And what would they want someone wearing Burgeon gear in the mountains to know?
Matt put it best:
"That someone who has walked thousands of miles in gear just like it had a hand in making yours."
That experience is stitched into every piece.
