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Products: The Patch Game

6/20/2017

Patches are a great way to show off your adventures!

Although Bourn Adventure Gear now has a large selection of patches to choose from, that was not always the case. We started with stickers and decals before we had the bright idea for a patch.

If you are not familiar with our beginning, please read our story by clicking here: About Us: Bourn Adventure Gear

We ventured into the patch world thanks to boredom, a cold beer, and our Toyota FJ Cruiser, which was parked in the driveway, waiting for history to unfold. One day while I was going through some of my military gear I stumbled upon my old unit patch from my first deployment with the 25th Infantry Division.

Brief sidetrack! In 2004 my unit wore the Desert Camouflage Uniform (DCU) which required our patches to be sewn on. Shortly after arriving in Iraq, some of us began field testing what was known as the Close Combat Uniform (CCU) which was an improvement on the DCUs we were issued. One of the new features with the CCUs was the ability to attach patches to the uniform using velcro. The CCU was later phased out for the Army Combat Uniform (ACU), which is currently in use along with the Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP).

Anyway, back to the story. The patches I located that day had velcro backing as they were used on my CCU. It was at that moment a dim light bulb started flickering in my head.

I grabbed the patches and my adult beverage and ran outside to the FJ. I leaned in, stuck the patch to my headliner and magically it stayed up there thanks to the fuzzy fabric.

I immediately realized this was why I was put on the earth; to show the human race that patches were rad again.

This does not work on all vehicles, but the Toyota and Lexus headliners are Velcro friendly. Occasionally, a patch will drop from the roof and land on someone in the vehicle. Usually when this happens, it scares the ever living crap out of whoever it hits! This led Ashlie and I to have an interesting conversation about those experiences following the roll over in our Toyota FJ Cruiser, which at the time had about 70 patches on the headliner.

- Ashlie: "Remember when we'd be driving the FJ and a patch would randomly fall from the roof and scare the crap out of us?"

- Me: "Do you think we scared the crap out of the patches when we rolled the FJ and fell on them?"

To read our article about the accident in the FJ, please click here: The Roll Over

Following this discovery, I immediately started hoarding patches to decorate our headliner. That was not enough for us though, we also wanted to make designs that we used for our stickers available in patch form too.

In 2013 we had our first patch made, which was our block BakesFJ.com logo. Shortly following that, we had our second patch made, which was our My Toyota Rocks! design.

To learn more about our design work, please click here: Product Design

What started as a cool way to display our designs and adventures has now grown into a large market filled with creative and talented makers. Although our patches were initially marketed to Toyota owners for use on their headliners, we have now expanded our design spectrum to include a wide variety of themes.

People all over the world rock Bourn Adventure Gear patches on their jackets, bags, hats, hiking equipment, photography equipment, camping gear, tactical vests, vehicle headliners, and much more.

We have physically carried our patches with us on adventures all over the world. They have traveled to places like Petra, Zion National Park, the Dead Sea, Arches National Park, Wadi Tiwi, and Niagara Falls, to list a few.

To us and many other people, our patches are more than just designs, they are a lifestyle!

Petra, Jordan
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We don't just design adventure based products, we live them!
-Bourn Adventure Gear

Author: Baker