Serious gear for serious use
We are Finnish, and we have a decades long history of making equipment for the Finnish Defence Forces and other demanding end-users. This shows in everything we do. Finland has short warm summers, wet and cold autumns and long, freezing winters with heavy snowfall. All this affects how we live and how we work, we make gear for hard use in these conditions.
Deliberately sensible functionality
When thinking about functionality the first
thing that comes to mind may be lots of fancy features and gimmicks. But for us this is not the case. Overly complicated designs may stumble over themselves in certain conditions. Often what you really want is something straightforward that just does what it’s supposed to.
In our designs we focus on making sensible
gear that gets the job done, without being needlessly complicated and gimmicky. Making complicated gear is usually fairly easy: just add and add features until it does all it needs to do. But trimming all that down to a smart package is harder. By focusing on primary functionality and keeping designs straightforward we get gear that is easier to use to its full effect.
Take our Kahakka packs as an example: compare these to any other commercially available “military combat packs” and you will see the difference. These are not zipper-upon-zipper-upon-zipper contraptions, but quite pragmatic designs which are both functional and extremely reliable.
Demanding environments
Finland is cold, and many other things, which puts a twist on how we make gear. In freezing cold temperatures (-30 degrees Celsius and colder is common here) and the dark of night you really want your equipment to be easy to use and reliable. Often you literally are not able to fiddle around with finnicky stuff in these conditions.
The effect of our environment can be seen in many of our designs:
- Our packs have aluminium frames, not plastic, because it works through the seasons year after year.
- We use metal hardware where needed and sensible, but we don’t make our packs main compartments close with steel G-hooks because those can be quite difficult to open quickly if you’re wearing thick gloves.
- Our Griffin slings have chunky aluminium slider buckles with generous webbing grip tabs, and steel tri-glides. They work no matter the weather and abuse.
- We use 1000D and 500D Cordura for most of our gear to make sure it really is strong enough for carrying nasty stuff through bad situations. You shouldn’t abuse your gear, but sometimes you must.
- Our field camp tents are made from tough canvas, fire-retardant and all, for long service life and use with wood burning stoves (which really are a must here when it gets cold).
Focusing on primary functionality and long-term reliability gives our work and gear an overall seriously deliberate and altogether sensible twist. Add to that our rather high material and labour costs and you get the distinct Savotta style, born out of numerous real-world factors, necessities and realities.
