At SOFIC 2016, MMI Outdoor is re-introducing their Catoma Adventure Shelters brand as Catoma and extending the product line to include all products designed and manufactured under their watch. If you’re attending SOFIC, you can find Catoma at Booth #238 on the main floor. Thermal Concealment, unique load carriage products, and Depsoc360 camouflage will now fall under the Catoma brand in addition to the individual tents that have been a staple in the military shelter market for well over a decade. The Improved BedNet System family of products – now given the name “Burrow IBNS” because of its shape and function – is a pop-up bug screen and tent system sold to the US Military to the tune of over 300,000 units.
The Catoma Adventure Shelters brand – under the MMI Outdoor parent company umbrella – was created in 1993 as a humble designer and importer of rugged tents to serve the brave firefighters on the front lines of wildland forest fires in the American West. The method of designing tents to serve the specific needs of elite users began there. Through growth over the last two decades, Catoma has become a leading provider of unique individual tents for the United States Armed Forces as well, founded on their willingness to design around the requests of their end users.
With close proximity to Fort Benning for testing and input, this design and testing protocol naturally led to opportunities outside the tent market, leading MMI to begin Research and Development on a number of military projects over the last decade. Close collaboration with training elements under the guidance of Director of Sales, Martin Lambert (Former US Army) – and his extensive contact with the Special Operations community – led to the development of unique sniper and reconnaissance-focused thermal concealment products whose capabilities remain unmatched to date. A defense manufacturing and sales partnership with Granite Gear eventually led MMI to venture into designing their own unique load carriage solutions, leading to considerable expansion of in-house design capabilities. Near-daily indexing with end user groups for testing and evaluation has given MMI unique insight into their products and how they are used.
An aging tent line on the Catoma front and newfound capability to design and manufacture product led to the necessity to consolidate the efforts. A re-facing of the Catoma brand began with a focus on the rugged, tactical nature of the products coming from the design program at MMI. The new Catoma logo you see here is not just a cosmetic change, but one that better reflects the warrior heritage of the products themselves. “In developing the icon for Catoma, we kept coming back to imagery of tools and weapons used by warriors of the past: Spartan helmets, Native American spearheads, and battle axes of the Viking Age were all inspirations for the shape,” says Marketing Director Jake Pugh.
An overhaul of existing products and the addition of products previously in development have resulted in a strong tactical and commercial line-up for the Catoma brand to begin its new chapter.
Tags: Catoma, MMI Outdoor, SOFIC