Our founder Vis grew up in the nature city of Vancouver. With proximity to the rocky mountains and countless virgin forest, Vis experienced his first encounter with nature in grade 6, when his all boys boarding school dropped him and his classmates off at a tiny pier at Indian Arms just north of Port Coquitlam. What followed was 3 days of solo kayaking up the channel and a near death case of hypothermia, because back then Vis had absolutely no idea what functional outdoor clothing was. Kayaking was then the first of many outdoor activities that Vis took on, and the first of countless sagas that Vis would tell. What followed was skydiving with a twisted wrist, being on the snowboarding team, dirt biking across the biggest desert in Asia, scuba diving with shark encounters, road trips across more than 50 countries, solo riding a rickshaw vertically across Sri Lanka, and more.

What began as more of a thirst for adrenaline rush below the rib cages turned into a spiritual escape for Vis. Rubbing hail from his goggles while trying to shift gears turned into picking up floras to light up at the campsite. During the same time, functional outdoor gears across the market was great as functional tools, but lacked the spiritual calmness and comfort that one feels when returning home in pajamas.

After our founder graduated from the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in business and contemporary art, UPPERVOID was born on a solo snowboarding trip in Niigata, Japan. Vis went off the boundaries (again), and was trapped in waist deep snow on a closed road. At that very moment, Vis wasn't scared, he felt home.