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Few components of the camping experience are as fundamental as a tent and sleeping bag. Shelter and bedding that fit your customer’s requirements will help ensure many weekend trips into the woods. Conversely, those that fall short can jeopardize not only a camping trip, but an entire camping season—and, perhaps, your relationship with the customer.

It’s up to you and your staff to steer your customers toward the accommodations that will meet their needs. Naturally, a family of four will have different requirements than a backpacker, but at the same time, two families of four may each have differing needs. Ask as many questions as possible, on subjects that range from how often your customers plan to go camping and their level of experience to where they plan to set up shop.

Before you can meet the camping customer’s needs in tents and sleeping bags, you have to understand how to meet those needs. Sorting through the hundreds of choices available in each of these categories becomes somewhat easier when you can group those choices by their relevance to the people who will buy and use them.

That means first identifying the kinds of campers they tend to be. Pegging those customers as either family campers or backpackers isn’t the end of it. There are occasional family campers and those who like to get away as many weekends as possible during the warmer months, and there are sometime backpackers as well as those who prefer to disappear into the wilderness for a couple of weeks at a time.

Each of these customers will have different requirements in tents and bags. The avid family group will need a tent that can stand up to more frequent use, and may also need bags that are rated to lower temperatures, because their camping season may stretch into early fall.

Casual and hardcore backpackers alike need lightweight tents, designed to compress into small, manageable silhouettes. Unlike the family group, each backpacker will carry his or her own tent. However, the frequent backpacker will likely be in the market for something more technical and likely more expensive.

A COMPASS, NOT A MAP

The most important consideration in a tent is roominess, and that is an individual matter. Tent manufacturers’ ratings on capacity should be used as guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules.

A tent needs to accommodate not only a particular number of campers, but also their gear. And this makes a big difference in how much room is needed. Some campers travel light, while others tend to pack as though going on a month-long cruise.

Ask your customers to determine whether they’ll be comfortable when stretched out full-length on the floor in a sleeping bag, for example, and whether there will be enough floor space to avoid a cooped-up feeling if the weather turns inclement.

Another consideration is the amount of time your customer plans to spend inside the tent, regardless of weather, and what they might do inside the tent aside from sleeping and changing clothes. Cooking inside the tent is one such activity, making a tent with a cook an option.

If camping in the rainy season is a distinct possibility, advise your customer to determine whether they feel the tent’s storm flap will keep out in the elements in the quantity they might encounter.