About

I’ve been an outdoorsy person for as long as I can remember. I grew up in Minnesota, riding bikes and exploring the woods as a kid, and I’ve been doing the same thing in the mountains of Colorado ever since. I don’t get as much time on the bike as I used to, but I still love it, and I fit in rides whenever I can.

That’s the same curiosity that made me a bike mechanic for more than ten years. For a long time I worked with the basic tools the shop provided. They mostly got the job done, but a lot of my effort went into fighting the tools instead of fixing the bike. Once I got better and started investing in nicer ones, work became fun again! I could focus on the problem instead of wrestling with the thing that was supposed to help me solve it. That’s stuck with me: the right tool makes life more fun.

These days I’m a PhD student studying how rivers change the landscape. It involves a lot of fieldwork, and spending that much time outside with gear has taught me what makes a bag hold up and what makes it fall apart.

I started making my own packs because I wanted things built for a specific purpose that did that job well. And honestly, I just love the making part. I get a ton of satisfaction out of turning a flat pile of material into something that does exactly what it’s supposed to and looks good doing it. A utilitarian thing doesn’t have to be boring, and figuring out how to make it both is my favorite part of the process.

— Josie

The name and logo

Rana is the Spanish word for frog. I’ve always loved frogs because they are silly-lil-guys. During the strangeness that was early 2020, I spent a lot of time learning how to draw frogs, in an effort to distract from what was going on in the world. During that time, I drew what would become one of the logos for this brand. I named my brand Rana Goods mostly because of this drawing, and the fact that I thought it would be fun to be able to put it on the things that I make.