How curiosity and a the love for riding bikes shaped every detail.

The Problem: Tents Aren’t designed for the way bikes carry load.

While bikepacking, space is a premium. And yet, tents — one of the bulkiest pieces of gear — are rarely designed with that reality in mind. While weight is often optimized, or tent poles come in shorter segments, compressibility of the tent itself is usually overlooked. For many riders, this means leaving the tent behind altogether or settling for gear that’s difficult to pack, awkward to carry, and not truly adapted to life on a bike.

The Question That Sparked Aper Gear

That’s where the idea for Aper Gear started: with a question. Can a shelter be reimagined specifically for the needs of bikepackers? Could it be easier to pack, smaller in volume, and better suited to the way bikes carry load?

A-shaped prototype. Concept dropped due to poor space-to-material ratio.

A Slow Design Process, on Purpose

The design process wasn’t rushed. It unfolded over years of testing, sewing, riding, and refining. After many iterations, a tent design emerged that struck the right balance between low weight, compact pack size and overall performance. By integrating the bicycle into the tent’s structure, we were able to increase interior volume by over 30% while using less fabric overall. The result is more headroom than any other singelpole tent offers. It allows you to sit upright comfortably. Since the tent stands on its own, the bike just lifts one corner to tension the fabric. There’s very little force on the bike, and it stays stable using a simple handelbar mount and brake lock.

But the challenge didn’t stop there. The next question became: how far could we push compressibility without compromising performance?

Early Apex1 prototype on a freezing morning along the Colorado Trail, late September 2023.

 

Discovering the Missing Metric

It was during this phase that something unexpected came to light:
in an industry full of technical benchmarks, from waterproofing to tear strength, there is no existing standard for measuring fabric compressibility!
That absence was telling. When a standard doesn’t exist, it’s often a sign that no one has truly focused on the issue. For bikepacking gear, this presented a clear opportunity.

 

Creating a New Standard: Pack Volume Testing

Aper Gear developed an internal test method to compare fabric compressibility in measurable terms — not just by weight or denier (fabric thread weight), but by actual packed volume. Every component of the Apex1 shelter was scrutinized: from the outer shell to the bathtub floor to the inner tent mesh, and even the finer details like tie-outs, door keepers, the tent opening, and the seams themselves. Every detail was considered, not just for strength and weight, but for how it behaves when packed on a bike.

The test method uses 0.5 m² of fabric, compressed under force levels that reflect what’s realistically applied in the field — simulating how fabric behaves during actual use.

 

Smarter Material, Smaller Pack Size

Through deliberate material selection, carefully optimizing the fiber type, coating thickness, and weave, the packed volume of the shelter was reduced by approximately 20% without changing fabric thickness. That improvement didn’t come at the cost of durability. It was the result of smarter material choices, guided by real data.

The tests didn’t just reveal differences between fabric types and coating type. But also coating thickness, and even ripstop weave structure (like grid size) had a measurable impact on compressibility.

 

Why We Chose Nylon

One of the clearest outcomes of this testing was the choice of outer fabric. Despite the trend in ultralight shelters to favor polyester or Dyneema, often at the cost of packability, our tests showed that nylon offers a clear advantage. In our scoring system, nylon proved to be approximately 25% more compressible than polyester and over 160% more compressible than Dyneema.

Nylon doesn’t just compress more than polyester and Dyneema — it also requires less force to do so. That insight was key to designing a shelter that not only packs smaller but is also easier to stuff.

 

 

Why We Chose Silicone Coating

We also saw meaningful differences in compressibility depending on the coating used. Silicone coatings consistently outperformed thermoplastic coatings (TPU, PU, PEU) — not just in terms of packability, but also in long-term durability. While the widly used PU coatings tend to become brittle and can delaminate over time, especially when a fabric is compressed repeatedly, silicone holds up far better. It also offers high UV resistance and natural water repellency without requiring additional treatment.

That’s why we chose a double-sided silicone-coated nylon as the outer fabric for Apex1. It combines best-in-class compressibility with the durability needed for real-world bikepacking, where gear is stuffed, unpacked, and repacked day after day. When compressibility is a key performance factor, this fabric simply made the most sense.

 

A Note on Nylon’s Only Drawback

Nylon comes with one manageable downside: it tends to elongate slightly when wet compared to polyester and Dyneema. This can be neglected through smart construction, and we’re happy to dive deeper into that in another blog post.

 

More Than a Tent: A New Way of Designing

This approach reflects the broader mission behind Aper Gear: to rethink outdoor equipment from the ground up, focusing on the unique demands of bikepacking. That means not only improving what exists but questioning what hasn’t been considered yet.

Apex1 is the first result of that mindset.
The knowledge gained through its development has opened entirely new possibilities. At Aper Gear, we’re excited to apply these learnings across a broader range of bikepacking gear. Whatever comes next, one thing won’t change: every product we create will be designed with packability at its core.
Made for the ride, not borrowed from the hike.