In 2021, during a trip to the rugged Alaskan wilderness, the owners of BSS found themselves out of luck while trying to rent a canister of bear spray. They resorted to asking door to door for any abandoned cans of bear spray and got lucky. This seemed outlandish in the land of brown bears. It was one of those ‘shituations’ that no seasoned or novice explorer ever wants to face.
This is the moment when they both saw a solution to a common problem: bear spray was hard to find, expensive to buy, impossible to fly with, kind of sketch to borrow, a pain to safely dispose of, and seemingly impossible to recycle.
As they were driving past a small standalone coffee shop, they had the idea of what if there was a free-standing vending machine dispensing bear spray just right there? Or what if they were near every National Park? A machine you could easily walk up to and rent from? What if you could get your rental without having to interact with anyone? What if the process of obtaining bear spray didn’t have to feel so archaic and prehistoric? Like searching for a needle in a haystack. What if there was an alternative?
After many months of researching, inventing, testing, programming, and researching some more…WHAM! They had figured out how to make renting bear spray feel a little less of a no-man’s-land.
