Hey!

We've come up with a new design of Strap Keepers and we'd like your help testing them.

It’s one of those to-may-to or to-mah-to kind of things: some folks don’t like the excess webbing from our backpack shoulder straps or waist straps and some of folks don’t even notice it.

Those of you who aren’t into the excess webbing have been asking us if we could offer a solution to wrangle it. We’ve been experimenting with different parts and options for a while now, and what we're calling our Strap Keepers (because you called them that!) is our favorite option thus far.

Here’s why we like our Strap Keepers more than the other solutions we experimented with:

• They’re low-profile with minimalist hardware.
• They’re not sewn in to the bag.
• They don't fall off the bag even when they aren't being used to wrangle webbing.
• They can work to wrangle excess webbing on any bag (TOM BIHN or otherwise)
• If properly used — see the photos above and video below — they don’t result in a dangly ball of strap hanging off the bag.
• It’s pretty easy to use the Strap Keepers to secure the webbing.

It's important to secure the Strap Keeper to the length of webbing that is between where it is sewn into your backpack and the ladderlock (the buckle through which the webbing is fed). This way, if you pull on the bundled webbing, the Strap Keeper will remain attached to your pack and won't fall off. If you use the Strap Keeper to bundle the length of webbing that extends beyond the ladderlock and hangs down to itself -- resulting in a dangly ball of webbing -- it, well, creates a dangly ball of webbing and, if you undo that ball of webbing, the Strap Keeper will likely fall off entirely.

Watch our quick (quick = meant to lower your expectations; it's a very amateur video) demo of how to use the Strap Keepers: