Why the best Quality Motorcycle Gear Is Worth the Investment
“It’s cheap. If it breaks, I’ll just buy another motorcycle bag.” It sounds easier than saving a little longer and buying something better. But the old bag does not disappear, and neither does the money spent replacing it.
At Turkana, we could have made the business decision to compete at the low end of the market, where price is the main selling point. Use low-quality PVC and cheaper materials, make it look like quality, low-budget manufacturing and sell it at a price that makes replacing it seem painless. When it fails, hopefully the customer comes back and buys another one.
We choose not to go that route.
A low price can eventually bite much harder. Poor materials and low-budget workmanship make something cheaper today, but not when you have to buy it again next year. Multiplied across millions of purchases, that thinking has created a wasteful culture where we buy cheaply, use things briefly and throw them away without much thought about where they end up.
We want no part of that culture.
This is why quality-made motorcycle gear is better value over time.
Make it proper and worth keeping. It’s really that simple. Use the hell out of your gear, care for it and repair it when necessary. If you can still strap it to a motorcycle years from now, we have achieved our goal.
That does not mean a product must remain pristine. Luggage that has crossed countries, been baked in the sun, rained on and dragged around campsites will show its age. We do not expect a ten-year-old bag to look showroom-new. We expect it to keep doing its job.
Cheap is not the same as good value
When a budget product rips apart on a trip or falls apart after a few uses, the bargain becomes considerably less impressive. You replace it and eventually replace the replacement. Before long, being cheap has become an expensive habit.
Real value is better measured over years than at the till. A $200 product replaced four times is not necessarily better value than a $600 product still working years later. A cheap product that fails is not a bargain. It is an instalment on the next one. And the next one…
The waste does not disappear
Throwing something away does not make it vanish. It simply moves somewhere we no longer have to look at it. The global clothing industry gives us an ugly example of where this thinking leads. Large quantities of unwanted clothing are exported from wealthier countries. Some of it gets a genuine second life, making clothing affordable and supporting livelihoods. The problem is not second-hand clothing, but rather clothing made so badly that it cannot have a useful second life. It is clothing made so badly that it cannot have a useful second life.
Ghana’s Kantamanto market shows both sides of the story. Some of the imported clothing is resold, but the damaged and badly made stuff still has to go somewhere. The United Nations Environment Programme is working with Ghana, Kenya and other countries on the challenges surrounding the international used textile trade.
In Chile, discarded clothing has accumulated in the Atacama Desert. Something bought for one season can become pollution for generations. And that’s after using raw materials, energy and fuel to manufacture something and ship it halfway around the world, only for it to be worn a handful of times and thrown away.
Made to be used
Turkana gear is supposed to get dirty. It should be strapped to motorcycles, covered in dust, baked in unrelenting sun and taken down roads that looked considerably better on the map.
Fabric fades, webbing gets filthy and bags collect scars from thousands of kilometres of travel. Repairs may eventually become part of the product. None of that bothers us if it still does its job.
We are equally uninterested in trends that make useful products feel obsolete. Good motorcycle luggage should not become obsolete just because this year’s fashionable colour has changed or you have bought another bike. This is one reason we emphasise modularity in our motorcycle adventure soft luggage. When you change motorcycles, your luggage should be able to come with you.
This is not about buying expensive stuff
Good gear costs money, and we know not everyone can choose the best option every time. Our problem is not with someone buying what they can afford. It is with an industry that normalises disposable products because selling you another one next year is good business.
Expensive and well-made are not the same thing either. A fancy logo and an impressive price do not guarantee quality. What matters is whether something is made properly and can take years of actual use. And when something eventually wears out, you should be able to repair it instead of throwing the whole thing away.
The Turkana standard
We want the weathered old bag still strapped to a motorcycle years later, perhaps after being repaired once or twice. We want the saddlebags that move from the old bike to the new one instead of being discarded whenever the motorcycle changes.
Making products this way is not always the cheapest option for us. Better materials cost more. Proper stitching takes time. Reinforcing the places we know will take abuse adds work. We accept that because the alternative is making gear we would not want to travel with ourselves.
Our job is not finished when somebody pays for a product. We have to think about what happens after thousands of kilometres of corrugations, bad roads, dust, rain, falls and relentless UV exposure. When something eventually does wear or break, can it be fixed rather than thrown away?
Those questions matter more than convincing you to buy another bag next year. We would rather make one good product worth keeping than sell the same bad product five times.
That’s the gear we want to make. Made for your life. Built to outlive it.
