Alpkit Innovation Award Back!

Alpkit's brilliant Colab Award is back for 2009 and with entries being taken from 1 October, it's time to get your thinking caps on and come up with a stunningly brilliant idea for an innovative new outdoor product.

The awards are your chance to showcase your product concepts, first on the web and then - if you make the final shortlist - direct to the public at the OS Outdoors Show at the NEC in Birmingham next year. Despite what we said above, your idea doesn't need to be completely new, it could be a tweak to an existing product - like last year's waterproof zip concept - or, of course, it could be something no-one's ever thought of - an inflatable kayak than converts into at two-person mountain tent perhaps...


The only 'must' is that your entry is original and your own work. If you're worried about other people stealing your idea by the way, it's down to you to make sure you take appropriate action to secure Intellectual Property Rights for your entry. Full details on the Alpkit web site.

As with last year's competition, it's not about Alpkit trying to blag your ideas for themselves, it really is the company's way of encouraging innovative outdoor design. We thought last year's competition was excellent and quite inspirational and it was ace to meet the shortlisted entrants at the NEC, hopefully this year's will be even better.

The full details are on the Alkit website already at www.alpkit.com, where you can also look back at last year's awards and find all sorts of handy links and information to help you with your entry. We're also hoping to hold an open forum chat on OM in the near future so you can talk direct to the Alpkit guys about the competition. Watch this space...