TECH & TRAVEL TIP: Dog Owners Also Need Better Pockets
If you live with dogs, you already know the truth:
You are never just leaving the house.
You are preparing for an outing, a walk, a negotiation, a training session, a cleanup operation, and occasionally a hostage situation involving squirrels.
For most people, getting dressed means grabbing a phone, wallet, keys, maybe earbuds, maybe sunglasses, maybe lip balm or eye drops, and heading out the door. For dog people, that is the easy part. Then comes the real inventory: leash, backup leash, poop bags, treats, training tools, whistle, collar accessories, maybe a shock collar remote, maybe a tennis ball, maybe medication, maybe wipes, maybe whatever your particular four-legged dictator requires that day.
And if you have more than one dog, everything multiplies.
That is one of the reasons SCOTTeVEST has always made so much sense for dog owners.
From my perspective, as someone who has usually had at least three standard poodles at a time, dog walking is not some minor side activity. It is part of daily life. And daily life gets a lot easier when your clothing actually helps you carry what you need instead of forcing you to juggle it in your hands, overload your pants pockets, or drag along an extra bag for a simple walk.
That is where Pocket Science becomes incredibly practical.
A good dog walk is hands-free. It is balanced. It is organized. It lets you move easily, reward quickly, clean up efficiently, and still keep your own essentials exactly where you need them. When your clothing is designed properly, you are not stuffing treats next to your car keys, trying to figure out which pocket holds the poop bags, or wondering where you put the whistle, remote, or spare leash. You are just walking the dogs.
That may sound simple, but it is not.
Most clothing is not designed around real carry needs. It is certainly not designed around the extra gear dog people bring with them every single day. SCOTTeVEST solves that problem the same way it solves travel and everyday carry problems: with enough thoughtfully designed storage, smart organization, and weight distribution to make the load feel manageable instead of annoying.
That is the customer side of the story.
Then there is the business side.
SCOTTeVEST has long been a dog-friendly company not because it was trendy, but because it reflected how we actually lived and worked. Dogs were part of the environment. Part of the rhythm. Part of the personality of the place. When we had a larger in-office team, employees were welcome to bring their dogs to work, and we even arranged for professional dog walkers to come by daily and take everyone’s dogs out together.
That was not just a perk, though it certainly was one.
It made the workplace happier. More human. More relaxed. More fun. Dogs have a way of improving morale, lowering stress, and making even a normal workday feel a little less corporate and a little more alive. If you are building a business around real people and real lifestyles, it helps when the culture reflects that.
And in our case, that culture absolutely influenced the product.
When you spend enough time living with dogs, traveling with dogs, walking dogs, managing multiple dogs, and being around other people who do the same, you begin to notice where normal clothing fails. You begin to appreciate quick-access pockets. Secure pockets. Deep pockets. Pockets that separate your own gear from dog gear. Pockets that let you keep treats accessible but not mixed with your chapstick. Pockets that let you manage all the little things without carrying a dedicated dog bag every time you step outside.
In other words, you begin to understand that dog ownership is one more real-world use case that demands better design.
That is what SCOTTeVEST has always tried to do: design for the way people actually live.
Travelers. Commuters. Gadget lovers. Parents. Dog walkers. People juggling too much and wanting to do it with a little more ease and a little less chaos. Dogs are not the entire story of SCOTTeVEST, but they are absolutely part of it. They helped shape the way we think about utility, access, comfort, and movement.
So yes, in a very real sense, this is dog-friendly clothing.
Not because we slapped a paw print on something.
Because it works.
If you have ever tried to walk one dog while carrying your phone, keys, treats, poop bags, and a backup leash, you get it.
If you have ever tried to do that with two or three dogs, you really get it.
SCOTTeVEST was built for real life.
And real life, at least around here, has always included dogs.
BEHIND THE SEAMS: Keeping Up With 25 Years Of Changing Tech
When we started SCOTTeVEST nearly 25 years ago, the challenge was not subtle.
People were carrying a lot of technology, and almost all of it was awkward. Portable CD players. Oversized digital cameras. So-called portable video recorders. Early cell phones. Spare batteries. Charging bricks. Different cables for different devices. Wired headphones. More adapters than anyone should ever have to think about. And because battery life was terrible, all that gear came with even more gear.
That was the world the original eVEST was designed for.
In fact, when we created the early SCOTTeVEST products, I literally measured consumer devices and built pockets around them. This was not some vague idea of “let’s add more pockets.” It was a deliberate effort to make sure the garment could actually carry the things people really used every day. Not theoretically. Not approximately. Actually.
That became the beginning of what we now call Pocket Science.
From the start, this was always more complicated than people realized. It was not enough to make pockets bigger. The pockets had to be hidden unless they improved the design. They had to be easy to access. They had to keep gear from falling out. And perhaps most importantly, they had to distribute weight comfortably so you did not feel like one side of your body was being dragged toward the earth. SCOTTeVEST’s own Pocket Science principles still reflect that same thinking today: hidden pockets, usable carrying capacity, balanced weight, easy access, and retention.
Then there was fit.
Designing one garment that works across sizes is hard enough. Designing it so that a smaller size can still accommodate large devices, while an XXXL size does not let those same devices flop around uncomfortably, is something else entirely. Add in our Weight Management System, which utilizes special design and features in the shoulder area to evenly distribute the added weight from your devices and essentials, and you begin to understand why no one stumbles into this by accident.
Early on, the wired world was a huge part of the problem. That is why the Personal Area Network, or PAN, mattered so much. This is our patented network of hidden conduits throughout the garment that lets you route wires from pocket to pocket or up to the collar. At the time, that was a real breakthrough. You could store a battery pack in one place, route power where you needed it, run headphone wires cleanly, and avoid the tangled-cable nightmare that defined the early portable-tech era.
Over the years, technology changed dramatically.
The smartphone replaced a long list of single-purpose gadgets. One device began doing the work of a camera, camcorder, music player, GPS, and more. Charging got better. Bluetooth made hardwired headphones far less important. USB charging became more standardized. Magnetic charging improved convenience. Larger tablets, Kindles, and phones created new needs, but they also reduced the sheer number of items people carried.
So yes, in some ways, pockets became simpler.
But they also became smarter.
As the market changed, we kept rethinking the architecture: how to support larger phones like the iPhone Pro Max, how to handle tablets and e-readers, how to protect passports and cards with RFID Blocking Pockets, how to keep items from disappearing into a jumbled void with Pocket in Pocket organization, how to prevent items from falling out with DeepPockets, how to manage earbuds with BudBuckets, and how to keep wires organized when people still needed them through systems like CollarConnect. These are not marketing flourishes. They are the vocabulary of a company that has spent decades obsessing over what most clothing brands barely consider.
And that is the real point.
Even though technology has converged, the need for Pocket Science has not gone away. If anything, the bar is higher. People expect clothes to look normal, feel comfortable, travel well, carry more, organize better, and never make them look bulky. They want fewer hassles, fewer dropped items, fewer overloaded bags, and less friction moving through daily life.
That is exactly what we have been solving for since the beginning.
SCOTTeVEST was never just about adding more pockets. It was about understanding the relationship between people, technology, movement, and comfort, then building clothing around that reality. The first eVEST launched in 2001 with 15 pockets and the Personal Area Network. Nearly 25 years later, the mission is still the same: make your everyday life and travel easier by designing clothing that actually keeps up with the way you live.
A lot has changed since the days of CD players and giant digital cameras.
But one thing has not. No other clothing brand has spent this much time thinking this hard about pockets.
That is why we call it Pocket Science.
MY TRAVELS WITH STRANGE MEN - Part V: Cabo With Joe Schultz
Continuing the Strange Men series, I barely had time to come up for air after saying goodbye to Thomas Hawk in Los Angeles before I did something that, even by my standards, qualified as a slightly questionable idea.
I spent one night in Los Angeles, then flew straight to Cabo San Lucas on November 16, 2023, with my massage therapist, Joe Schultz.
Yes, really.
Joe had heard all about these trips because every time I got a massage, I would tell him the stories. Somewhere along the way, while I was planning Cabo, I asked if he wanted to come. He said yes. And just like that, the next Strange Men trip was born.
This one bent my original rule a bit.
The whole Strange Men concept started with the idea of traveling with men I barely knew well, often men with whom I had not even really broken bread before. It was never a rigid legal code, but more a loose framework with one important understanding: if things went sideways, either of us could bail out and move on separately after making a good-faith effort to see whether the chemistry worked.
I spent one night in Los Angeles, then flew straight to Cabo San Lucas on November 16, 2023, with my massage therapist, Joe Schultz.
Yes, really.
Joe had heard all about these trips because every time I got a massage, I would tell him the stories. Somewhere along the way, while I was planning Cabo, I asked if he wanted to come. He said yes. And just like that, the next Strange Men trip was born.
This one bent my original rule a bit.
The whole Strange Men concept started with the idea of traveling with men I barely knew well, often men with whom I had not even really broken bread before. It was never a rigid legal code, but more a loose framework with one important understanding: if things went sideways, either of us could bail out and move on separately after making a good-faith effort to see whether the chemistry worked.
With Joe, there was a little more trust and a little more risk. We may have had lunch before, but not much more than that. And unlike some of the other trips, we were sharing a hotel room. My room, no less. Fortunately, I had a pretty strong hunch it would be fine.
It was more than fine. It was fantastic.
Joe was, in his own way, one of the strangest men of all, which is exactly what made him interesting. He came from a background that was oddly familiar to mine in some ways: Jewish, educated, once on a more conventional path, originally in finance. But then he did something few people have the courage to do. He walked away from that world and decided to dedicate himself to becoming the best massage therapist he could possibly be. He had spent months living in India, told stories that hinted at a much more thoughtful and unconventional life than most people ever bother building, and carried himself like someone who had chosen meaning over status and actually meant it.
That intrigued me.
I was not lonely. I travel alone all the time and genuinely enjoy it. But after the success of the earlier Strange Men adventures, I figured: why not keep going? Why not continue the experiment? Joe was available, curious, easy to talk to, and seemed like someone from whom I might actually learn something.
So off we went to Cabo. Check out our first meetup on night one here.
We stayed at ME Cabo, a spectacular, not-so-inexpensive hotel in Cabo San Lucas, right on Medano Beach. Great vibe, great weather, great food, great music, beautiful sunsets, and exactly the sort of place that makes you feel like your life choices, at least for a few days, have been unusually solid. At some point I also had to deal with some bizarre room-charge dispute where someone had billed a bunch of things to our room that were not ours, but even that somehow failed to ruin the mood.
It was more than fine. It was fantastic.
Joe was, in his own way, one of the strangest men of all, which is exactly what made him interesting. He came from a background that was oddly familiar to mine in some ways: Jewish, educated, once on a more conventional path, originally in finance. But then he did something few people have the courage to do. He walked away from that world and decided to dedicate himself to becoming the best massage therapist he could possibly be. He had spent months living in India, told stories that hinted at a much more thoughtful and unconventional life than most people ever bother building, and carried himself like someone who had chosen meaning over status and actually meant it.
That intrigued me.
I was not lonely. I travel alone all the time and genuinely enjoy it. But after the success of the earlier Strange Men adventures, I figured: why not keep going? Why not continue the experiment? Joe was available, curious, easy to talk to, and seemed like someone from whom I might actually learn something.
So off we went to Cabo. Check out our first meetup on night one here.
We stayed at ME Cabo, a spectacular, not-so-inexpensive hotel in Cabo San Lucas, right on Medano Beach. Great vibe, great weather, great food, great music, beautiful sunsets, and exactly the sort of place that makes you feel like your life choices, at least for a few days, have been unusually solid. At some point I also had to deal with some bizarre room-charge dispute where someone had billed a bunch of things to our room that were not ours, but even that somehow failed to ruin the mood.
The trip ran through November 20, the day before my birthday, and for a relatively short trip, it packed in a lot.
We did all the touristy nonsense you are supposed to do in Cabo, and some you probably are not. We had our feet cleaned by minnows. We went into one of those pressurized floating air-tank experiences that felt vaguely like something between wellness culture and a science experiment. We ate extremely well. We spent a lot of time in the hot tub. We took photographs, reviewed them, talked endlessly, and walked the beach for hours.
Those walks were probably the real heart of the trip.
Joe and I had the kind of conversations that happen when two men from very different paths discover they are asking similar questions. We talked about relationships, especially my relationship with Laura and why it has worked so well. We talked about success, and more specifically the uncomfortable fact that I was raised in a world where money and status carried enormous weight, while Joe had quite consciously stepped off that track. He had chosen a life that was not nearly as financially rewarding, but was deeply aligned with what actually made him happy. He wanted to help people feel better. He wanted to get really good at something human and intimate and useful. He built a life around that.
And somewhere in those conversations, I found myself admitting something I probably already knew: that while financial success had driven me for much of my life, it had also been overrated in ways I had not fully appreciated until I met men like Joe. People who were not trying to win the obvious game. People who had, in their own way, already won a better one.
That was a meaningful part of the trip.
There was also a less meaningful part involving scuba diving.
Technically, yes, we went scuba diving together. In reality, it involved a two-and-a-half-hour ride each way for what turned out to be a fairly average scuba experience in the middle. Joe was the one pushing for it. We made the best of it. We had fun. But if I’m being honest, it was mostly a wasted day and not the crown jewel of the adventure. Cabo itself, the walks, the conversations, the sillier tourist experiences, and the downtime together were much more memorable.
One especially surreal detail of the trip deserves its own mention. Right next to ME Cabo was an outdoor massage place on the roof, right on the beach, with what felt like about fifty massage beds lined up side by side in the open air. That may be a slight exaggeration, but only slight. Check out my fist impressions here. You could lie there listening to the ocean while two women gave you a four-hand massage simultaneously, all for a sum of money so reasonable it felt almost absurd given how good it was.
Joe and I turned it into something of a ritual, going almost daily and sometimes twice in a single day. I got a real kick out of the fact that Joe, an actual massage therapist and someone who had devoted a meaningful part of his life to mastering that craft, seemed to enjoy receiving massages every bit as much as giving them. And honestly, I couldn’t blame him. A cheap four-hand massage on a rooftop over the beach in Cabo is about as close to euphoric as a person has any right to expect.
Joe and I turned it into something of a ritual, going almost daily and sometimes twice in a single day. I got a real kick out of the fact that Joe, an actual massage therapist and someone who had devoted a meaningful part of his life to mastering that craft, seemed to enjoy receiving massages every bit as much as giving them. And honestly, I couldn’t blame him. A cheap four-hand massage on a rooftop over the beach in Cabo is about as close to euphoric as a person has any right to expect.
And then there was the rave.
This may have been the highlight.
We ended up at a very hip, youth-oriented rave-style party, the kind of place where everyone is curated, deliberate, and extremely aware of how they appear. Before the party even properly got going, before there was really even much of a crowd, Joe went out onto the dance floor alone and started breakdancing.
Or at least what can most generously be described as breakdancing.
Imagine a Saturday Night Live skit. Imagine Jim Belushi trying to impress a room full of attractive, far younger people. Imagine someone moving with complete commitment and absolutely no concern for whether he looked cool, current, or sane. That was Joe. He looked ridiculous. It was glorious.
The bouncer, perhaps sensing that this was not exactly the aesthetic the venue was hoping to cultivate, came over and asked him to stop.
I was delighted.
At first I may have felt a flicker of secondhand embarrassment for him, but that evaporated the moment I realized he had none for himself. And once you see that someone is truly free of self-consciousness, it becomes almost impossible not to admire them. Joe was not performing coolness. He was not trying to fit in. He was not calibrating. He was simply having fun, fully, absurdly, unapologetically.
That stayed with me.
It also captured something essential about the Strange Men series as a whole. These trips were never really about the destination. They were about proximity to people outside my usual orbit. Men with different histories, different philosophies, different ways of moving through the world. Men who, for one reason or another, seemed worth saying yes to.
Joe was absolutely one of those men.
As for SCOTTeVEST, yes, we both wore it, though this was not exactly a trip where the clothing was the star. Beach destinations tend to require fewer pockets than urban adventures. Still, useful summer travel clothing proved useful summer travel clothing. Joe wore SCOTTeVEST pieces including the cabana shirt, performance tee, jogger pants, and shorts. I wore my usual quarter-zip with a SCOTTeVEST logo, and even in a place like Cabo, the utility mattered. Sunscreen, a credit card, a hotel key card, and a phone are the little things that always need a home when you are trying not to carry a bag around all day.
But this was not a SCOTTeVEST commercial.
It was a friendship story. Or at least the story of how an unlikely friendship briefly took shape in a beautiful place, under ridiculous circumstances, with surprisingly meaningful results.
Joe and I did become real friends afterward, and while life eventually complicated that as life tends to do, that is not really the point of this story. The point is that for four days in Cabo, two men from very different backgrounds, with very different definitions of success, managed to meet in the middle and enjoy the hell out of each other’s company.
That is not nothing.
If anything, it is the whole point.
Some men chase status. Some men chase meaning. Some get lucky enough to realize, eventually, that meaning was the better game all along.
And sometimes, if you are open to it, you can learn that from your massage therapist while watching him get politely shut down for breakdancing at a rave in Cabo.
Honestly, that feels like money well spent.