HISTORY

Johnson Outdoors Inc. is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ (JOUT). The Eureka! Tent Division has more than a century of tent and soft shelter experience and is a leading full line tent manufacturer with design capabilities that serve camping, military and commercial canopy/rental markets.

Eureka! was established in 1895 as a small custom canvas shop that designed and sewed house and store awnings, Conestoga wagon covers, horse blankets, American flags, and – of course – tents.

Eureka! became a major manufacturing facility in the 1940's when World War II erupted and demand for tents skyrocketed. During World War II, we manufactured hundreds of hospital ward tents. In the 50's, many returning G.I.'s purchased mobile homes in the housing shortage, and bought trailer awnings from Eureka!. In the Vietnam campaign, Eureka! produced liners for thousands of Quonset huts.

Our "camping" tent history began in the late 50's and early 60's. That's when work on the Draw-Tite® began ... the tent used first by Sir Edmund Hillary and then by America's first Everest expedition in 1963. From this benchmark, innovation grew. A breakthrough came in 1973 with the introduction of the Timberline®. For backpackers, the Timberline® was the first self-supporting, lightweight tent. Brass hooks were used to speed set-up, an early predecessor to clips. Truly our first StormShield® design, over 2,700 Timberlines were sold the first year, and by its tenth anniversary, sales of the Timberline® topped 1 million! And in 1978, Eureka! was with the American Women's Himalayan Expedition to Annapurna every step of the way. In fact, Eureka! tents have accompanied all the North American "first ascents" of Mt. Everest, including the first Canadian woman in 1986 and the first American woman in 1988.

The Eureka! commercial tent division has earned a reputation for quality products and innovative designs in manufacturing. Eureka! was first in the industry with the introduction of the Genesis and Elite tension fabric tents. We have been the recipient of multiple IFAI Achievement Awards for tent design and excellence.

Keeping up with the growth of our business, Eureka!'s facilities, located in Binghamton, New York have grown to over 77,000 square feet of manufacturing space and a 42,000 square foot distribution center in 2 locations, employing a total of 250 people.

The experience gained in over 100 years of building soft shelters, from covered wagons and tents in 1895 to the Genesis® tension tent in 1986 to the Fifth Season Expedition Tent in 2002, has carried over to development of tentage for both structural and sleeping tents covering all branches of the U.S. Military.

Eureka! began developing the current Modular General Purpose Tent System (MGPTS) design in 1997. This is the replacement for the old style General Purpose Tent used since the late 40's. Through extensive Government and Eureka! research and development, the MGPTS has evolved into an efficient tent system and Eureka! has achieved extensive knowledge and experience in the production of the MGPTS. The MGPTS incorporates the latest tension tent design and manufacturing technologies to provide the Government with a multi-purpose weatherproof shelter for any environment. The MGPTS is significantly different from any other tent that is currently being produced for the U.S. Government.

Tensioned fabric structures are extremely efficient. They are very different than conventional fabric systems and have to be designed and manufactured using different techniques. In a tension fabric structure, the fabric becomes an important structural member of the tent system. The shape of the fabric is tailored to achieve the desired structural element by forming finding analysis. The fabric shapes are predicted using algorithms that account for the material properties in both warp and fill directions and then adjusted for fabrication techniques. Because of this design, the MGPTS distributes loads more efficiently with lighter support systems than conventional tents. Eureka! manufacturing procedures for the MGPTS have been developed to accommodate this advanced technology from Radio Frequency fabric sealing to high speed sewing machines.

The MGPTS Performance Specification established some of the most stringent Wind/Rain/Snow loading criteria to be applied to a military tent system. The fabric used in the MGPTS was developed specifically for this tent. It has to maintain complete light discipline, suppress infrared signature while operating in temperature ranges from 120° F to -60° F.

From the MGPTS, we developed with the U.S Army Soldier & Biological Chemical Command a protective liner to guard troops in the field. This works on an overpressure system with fabric that has been developed to resist penetration from chemicals such as mustard gas, VX nerve gas and biological agents.

At the same time, we developed a 2-man Combat tent for the U.S. Marine Corp. This tent was developed directly with the Marine Corp and incorporates a unique reversible outer fly in green and desert tan colors. The fabric was developed specifically for this project and features the same light discipline and infrared signature requirement. We have produced over 75,000 of these units and they have been deployed around the globe from U.S. bases to Afghanistan to Kuwait to Iraq.

The experience gained as the prime manufacturer of the MGPTS has brought other government solicitations to Eureka!. We have been a leading supplier to the military, including the U.S. Army 3-man Lightweight Extreme Weather Shelter (LEWS), the 2-man Marine Combat Tent, the 4-man Extreme Cold Weather Tent (ECWT), the Canadian Survival Environmental Protector Tent (SEP) and the Chemical / Biological Liner for the MGPTS. In addition, we are currently in testing for a replacement for the Army shelter half with an Individual Combat Shelter (ICS). This one man tent is lightweight and maintains the same specifications as our tents above.