Nomadix | The Story

4th August 2026 | Words by Matt Jones @ WildBounds HQ

The car was packed so full you couldn’t see out the back window. At least, that’s how all three friends remember the start of a fateful cross-country US road trip in a battered 1998 Subaru Outback, a vehicle affectionately known as “the Bu”, crammed with camping gear and ski kit wedged into every available inch.

"That's how we figured out we needed less stuff," Nomadix co-founder Chace Petersen jokes today. Fellow founder Hunter Robinson drove the entire way, spending countless hours glued to the wheel. The third member of the trio was Zack Helminiak, occupying the last of the available seats. The three friends spent weeks living out of the car, sharing a washcloth and a bar of Dr. Bronner's, occasionally rescued by fortuitous natural springs, most memorably one in the Zion backcountry. There were no showers, plenty of tinned sardines and crackers, and – by Robinson's account – a cheap half-gallon bottle of E&J Brandy that got them through cold evenings by the fire. Somewhere between the gas station snacks, unhealthy amounts of Tabasco hot pepper sauce and the smoke that once billowed from under the bonnet on a steep stretch of Oregon coastline, a general feeling hardened into something more concrete: if they carried less, they'd get to do more. It became the four-word mission statement the company still runs on today – Own Less. Do More.

It also left them with an oddly short and specific wish list of minimalist multi-purpose outdoor kit. Helminiak has talked about the trip leaving all three of them coveting a $50 double-walled titanium mug that none of them could justify buying (collectively assuming this would be the lightweight, durable and heat-holding drinks receptacle of their dreams). The other piece of that imagined kit? A good towel. None of them could find one that did more than one job, so eventually they decided to make it themselves.

Beyond the road trip legend is a more prosaic meeting. Helminiak, Petersen and Robinson had initially bonded while working the 2008–09 winter season at Beaver Creek Resort in Colorado – Petersen as a snowboard instructor, Robinson in on-mountain guest services, Helminiak in the rental shop. On a spring trip to Canyonlands that same year, the three of them sat around a campfire overlooking the canyon and spit-balled the idea of starting a company that made eco-friendly, multi-purpose travel gear. It would be a few more years, and one heavily overpacked Subaru, before that fireside idea had a product to go with it.

From a Garage to a Kickstarter

Nomadix didn't happen overnight. It took two years of designing, sampling and testing towel after towel before the founders had something they were prepared to put their names to. What they were chasing didn't really exist yet: a single towel good enough to replace the beach towel, the yoga towel, the travel towel and everything else cluttering up laundry closets in countless homes. Hunter Robinson remembers it as a want born from frustration: none of them could find, or even really describe, a travel towel they actually liked.

So in July 2014, with day jobs still very much in the picture, they put the prototype on Kickstarter under the name "The Only Towel You Need". Zack Helminiak had just relocated from Washington, D.C. to California to help finish the campaign at night, and submitted it the evening before flying out to Europe. "I remember rushing to finish the video and pressing submit on Kickstarter late the night before I was leaving for a scheduled trip," he said. He tracked the campaign's progress from Berlin, Budapest and Ljubljana, and by the time he reached Kraków, they'd hit their goal.

They'd asked for $15,000. They got $65,853, from 730 backers – over four times the target. The three of them then piled back into the Subaru with roughly 900 orders to fulfil, driving the finished towels out to yoga studios, surf shops and coffee counters themselves. Within a few years they'd pitched their way into REI, Urban Outfitters and Nordstrom, and what had started as a scrappy side project became a company with its own warehouse, its own team, and – eventually – its own ping pong table (Petersen: "proceeding to dominate the game – minus Hunter, he's too good").

Growing Pains

Sustainability sounds simple in a mission statement. It's considerably harder in a supply chain. Nomadix's early ambition was to manufacture in the US, but the economics didn't work: the costs would have priced the towels out of the wallets of the very customers they were trying to reach. They moved production instead to a small partner factory in China that makes Nomadix products exclusively, now partly solar-powered, and built the company's sourcing around post-consumer recycled polyester rather than virgin plastic.

That decision has never been free. Recycled fibre costs more to process than virgin material, and Helminiak has been candid that a cheaper towel was always available if they'd been willing to compromise. Despite inflationary pressure and rising freight costs through the COVID pandemic years, the brand chose to hold its flagship Original Towel at the same $40 price point rather than pass the cost on – a decision he's described as a straightforward bet that customers would rather pay for something built to last.

The pandemic tested the company in other ways too. Hunter Robinson counts Nomadix's survival from 2020 to 2023 with its entire founding team still in place among the milestones he's proudest of, alongside a 100% staff retention rate across the company's first seven years. He's just as fond of the growth story in the shorthand version most start-ups recognise: garage, then a house with a garage, then a second building and warehouse.

Zack Helminiak's own list of milestones runs closer to the ground: shipping the first order to REI, walking into Outdoor Retailer as an exhibitor for the first time, and – less glamorously – unloading their first shipping container one box at a time, up a flight of stairs. He's said the moments he's proudest of as an owner aren't the retail wins at all, but being able to offer their loyal team health insurance and a 401k plan once the business could support it.

More recently, the brand went looking for a way to insulate its blankets without leaning on PFAS – the "forever chemicals" found in many water-repellent finishes – and ended up working directly with manufacturers to develop a vegetable-based DWR treatment instead. As Helminiak has put it, the business isn't chasing perfection so much as working through "a laundry list" of things it still wants to fix.

Sustainability Woven In

None of this happens by accident. Nomadix is a certified Social Purpose Corporation – a structure that legally commits the business to its environmental mission alongside its bottom line – and a member of 1% For The Planet, donating 1% of sales, not just profits, to environmental causes including Surfrider Foundation and The Conservation Alliance. Its fabrics are Global Recycling Standard certified, and the brand is Climate Label Certified, meaning its production and shipping emissions are measured and offset in full.

There's more. Rather than dyeing yarns – a process that Chace Petersen points out can turn rivers near textile factories the colour of that day's ink, and leaches heavy metals into local food supplies – Nomadix prints its designs onto the fabric instead, sidestepping the wastewater problem almost entirely. By its own 2023 reporting, the company had repurposed more than 18.2 million plastic bottles, cut its carbon footprint by 80% against a 2021 baseline, shifted its headquarters to 50% solar power, and moved all its packaging to FSC-certified paper stock.

For a brand built by three self-described minimalists, the growth since that Kickstarter campaign has been anything but small: Nomadix products are now sold in more than 1,000 stores across the US, REI among them, a decade on from three friends filling out spreadsheets in a garage.

The Kit Worth Packing

WildBounds carries a tight edit of the Nomadix range, and it's worth knowing what each piece is actually built to do.

The Original Towel is the one that started it all, and still the best entry point into the brand. At 76 x 184cm and made from 90% post-consumer recycled polyester, it's designed to replace the beach towel, the yoga mat, the travel towel and the post-swim wrap in one go. The tightly woven MicroTerry surface grips well enough for yoga, resists sand at the beach, absorbs four times its own weight, and carries UPF 50+ sun protection – with 20 colourways to choose from, from bold prints to plainer, understated options.

The Ultralight Towel strips things back further for anyone counting grams: a packable, quick-drying option built with backpacking and fastpacking in mind, where the Original's extra coverage isn't worth the extra weight.

Thirdly, the Bandana Towel is the smallest and most quietly useful piece in the range – a UPF 50+ MicroSuede square that mops up sweat on a run, doubles as sun protection round the neck, and cleans up whatever little messes the day throws at it.

Beyond towelling, the brand's Festival Blanket trades performance fabric for comfort: a soft plush top over a water-resistant base, built for sitting on damp grass at a festival, a picnic or a campsite without a second thought.

The Pocket Tote is the one for a spontaneous beach day or a dash to the farmers' market – made from recycled ripstop polyester with a PFAS-free DWR finish, scrunching down small enough to live permanently in a jacket pocket.

Lastly, the Graphene Puffer Blanket is the newest and most technical piece in the range – a 2-in-1 blanket-and-sleeping-bag built around the GrapheneLoft insulation Nomadix introduced in early 2026. The graphene-infused fill traps and redirects body heat, snap-together sides turn it into a hooded cloak or a minimalist sleeping bag, and a PFAS-free water-resistant shell shrugs off damp ground, sea spray and morning dew. Comfortable down to around 4–5°C, it packs to roughly 15 x 7 x 6in and weighs a little over 2lb (900g) – warm enough for a late stargazing session, and easily big enough to share.

Taken together, these core lines are a reasonably faithful cross-section of what made Nomadix's name in the first place: gear that earns the space it takes up, made from the plastic bottles nobody wants lying around.

Still on the Road

Ask any of the three founders what sustainability means day to day, and the answers are less about carbon offsetting and more about habit. Petersen says he's constantly asking himself whether he needs something or just wants it, and what he'll do with it once he's finished. Helminiak keeps grocery bags in the car but doesn't beat himself if he slips up and accidentally takes out a drink with a plastic straw. "You don't have to be perfect to make a difference", he emphasises.

More than a decade after the three friends ran out of room in a Subaru, that original impulse hasn't really changed – it's just been given a fabric, a factory and a fair few thousand more customers. The brand that once fit its entire stock into the back of that same car now ships towels, blankets and bandanas to more than a thousand stores. Own less. Do more. It's a mantra that still rings true, even with the warehouse.