I'm James, the founder of Last Minute Gear, San Francisco's last small, independent outdoor gear shop.

Last Minute Gear was founded with the values of increasing access to the outdoors and reducing unnecessary waste. We predominantly rented gear, while also having a free borrow program, and offering repair and cleaning services.

Over our 10 year run in SF, we've supported more than 12,000 individuals and families getting outdoors, many on their first ever trips into nature.

We also tried to quantify our sustainability impact for our top rented summer items (tents sleeping bags/pads, and backpacks). Here, we've helped folks save over $500,000 in not having to buy 6000+ pieces of gear, representing a carbon offset of ~700,000 lbs (over 1000 cross country flights!).

Our borrow program, the only one of its kind where people could borrow camping gear for FREE, helped save folks over $100,000 and was a key avenue for access for low income folks and students.

We moved downtown during COVID, and this ultimately led to our final closure (read more here).

For the past several months, my goal has been to wind down in a financially sound manner. Unfortunately, in the last few months of tenancy, we entered a legal dispute with the landlord that almost went to court. The final settlement extracted $14,000 that I was counting on to pay down loans, since we've never moved back to cash flow positive after COVID.

There are a lot of world events right now that deserve attention. However, if you have the means, and Last Minute Gear helped you create some beautiful memories in nature, I hope you'll donate to help pay our closing costs.