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Brian Mackinnon (right) displays his winning cooler.
IT’S NICE WHEN the little guy wins, that lone innovator challenging corporate and industry behemoths.
Alaska resident Brian Mackinnon is no little guy when it comes to his physical stature, but his company is miniscule, with just his brother Phil and friend Jac Arbour the other primary players.
No matter. In the 2022 New Product Showcase, a centerpiece event of last month’s annual International Convention of Allied Sportfishing Trades (ICAST) trade show, they captured Best-in-Show honors with a visionary design of a better fishing trip cooler.
Mackinnon’s PacBak P88-MK cooler with an integrated vacuum sealer bested products backed by deep pockets and intense marketing. While the product’s design is innovative, the backstory behind its development is a lesson in overcoming painful obstacles.
More than 900 new products were entered in the showcase’s 30 categories. (Disclosure: As a member of the outdoor media, I get a vote in the competition.) The American Sportfishing Association, ICAST’s sponsor, has a special preview event the day before the show formally opens. This lets participating manufacturers meet media members to demonstrate or talk about their products. Many use the occasion to spotlight their showcase entries.
Florida’s summer sun is scorching. One vendor at the outdoors event demonstrated a new outdoors grilling system and offered brats, burgers and beer. It was a popular draw and good exposure for their product.
Nearby, Mackinnon, his brother Phil and Arbour were vacuum-sealing stuffed sockeye salmon toys atop a large cooler. A nice gimmick, I thought, a little something to take home to the kids and grandkids. We began talking.
Brian demonstrated his multi-chambered, fully rotomolded product, explaining the design lets you keep cool items in one compartment and hot items in another. A table--essentially a second top to the cooler--is removable and attaches to the side for an extended workspace. A lightweight, battery-powered vacuum sealer has its own small compartment, covered with a removable cutting board.
“This is the first-ever, built-in, battery-operated vacuum sealer,” Mackinnon said, adding the 18-volt lithium-ion battery gives you up to 70 seals per charge. His patented sealer also has inexpensive, replaceable heating strips, extending the life of the unit since those strips are often among the first things to fail on other models. He sells backup batteries for $15.
The cooler, with the sealer weighs 59 pounds. It’s hefty, a two-person carry if going remote, but it fits into a UTV cargo bed or towed in a cart behind an ATV.
“It went 24 hours with about a 1,250-pound Alaska Kodiak brown bear,” Mackinnon said. “That’s how we tested it. It was the only cooler tested that the bear couldn’t get into.”
Cooler companies also like to tout ice preservation. Mackinnon said PacBak’s own ice preservation testing was a more realistic, “beer in, beer out,” scenario. The ice lasted better part of six days, he said.
The cooler design reflected his own Alaska fishing experiences. He and Phil grew up fishing all summer long, often hauling two coolers to the field, one for wet and cold stuff and another for dry and warm. They grilled fresh salmon right on the riverside.
Mackinnon realized that preserving the flavor of freshly caught fish was difficult unless it is preserved as close to the source of capture as possible. That was his aim with PacBak.
Mackinnon’s 10x10-foot booth off the show floor’s main thoroughfares contrasted sharply with the opulence and high-energy booth designs of the industry’s biggest names. Clearly, size didn’t matter. The P88-MK cooler (pacbak.com) first won the Soft and Hard Coolers category and then topped all other category winners to take Best in Show.
MacKinnon was emotional following the announcement. His triumphant tears transcended Best-in-Show happiness, though, and were reflective of a five-year journey that saw him overcome incredible depths of despair.
You see, Mackinnon was present in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017, when a gunman massacred 58 people and wounded more than 400 others at the Route 91 Harvest festival. His best friend, Adrian Murfitt, also an Alaska angler, died in his arms.
“I was mentally messed after and was losing everything, homeless and self-medicating with alcohol,” Mackinnon shared.
Severe post-traumatic stress disorder was destroying his life.
“I saw a couple of counselors. I had visual PTSD, saw people bleeding through their shirts and stuff, hearing things,” Mackinnon said. “None of the counselors could really explain it to me. They were just trying to put me on different pills.
“I ended up going to another counselor and got invited to a VA (Veterans Health Administration) hospital to be part of a PTSD group. They really helped me understand what was happening, what triggers it, how to find my triggers and deal with them. They helped me turn my life around.”
Finishing the design of the new cooler and bringing it to reality became a mission that gave him focus. As employment situations and his paycheck-to-paycheck life improved, he attained the wherewithal to hire engineers and experts needed to gain his patents and make it happen.
He smiled, recalling that the first patent-related drawings of his cooler were sketched out on the back of a piece of paper associated with a urine test he had to take to get a job.
And now, his innovation is the new product Best in Show at the world’s biggest sportfishing industry gathering. Mackinnon knows his life is about to rapidly change again—for the better. The company is ramping up manufacturing to meet expected demand. Mackinnon said several Army and Air Force Exchange Stores may offer the products soon.
Yes, it’s a good feeling when the little guy wins.
For more wide-ranging outdoors coverage, including videos, photos, wild game recipes and more, see Ken Perrotte’s weblog www.outdoorsrambler.com.
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Brian Mackinnon (right) displays his winning cooler.
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