Ultra runner Luke Sigle built SILO to solve a problem no bag could fix

Luke Sigle did not set out to start a gear company. He set out to run a hundred miles. But somewhere around mile 44 of the Grindstone 100, standing under a tent in the pouring rain at 2 a.m. while his dad fumbled through a backpack looking for nutrition and gear, the idea for SILO became impossible to ignore. "I just realized that was kind of the moment where I was like, hey, I need to take some steps to building. What would I build to help runners, to make that part of the race easier?" That single, frustrating aid station stop set fourteen months of prototyping in motion.

Sigle's background gave him an unusual head start. He has worked in promotional products and apparel since the mid-2000s, spending more than a decade at the Vernon Company doing custom importing of everything from barstools to backpacks. That experience meant he already had a trusted import partner, factory relationships, and a working knowledge of how to move a product from concept to production. The Crew Drop One, SILO's flagship drop bag, is now manufactured in Vietnam and went through multiple rounds of iteration before Sigle was satisfied enough to bring it to market in September 2024.

Building a consumer brand from inside a sales career

Running a direct-to-consumer brand while holding a full-time commissioned sales role is not a clean arrangement, and Sigle is direct about the tension. Vernon remains the business that pays the bills. SILO orders ship from his home, often at night, alongside his wife. But the two businesses are less competitive than they might appear. Sigle routes non-SILO branded merchandise, including race t-shirts and event swag, through Vernon. SILO, in turn, acts as a supplier to Vernon reps who sell the Crew Drop One to race organizations and brands. A sponsorship deal with the Long Haul 100 in Florida, for example, generated both visibility for SILO and a t-shirt printing account that now covers eleven events, all running through Vernon.

The early-stage marketing side of the business proved harder than sourcing and manufacturing. Sigle spent roughly two and a half years absorbing direct-to-consumer content, primarily through podcasts, before going to market. What he found when inventory arrived was a gap between knowing what to do and being able to execute it. Two agency relationships, one early and one in early 2025, produced mixed results. "Knowing what to do and executing that are very different," he said. He eventually pulled back from both agencies and began running digital marketing efforts himself, accepting that the learning curve was unavoidable.

Who the product is actually for

Sigle is clear-eyed about where SILO fits in the ultra running market. The Crew Drop One, the Roll Drop, and the newer Dry Drop 10-liter are not technical running products worn on course. They are organizational tools used before, during, and after a race, designed for the athlete's crew to manage gear and nutrition at aid stations efficiently. That positioning matters when it comes to marketing. Elite runners at the front of major races often have contracts with larger brands and move through aid stations in minutes, with everything handed to them. SILO's customer is the everyday ultra runner who spends real time at aid stations and whose crew needs to find the right items quickly in the dark, in the rain, under pressure.

That insight shapes how Sigle thinks about promotion. Rather than chasing a single high-profile ambassador, he has leaned into authentic, user-generated content from everyday runners. A video posted by a runner named Julissa performed well in ads precisely because it was unpolished and recognizable to the target audience. Sigle also built a relationship with young competitive runner Cody Poskin, whose crew used the bag at the Cocodona 250. The 2025 Cocodona winner's crew was also using SILO gear throughout the race. Because so much of a 250-mile event plays out at aid stations and gets captured on live streams, the bag accumulated organic exposure without a formal sponsorship.

The reality of consumer durables in a direct-to-consumer world

One structural challenge Sigle raises is the economics of selling a durable product rather than a consumable one. Supplement and subscription brands can afford to acquire a customer at a loss because repeat purchases close the gap over time. A bag does not work that way. "You have to be first-order profitable," Sigle said. "Otherwise, it's not like you can spend five times what the first purchase is and make that up in the next six months." His answer to that constraint is the promotional channel, selling custom-branded versions of the bag as race swag and event merchandise, which creates the kind of repeat commercial relationship that direct-to-consumer sales alone cannot guarantee. After roughly eighteen months of figuring out what works, Sigle says he can now see a path toward the scale that would let him delegate the parts of the business where he is weakest, and keep doing the parts where experience and relationships give him a genuine edge.