Some call it knolling. Others, a flatlay. Or you may call it a simple pocket dump. Lining up all the little items you carry with you throughout the day and sharing them on social media is a longstanding tradition, but some have taken it to another level. This is the world of EDC, or everyday carry.
The EDC community is obsessed with assembling a fine-tuned collection of everyday essentials. They gather on subreddits like r/EDC, with half a million members; social media platforms under the hashtag #EDC, with 13 million posts; and blogs like Everyday Carry and Gear Patrol. Their flatlays include metal wallets, leather notebooks, rugged flashlights, pocket knives, Casio digital watches, and high-performance bags from brands like Peak Design and Bellroy. On the subreddit, users debate the granular differences between the Peak Design 3L Sling and the 6L sling, and the utility of one pocket knife or two.
For the brands that the EDC community has decided are worthy of inclusion in their kits, EDC has been a godsend.
“EDC is one of those niches that helped us grow,” said Ramiro Gomez, co-founder of the 8-year-old bag brand Alpaka, whose products are beloved among the EDC community for their high-quality materials and thoughtful internal organization. “One of the first consciously EDC products we launched was a pouch in 2020, just to test the market. It turned into a huge hit. It’s not everything we do, but EDC plays a big role for us.”
Gomez said Alpaka consciously leans into EDC in its marketing, often showcasing its bags alongside common EDC mainstays like flashlights and pocket knives or an EDC coin, a simple decorative item included in many EDC kits. Alpaka’s Instagram posts often include “everyday carry” or “EDC” in the copy.
EDC customers are particular about details, including a product’s material and construction.
“For a community who nerds out about gear, the bar is high for quality,” Pete Dering, founder of Peak Design, a brand that makes bags, phone cases and camera gear. “They would absolutely notice if our quality dropped, like if we started using a flimsier material.”
But it’s not all about function over form. Dering pointed to Bellroy, another EDC favorite, as an example of a brand that has succeeded in the community for its aesthetic sensibilities. Dering said that, while both brands value and are valued for their high quality, “Bellroy skews more toward form, and we skew more toward function.” (Dering is friends with Bellroy’s co-founder Andy Fallshaw.)
At 14 years old, Peak Design was one of the earliest brands to adopt the EDC ethos. It projects to reach $100 million in revenue this year, Dering said, with a full-time team of around 84 people.
So what’s behind the EDC trend? Bernard Capulong, founder and editor-in-chief of the EDC blog Everyday Carry, credited two things. First, some people just love to nerd out about gear. The audience for EDC is primarily men, and it scratches an itch that’s common in the menswear world for learning everything there is to know about a product or category to find the best one.
And second, people like to feel like they’re part of a community and to share their interests with like-minded people.
In 2009, Capulong started Everyday Carry as a Tumblr blog where he pioneered the flatlay image format. Since then, he turned it into a successful business which was purchased in 2022 by Ridge, yet another mainstay EDC brand and a maker of metal wallets. Ridge, founded in 2013, has over $100 million in annual sales.
Capulong said EDC may seem like an intense world — one dark, and uniquely American, element of EDC is how common it is for people to include a firearm in their EDC kits — but anyone can be a part of EDC.
“Everyone has an EDC, even if they don’t know it,” Capulong said. “For most people, it’s their phone, wallet and keys, at minimum. All it takes is a little more intentionality. Ultimately, it’s about self-expression. What you carry says a lot about you. And there’s an element that’s not strictly utilitarian. It’s about making friends, bonding with people, sharing a hobby and expressing yourself.”
