Richard Frank-Huff's Seattle Social Blog

While in New Zealand I ran across a company that makes, arguably, the best umbrella on the market.  I'm not saying that lightly.  As a resident of Seattle, I have to give rain more respect than the average American.  There are days when it rains so hard that just the splash-back will soak your clothes to the middle of your thighs.  I've been through hundreds of umbrellas that performed more like a disposable trinket than a shield.  Moderate wind would turn them inside out as if that were their natural state.  The fabric detached from the ribs and the ribs crumpled like dry grass.  Generally useless.  The whole lot of them.  Small, compact, golf-sized -- they all were designed with the lowest common denominator as a goal.

But then I read about the Blunt Umbrella in a magazine on my flight back to Los Angeles.  Blunt appeared to have solved all of the failure points typical in existing umbrella designs.  They attached the canopy to a set of ribs with expanding anchors inside of sown pockets -- not just a single thread snaking through tiny eyelet.  The ribs are several times the diameter of those on a typical umbrella, and I can't imagine that they would buckle under any wind force still within a person's ability to keep hold of the umbrella.  To top all that off, the Blunt Umbrellas are aesthetically pleasing.

I've been using one of the Blunt Umbrellas since late October 2009, and I couldn't be happier.  Don't let the NZ$110 (~US$77) price tag frighten you away -- this will be the last umbrella you'll ever need to buy.

[Full disclosure: Although I've never received any monetary compensation for my product endorsements, Blunt gave me a second umbrella for free after I ordered and paid for the first one.  The second, free umbrella was an unexpected gift for the help I provided them in debugging a foreign payment problem with their online storefront.]