Camping gave brothers Ollie and Neill some of their happiest childhood memories and in 2014 it changed their life.
Growing up, family holidays meant tents, campervans, campsites and the freedom to spend whole days outdoors. But by the time they were adults, they felt camping had started to mean something very different.
For many people, it meant ‘roughing it’ , sleeping on cold or wet ground, wrestling with poles and packing huge amounts of equipment into the car. At the other end of the spectrum was a growing image of outdoor adventure as something for hardcore enthusiasts: modified 4x4s, expedition vehicles, specialist kit and remote wilderness.
There seemed to be very little in between. Ollie and Neill saw a market where traditional camping could feel like something you have to endure, while the alternative was an expensive campervan or heavily modified vehicle. Their idea was to use the car people already owned as the starting point for an adventure.
The trip that changed their idea of camping
In 2014, the brothers were travelling through France when they bought a rooftop tent. Suddenly, camping felt different. There was no hunting for the perfect patch of ground, no lengthy tent set-up and no need for a campervan. They could stop somewhere, open the tent above the car, sleep on a proper mattress and move on again the next morning.
And everywhere they went, people wanted to know what it was. The experience convinced them there was an opportunity to take something that was still largely associated with expedition vehicles and make it relevant to ordinary cars and ordinary weekends away.
Two years later, the brothers founded TentBox. The ambition wasn’t to make camping more extreme. It was almost the opposite. They wanted to remove the barriers that made people think camping wasn’t for them.
Childhood experience appears to play a significant role in whether the next generation discovers camping at all.
New research commissioned by TentBox found that parents who count camping among their own fondest childhood memories are more than twice as likely to want to camp with their children (39.8%), compared with 19% of parents overall and 14.6% among those who did not name camping as a favourite childhood memory.
For Ollie and Neill, the finding resonates particularly strongly. Camping formed some of their own happiest childhood memories, but their ambition with TentBox has always been to ensure people don’t need to have grown up camping to feel that the outdoors is for them.
A family should be able to decide on Thursday that they wanted to go away on Friday. Someone without specialist outdoor knowledge should feel just as comfortable using the product as an experienced camper. And adventure shouldn’t require a £50,000 campervan, weeks of preparation or an identity built around being ‘outdoorsy’.
Ten years later
What began with early prototypes developed from Ollie’s garage has grown into the UK’s leading roof-tent brand, with rooftop camping now being used by families, couples, solo travellers and people who may never previously have considered themselves campers.
TentBox is also unapologetic that most of its customers will use its products at campsites, and treats that as something to celebrate. UK campsites are a national treasure: places for spontaneous weekends, easy socialising, family time and a more relaxed kind of adventure. The outdoors doesn’t have to mean remoteness or hardship to be worth the trip.
More than 100,000 TentBoxers are now on the road, with owners swapping campsite recommendations and routes and even organising large community meet-ups known as TentBox Takeovers.
And having helped establish rooftop camping in the UK, the brothers are now taking the idea further.
TentBox is expanding across Europe while continuing to invest in product development from its Southampton headquarters. New products such as TrunkBox are designed around the same question the brothers asked a decade ago: what are the little bits of friction that stop somebody simply deciding to get away? The company also has further product development planned for 2027.
For Ollie and Neill, though, the measure of what they have built is perhaps simpler. It is seeing children running around campsites creating versions of the same memories they had themselves.
Ollie, co-founder of TentBox, said: “When we started TentBox, roof tents in the UK were something you saw on an expedition vehicle, not on a normal car outside a normal house. We thought that was the wrong way round.
“The whole point is that your bed is already there. You arrive, pop it open in minutes, and you’re sleeping up off the cold, wet ground with a proper mattress and usually a pretty great view. No hunting for the perfect patch of grass. You get some of the freedom of a campervan, on the car you already own.
“That changes the psychology of camping. It stops being a logistical exercise and becomes something you decide on a Thursday and do on Friday night. Most of our customers aren’t trying to prove how outdoorsy they are. They just want a good weekend away without the faff.
“Looking at where we are now, the team, the community and the sheer number of trips people have taken with a TentBox is pretty surreal. Ten years on, the ambition hasn’t changed: to help more people get outdoors more often, and to keep designing products that make doing that easier, more comfortable and more fun.”
