An Ex-Apple Designer's Travel Gear Site: 4.5M Monthly Visitors, 7-Figure Revenue, Acquired
Pack Hacker, the travel gear review site founded by former Apple designer Tom Wahlin, grew to 4.5 million monthly unique visitors, 370K YouTube subscribers, and 7-figure annual revenue before being sold to AllGear Digital in 2023. The story of rebuilding after a 60% traffic drop during the pandemic is also public.
This is a translation of the Japanese original. The Japanese version and cited primary sources are authoritative for all figures.
JPY figures are approximate conversions at ¥150/USD.
Timeline
| Period | Event |
|---|---|
| May 2015 | Wahlin quits his design manager job at Apple to travel. His Medium article on packing goes viral |
| January 2017 | Pack Hacker founded |
| March 2020 | Traffic drops 60% within two weeks as the pandemic hits |
| Through 2021 | Pivots content strategy and normalizes revenue within a year |
| December 2023 | Sold to AllGear Digital (with an earnout). Wahlin stays on as GM |
The Numbers (at Sale)
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Monthly unique visitors | Over 4.5 million |
| YouTube | 370K subscribers across 2 channels, 1.6M monthly views (50K average per video) |
| Annual revenue | 7 figures (affiliate + brand partnerships + Pack Hacker Pro membership at $60/year) |
| Team | 5 Detroit-based employees + 6 contractors |
Turning Design Quality into a Moat
Wahlin’s previous job was design manager at Apple. Pack Hacker’s reviews stand out for the quality of their photography, diagrams, and UI — even among identical affiliate articles, they became the ones people sought out by name as “Apple-quality guides.” The twin pillars of search and YouTube were designed to capture both the audience that wants text comparisons and the audience that wants to see gear in real use.
The pandemic’s 60% traffic drop hit a travel site head-on, but he recovered within a year by broadening the content from “travel prep” to “everyday gear and EDC (Everyday Carry).” A response that abstracted the niche one level up — from ”travel” to ”what you carry.”
Our Take
Bring a world-class professional skill into a niche media outlet, and quality itself becomes the barrier to imitation. A scaled-up version of Tokuda’s photography x handmade goods. In a commoditized review market, countless people can write — but there is only one “review site built by an Apple designer.”
Redefining the niche in a crisis is a move to weigh before ever shutting down. Expanding from travel-gear to life-gear slid the business into a market with demand while preserving its accumulated trust and SEO assets. Where RemoteOK’s persistence was a “wait it out” strategy, this was a “shift sideways” strategy.
Here too, the deciding factor for the sale was strategic fit. In his words: “The strategic fit was so strong it would have been foolish not to talk.” For AllGear’s roll-up, which also acquired BikeRumor, the highest-quality gear media outlet was an inevitable target.
Further Reading
Sources
This article summarizes and analyzes the public sources above. Please refer to the primary sources for details.