It started with a hammock that cost almost nothing — and outlasted everything.
Years ago, travelling through Southeast Asia, I stopped in Kuta, Lombok — a dusty surf town where the air smells like salt and clove cigarettes. From a local maker there, for what amounted to pocket change, I bought a handwoven hammock and carried it home to Canada as a gift for my dad.
That hammock should have been a souvenir. Instead, it became the longest-serving piece of furniture our family has ever owned. Summer after summer it hung outside — sun, rain, kids, dogs, more weight than it was ever rated for — and it simply refused to quit. The cheap factory-made gear around it came and went. The handmade one stayed.
That's the lesson Slack Tide is built on: a hammock woven by hand, by someone who knows the craft, isn't a product. It's an heirloom that happens to be comfortable.
Why "Slack Tide"?
On the coast, the slack tide is the still moment between ebb and flow — the pause where the water rests before it turns. It's the moment everybody out here actually lives for: work done, light going gold, nowhere to be. We named the store after that pause, because a hammock is where you spend it.
Today we're based in Nanoose Bay, on Vancouver Island — a short walk from the water, with our first child on the way and a yard full of cedars that were clearly planted for hammocks. Every hammock we sell gets hung between those cedars and tested by us before it earns a listing.
The makers come first.
We don't buy anonymous factory stock and put a logo on it. Our hammocks are woven by named artisan makers whose work we can trace:
The Maya weavers of the Yucatán, Mexico — families who have woven hammocks for generations, including the weavers behind our signature Matrimonial double. In the Yucatán, the hammock isn't patio furniture; it's the bed, the crib, and the couch, perfected over centuries.
The makers of Bali, Indonesia — including the Muntigunung community enterprise in Karangasem and independent weavers like Dian Rahmawati, whose travel hammocks come back to where this story started.
Artisan weavers in Brazil and Nicaragua — whose cotton and macramé work rounds out the collection, sourced through fair-trade artisan networks.
Our promise
Every design is sample-tested before it sells. Every maker is named. Every hammock is listed with an honest ship window, and if a batch ever runs more than 14 days late, your pre-order is refundable in full — no questions, no store credit games. If we wouldn't hand it to our own family, we don't sell it to yours.
That first Lombok hammock is still hanging. That's the standard. Handwoven to be handed down.
— Chris Hauk, founder, Slack Tide Hammocks · Nanoose Bay, BC