Hey, Shane here, the inventor of the StrapWrangler. 

I initially came up with the concept back in 2018 when prepping for a road trip the night before, again.  My wife Julia and I loved taking road-trips since we were in high-school, and were breaking in the next gen early by taking our newborn daughter and her 15month old brother (yep) from our current home town in Fort Worth, to meet their grandparents in the panhandle of Florida, and their great-grandparents in Atlanta, where I'm from.  We had a roof rack on our Ford Explorer, and I usually mounted two big red-totes we got from the Container Store for all the kid stuff, while the rest of the luggage and 2 dogs went in the rear cargo area.  Needless to say our rear-view mirror found a new purpose as a simple baby monitor since there was no other rear "view" to be had...

Anyway, now that you have a visual, you can understand that we needed to make frequent "pit stops", which also included the need to retrieve one, or both, of those big red totes; Which I had recently learned on another trip, means constantly untying the knotted web of ratchet-strap slack I had on the roof (what, was I just going to leave the lose ratchet straps on the roof like a mad-man?  I ended up making due with some velcro straps, but they kept coming undone if not secured tight-enough, which was becoming a problem with frequent use.  So I got better velcro straps for the ride home, which did hold up, but were showing wear fast, in the wind and rain on the top of the vehicle.  I just didn't trust them. 

So it was the night before our Great Grandparent Adventure and I was loading up the totes, again, when I said to my-self, "there's gotta be a better way".  So instead of going to bed early, I stayed up designing -- <cough> over-engineering <cough> a "simple" RatchetRangler(TM, but not by me unfortunately), and hit print on my OG Ender-3. 

To my surprise, when I woke up the next morning I found the print was mostly successful!  Well, enough to beta-test on the road when paired with a couple of hobby-grade rubber-bands I had laying around from my RC Cub-Trainier (IYKYK). 

To my perhaps even greater surprise, it worked! And, knot [sic pun] only that, but I found my straps were now a self-managed, per-settable, tangle-free, pain-free experience... mostly.  The rubber bands needed a better way to stay attached to the Wrangler, and were already showing more wear than expected.  Also, one of the Wrangler's had split in twain (that means two for us normies) on one of the sidewalls, right at the 3D-printed layers.  Still, it seemed to hold up fine, though the rubber-bands needed replacing by the end of our two-week trip.  Good thing I brought spares...

I'll fill you in on the rest of the details in another post, but suffice it to say, before ever starting my venture, I did several Google and Amazon product searches for a similar solution, to no avail.  Ruberbands didn't last long in the elements, Self-retracting ratchet straps seemed like overkill, and even the best velcro straps would wear the on the soft-loop side of the mechanism with frequent use, and still left the potential for the strap to come lose again if not VERY securely fastened or uniquely wound, a concept we learned the hard way.  Honestly, I just needed something like a belt, or a watchband... and that was it.  20 minutes later I had a flex-band mocked up in autocad and a couple hours after that, the print was ready. 

It worked perfectly.  Soon after that the StrapWrangler 1.0 faded into the day-to-day background of our family's frequent road-tripping, camping, boating, fishing, off-roading, and just generally outdoorsy lifestyle.  And occasionally enough, usually at the ROV park or boat ramp, I would have passerby's strike up a conversation about "the way I tied up my straps".  The feedback was almost always extremely positive, even if only mildly interested. Still, I started carrying spares just to give away.   Looking back, I think it was Julia that first suggested I should print the product name on the front and build a website to start selling them...

But, it wasn't until I left my corporate job in the spring of 2025, and started a small hobby based home business with Julia, did I decide it's time to file a patent and submit a trademark, only to find out that someone beat me to the name RatchetRangler by 3 WEEKS!  A reminder that I started this journey in the winter of 2018 and had been calling it Ratchet Wrangler (with the "W") for over 6 years now.  Fortunately, and to my great relief as I had already paid my patent-attorney,  his product his product was very different in form and basic function, though admittedly elegant in it's simple approach to the problem (though I'm confident my solution is more durable and flexible in its function, if not also a bit over-engineered for extreme conditions).

Sure, I was a bit miffed that someone beat me to the name, but I was more frustrated with myself for having waited so long to register my trademark and patent in the first place.  So after crying into my beer for a while, I found my self appreciative that this competing entrepreneur at least had the foresight to also purchase and re-direct "RatchetWrangler.com" (with the "W") to his site as well.  Because, if I'm still being honest, I have no doubt it would never have occurred to me in the moment to search for alternate spellings if my preferred domain was available, which I'm sure would have ultimately led to much worse headaches in the future. 

So with no room for hate or regret in my heart, I trudged on and settled with the name, RatchetRig! No, we work with more than just Ratchet Straps... so, StrapWrangler! Honestly, Both are still pretty close to the old name.  But I like the website name, RatchetRig.com.  It's simple to type and remember, and gets the idea across well enough.  But when demoing the product, I found "StrapWrangler" conveyed more meaning with less words.  So that's where we landed, for now.  But at least I bought both domains, and can redirect if I change my mind, again.  

Ohh, yeat, the plug! 

So, in addition to selling the Original StrapWrangler on RatchetRig.com, Julia, and I, are launching a new and fairly eclectic brand in early 2026!  That's all I can share for now, but if you're interested in learning more, then please check us out at HobbyMeThis.com, and be sure to register your email address so you can be the first to know when we go live!

Sincerely,

Julia & Shane 

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Update: Dec, 18 2025 -
Feedback has been GREAT! And sales... Well Feedback is great! But we clearly need to get the cost per unit down before striking any bigger deals as a retail-vendor.  So, I'm happy to say we now working with a local manufacturer that specializes in injection molding and planning to expanding production of the Original StrapWrangler (the heavy-duty 1.5" variant) in early 2026.  We'll still be 3D-printing and producing other sizes and variants in our home-workshop while we experiment with this new process aimed to improve production quality and consistency, while reducing costs and overhead at the same time.   

In the meantime, keep a look out for our next beta-tester announcement to get early access at a reduced price to the new version of the best and Original StrapWrangler.  

As always, PLEASE don't hesitate to use the "Contact Us" section to send and email and let me know what you think our product (still patent-pending!).  I welcome comments and criticisms.