Thanks for the comment! I hear ya. We're considering retail as an option in the future. Right now the subscription simply is the business model that makes sense for us - our current margins are too slim for retailers.
If you want to hit the backpacker market get some freebies out to blogs like Andrew Skurka, Section Hiker, Adventure Alan, Gear Junkie, etc. I don't know that the market is big enough to target, but I suspect with how profitable REI is there may be something to it.
Personally I subscribe for a similar use case and then just defer a week or two or skip on the months where I haven't used it all yet. Their subscription management options are very fine grained which is nice. I've been really happy with it so far.