Thirty years ago this month in a Boulder garage, Bruce “Bruno” McGowan and Bruce “Edge” Edgerly minted their first Alpine Trekker, a clunky contraption that enabled skiers to skin uphill in alpine boots and bindings. As their Backcountry Access Alpine Trekker sold, they moved into a dark office on North Broadway, next to Boulder’s only strip club, where there was an executed search warrant on the floor and a car on blocks in the back room.
This story first appeared in The Outsider, the premium outdoor newsletter by Jason Blevins.
In it, he covers the industry from the inside out, plus the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.
When McGowan and Edgerly launched BCA’s Tracker DTS avalanche transceiver in the late 1990s — revolutionizing avalanche safety with the world’s first digital, multiple antennae beacon — they moved to a new Boulder office where they would anchor the launch of the company’s equally game-changing Float avalanche airbag line in 2010.
Ski industry titan K2 Sports acquired BCA in 2013, taking over some administrative tasks while engineering, design and marketing for its avalanche safety gear remained in Boulder. K2 Sports owner Jared Corp. sold to Newell Brands for $16 billion in 2015. Newell sold its winter brands — K2, Line, Volkl, Marker and BCA — in 2017 to private equity firm Kohlberg and Co. for $240 million.
And now, K2 is corralling its operations in Washington and BCA is leaving Boulder.
“We’ve been suspecting this for about 10 years,” said Edgerly, who two years ago moved away from daily operations to serve as a BCA brand ambassador focusing on how BCA tools can improve safety in avalanche terrain. “One of the main reasons to be in the outdoor industry is to have a fun work environment with like-minded people and to be involved in developing and testing prototypes and being hands-on with products. All that is going away, so it appears my dream career is kind of starting to dissipate, which is heartbreaking but inevitable, you know.”
BCA is not alone in leaving Colorado. This month QuietKat, an electric bike company founded by brothers Jake and Justin Roach in Eagle, quickly pulled up stakes and moved to California as part of a corporate reshuffling. Bike-maker Niner Bikes has left its longtime headquarters in Fort Collins. Denver’s Guerilla Gravity has shut down its bike factory and closed its unique carbon manufacturing business.
As Colorado’s outdoor recreation industry matures and draws investment from heavyweight outsiders, part of that growth includes reshuffling, consolidation and new corporate strategies that can pull thriving businesses out of the state.
“There is always talk of quote-unquote ‘synergies’ and ‘leveraging fixed assets’ and other buzzwords that look good in PowerPoint decks,” Edgerly said. “I have not really seen any of that out of this acquisition but you never know. About two years ago, we really started to see some corporate fingers getting into BCA’s operations.”
At one point BCA had 50 employees in Boulder. When K2 took over, that dropped to about 35. There were about 15 when the company announced last month it would be consolidating its operations in a new headquarters outside Seattle. K2 has asked that about six BCA workers — all the electrical engineers who helped design the company’s airbag packs and transceivers — make the move to Washington.
It’s a result of BCA shifting production from China to a circuit-board manufacturer in Washington. All the assembly, testing, calibration and packaging of the company’s Tracker 4 avalanche beacons — which used to be done in Boulder — will now be done in Washington, near K2’s headquarters.
“They wanted the engineering team to be closer to manufacturing, which is mandatory really,” Edgerly said.
Guerrilla Gravity closes shop
The founders of Guerrilla Gravity, Matt Giaraffa and Will Montague, spent 12 years innovating a new American-made modular frame and then a first-of-its-kind carbon manufacturing process for bikes, all from a bustling shop in Denver. The company quietly closed in September. Cycling newsroom Pink Bike reported that investors in the company decided to pull out and shut down the bike-maker.
It appeared last fall that company’s parent, Revved Industries, remained intact after the closure of Guerrilla Gravity, offering its innovative carbon fiber technology and manufacturing process to the cycling and other industries.
Revved in February 2020 offered investors shares of Revved Industries, offering $3.2 million in equity shares and selling $2.2 million. In December, Revved auctioned its manufacturing equipment after a bankruptcy filing.
Guerrilla Gravy co-founder Giaraffa last fall posted on LinkedIn that he was leaving the company after “introducing the first modern thermoplastic/carbon fiber composite manufacturing to the mountain bike industry, growing from just a couple of us to a pretty large crew.”
“I’m super proud of what we have accomplished, the relationships created, friends made, challenges figured out, machines built, and products made,” Giaraffa wrote. “Like all things, eventually it’s time to move along, see others carry on the torch.”
Giaraffa declined to speak about the closure of Guerrilla Gravity. The engineer landed at Supertramp Campers in Golden, helping to design and build a new overland camper.
“The company has a lot of similarities to Guerrilla Gravity,” he told The Sun.
Niner Bikes pulls out of Fort Collins
In December, Niner Bikes announced it was leaving its 13-year headquarters in Fort Collins for Ohio as part of a consolidation by Niner owner United Wheels, the owner of Huffy brand bikes.
United Wheels, a division of Hong Kong-based investment company Covation Holdings Ltd., bought Niner out of bankruptcy in 2018. Niner was founded in California in 2004 and helped prove the efficiency and validity of 29-inch wheels for mountain bikes and recently began making high-end, carbon-fiber electric mountain bikes.
QuietKat leaves Eagle
Justin and Jake Roach founded QuietKat in 2012 with a plan to help hunters get deeper into the backcountry with agile but powerful electric mountain bikes. By 2014 the brothers were selling their e-bikes to all sorts of riders, emerging as a top brand in the growing industry. In 2021 they had almost 50 employees and sales were exploding, up 145% in 2020 compared with 2019.
Vista Outdoor Inc., a Minnesota-based conglomerate that owns diverse outdoor brands including CamelBak, Bell, Giro Simms, Remington and Camp Chef, acquired QuietKat in 2021 in for an undisclosed price. The company recently announced plans to create a standalone public company — Revelyst — with 15 of its biking and hunting brands. The restructuring moves brands like CamelBak, Bell, Giro and QuietKat into the headquarters of Fox Racing in Irvine, California, and a warehouse in Kansas City, while other brands shift to Bozeman, Montana, and San Diego.
“It was a quick move,” said Jake Roach, whose last day with QuietKat was April 1.
Keeping companies anchored in small communities as they are acquired or consolidated “can be challenging but not impossible,” said Chris Romer with the Vail Valley Partnership.
While resort communities can nurture entrepreneurs with investment in workforce training and support systems, Romer says the fight to keep businesses local is a perpetual challenge as housing prices soar and rural supply chain issues spike costs.
“Our focus needs to remain on building a culture that supports our outdoor recreation economy and our small businesses, and to continue to support those with an emotional connection to our communities,” Romer said. “Because the financial bottom line will almost always be better when consolidated, but the brand alignment and emotional connection with community might never be.”
Cory and Jamie Finney’s Greater Colorado Venture Fund has invested $44.5 million in 37 rural Colorado startup companies, helping to support entrepreneurs beyond the Front Range, including QuietKat.
The Finneys are quick to make sure to not blend the outdoor industry, Colorado rural startups in the outdoor industry and the overall ecosystem supporting rural entrepreneurs in the state.
The outdoor industry is seeing challenges as it emerges from the banner years of the pandemic. Outdoors businesses across the country are tightening budgets and consolidating operations and “some of our rural Colorado outdoor success stories are caught up in this current,” Cory Finney said.
“Sure, they may have had more say of where operations are when they were private, but the reality is that most outdoor companies right now are focused on survival,” he said.
But the rural Colorado entrepreneurial landscape is vibrant, Finney said.
“That includes new starts in the outdoor industry. We are still seeing businesses being created at a consistent if not increased pace,” Finney said, noting that the Greater Colorado Venture Fund anticipates investments in another 15 to 20 businesses in the next few years. “The opportunity set remains strong. It is natural for companies to go through life cycles, but the constant is that the founders have chosen rural Colorado as home and will start their next venture in their community.”