The tens of thousands of attendees at the Outside Days festival last month in Denver had to wend their way through a menagerie of small-town Colorado outdoor innovators and their home-grown creations to get to the stage for My Morning Jacket, Eggy and the Flaming Lips.
“It was pretty sticky,” says Conor Hall, the boss at the Colorado outdoor recreation office, of the ambling festival-goers taking their time to scope one-of-a-kind Colorado gear.
Almost all of the rural brand creators in the “Camp Colorado” cluster had never displayed their newest notions in public. That is the mission of Rural is Rad, a collective of now more than 50 brands that is amplifying the ingenuity of rural outdoor innovators beyond Colorado’s mountain valleys.
“Running a business in rural places can be challenging because once you’ve gone to the farmers market a couple times you’ve seen everybody and they’re like, ‘I’ve already supported you as much as I can,’” says Kelly Mazanti, the Summit County CEO and cofounder of the Rural is Rad collective. “How can we create sustainable industries in these communities so people can live and work there?”
During the Outside Days festival at the Auraria Campus last month, Mazanti herded 15 innovative tinkerers into the Rural is Rad Village, where thousands of new customers were able to see the latest creations from outdoor enthusiasts fueled by the industry-defining mantra: “There has got to be a better way to do this.”
There was a rack with Bold goggles and sunglasses, a new brand out of Steamboat Springs that is navigating the world between $30 and $350 eyewear. Sara Hogan set up her new portable kids tents and sleep systems for her Crested Butte-based WrovenDen brand. Buena Vista’s Sky View Tents displayed backpacking tents with super-fine mesh for stargazing and a rainfly that can be pulled from inside the tent.
Industrial engineers Trevor and Ana Stark were there with their Stark Side Gear quick-release mounts for rooftop tents they designed in Buena Vista. Across the grass, the engineers with Grand Junction’s QuikrStuff bike racks showed off their U.S.-made bike haulers.
Courtney Despos debuted her burly bags that protect skis on rooftop racks. The future of her soon-to-launch Skeyo Outdoors company will include highway-ready coverings for bikes and surfboards, with a focus on shielding gear that can survive in the mountains but suffers on the journey there.
“We put a lot of money in that stuff, right?” Despos says, heralding Rural is Rad as “good for the state, good for our rural economies and good for us as small brand owners.”
The Rural is Rad Village in the Camp Colorado section of the three-day Outside Days festival was on the east side of the Auraria Campus venue, which meant just about everyone coming into the event had to walk through a gauntlet of Colorado outdoor brands wedged between an art piece and a gilded Mighty Argo gondola car. Despos says she felt validated at the village where she sparked many sales of her protective ski bags.
“The reception to my brand and products was fantastic and humbling,” she says.
Rural is Rad is setting up in The Hub in Gunnison, a new venture by Western Colorado University’s ICELab business incubator and co-working space that offers manufacturing and storage space to up-and-coming rural businesses.
Colorado’s mountain-town business founders sometimes pine for urban-level connections with investors, consumers and employees. Rural is Rad wants to help ease that ache while offering a platform to amplify awareness beyond lonely valleys.
“There is amazing support within your community but that also has an end point where brands need to broaden their customer base,” Mazanti says.
Rural is Rad has the full-throated support of the Colorado outdoor recreation office, which helped subsidize the brands in the Outside Day festival.
That festival level of exposure cannot be overstated, says Hall, with the Colorado outdoor recreation office. Championing networks like Rural is Rad “expands opportunities across the rural expanses of our state,” says Hall, who is particularly excited about having a group that can expose small brands to capital investors who typically move through more urban landscapes.
“This is about diversifying the economies in rural Colorado,” he says. “If we can help these smaller brands grow, we can strengthen the entire state.”
Mazanti, the boss at Rural is Rad, hopes to build a pathway so investors can better reach small-town business founders. The plan includes events and education on both the business and investor side of the equation.
“These brands sometimes don’t fit perfectly with private equity-type investors but there are investors out there in these communities who are willing to support these new ideas and brands,” she says.
There’s a point where the founders of growing brands in small communities must make a choice: leave for urban locales close to airports and shipping routes or spend more money in the expensive mountain valley where their brand first sprouted. It’s a hard decision. The innovative founders of high-quality outdoor brands are intimately connected to the places that inspired their inventiveness.
Mazanti hopes her Rural is Rad collective can help business owners with that challenge, giving them more tools to keep them based in the garden where they first sprouted.
“The people who are really invested in these communities, they are not the type to give up and leave,” she says. “So how can we help them?”