Where did the time go?
Our local paper, The Daily Camera, recently gave us some love in honor of our 15th year in business (14th Birthday? 13th Anniversary of turning 1?). check it out:
Check it out:
Boulder hammocks maker Trek Light Gear celebrates 15th anniversary
By Shay Castle
Staff Writer
Boulder Daily Camera
Posted:Thu Jul 20 16:45:37 MDT 2017
Money can't buy happiness. But it can buy a hammock, and a hammock will make you happy. Seth Haber guarantees it.
Haber is owner, founder and CEO of Boulder-based Trek Light Gear. Locals may be familiar with the company's kiosk on the Pearl Street Mall, parked in the 1200 block for the past eight years. Each hammock sold comes with a handwritten note, lifetime warranty and a promise that your purchase will bring you joy.
As Haber is fond of saying, "Life's better in a hammock." He starts every morning with at least 10 minutes in one, and has been selling them full-time since 2008.
Trek Light Gear is celebrating its 15th year in business. Technically, it's the 14th anniversary, since it was founded in 2003, but Haber likes to round up. The kiosk, which debuted in 2007 near the courthouse, is now a decade old, but Haber has decided to turn it up to 11.
"This is our 11th season out on Pearl, so we're having our 11th anniversary," he said.
However you count them, Trek Light Gear is marking both milestones Saturday, which happens to be National Hammock Day. Haber will spend it as he has for many years — working and giving things away. Past schemes included raffles and a get-inked challenge: a free hammock to anyone who tattoos a company logo on their body.
"The first year, we got one person to get a tattoo," he recalled. "We brought it back the next year and it was five people, and then in the third and fourth years it got to the point where we had so many people, we ended up having to stop the contest."
This year, Trek Light Gear is going a different route with a buy-one-get-one-free sale. Though a costly venture — hammocks start about $60 — it's one that fits with Haber's ethos. Every hammock purchased pays for the planting of two trees; pack sales fund school supplies.
"There are things I can look at and say our business might have been more successful if we had done this differently," he said. "If I start running it by accountants and lawyers that want to put a dollar value to it, it's just not how we look at it.
"We know that if we make every customer happy, our business is going to grow. And if the business grows, good things are going to happen because of all these trees being planted and the school supplies and the happiness hammocks bring to people."
Trek Light Gear has stayed small, with just two full-time employees, plus part-time workers for the kiosk. But it has outlasted many a brick-and-mortar store on the mall.
"Most of the carts that are out there have been there for a long time," said Downtown Boulder Partnership CEO Sean Maher. "When there's an opening, it's a very competitive process — you might have 10 to 12 people vying for one permit."
Trek Light Gear is a great example of a "cool, uniquely Boulder businesses," Maher said. The popularity of its products are visible mere blocks from the mall, where dozens of hammock-loungers line the banks of Boulder Creek in the summer.
The apparatus are technically illegal on city property due to ordinances banning the attachment of anything to trees, according to Denise White, a spokesperson for Boulder's parks and recreation department. Enforcement of the rule is lax, to say the least, but White warned that people can be ticketed if spotted suspended in the shade by an officer.
Certain exceptions have been made for slacklines as a result of lobbying, but no such relief has been granted to hammocks. But, White said, "If there's a group of hammock community members who want to pursue changing that, we're open to a conversation."
Read the original story here: http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-business/ci_31156066/boulder-hammocks-seller-trek-light-gear-celebrates-15th