Listen: Good Vibes in Craig, Colorado's Economic Transition
Seven years ago, Josh Veenstra was working as an insulator at one of Craig, Colorado's energy companies. Today, he and his wife Meagan are the founders of Good Vibes River Gear, a handmade mesh rafting accessory manufacturer that's become an influential voice in the town's transition from the energy economy to outdoor recreation. Here's how Josh and Meagan started a business powered by the waves of change.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify.
Discover more Colorado startups, connect with mentors and funders, and get advice on starting a business (or scaling) via our free, online community. Join now.
About Good Vibes River Gear in Craig, Colorado
Good Vibes River Gear, founded by Josh and Meagan Veenstra, is a local manufacturer and retail business deeply rooted in the town of Craig, Colorado. In addition to manufacturing handmade mesh rafting accessories, they also have a retail location that provides gear for adventures on the Green or Yampa rivers. Since founding Good Vibes, Josh and Meagan have become proponents of the development of Craig's outdoor industry, and have supported the development of the town's new whitewater park.
Transcript
Vanessa: I’m Vanessa McCrann, the Community Manager at Startup Colorado. I’ve temporarily stolen the microphone to let you know about Startup Colorado’s community for rural entrepreneurs.
This online community is the first of its kind, a single destination for Colorado’s rural founders to discover peer-to-peer networking, business resources, mentorship, and maybe even funding.
Signup for free at StartupColorado.org.
How was that?
Margaret: I think that was great, thanks!
Vanessa: Ok, I guess you can have the mic back now.
Margaret: So anyway, I’m Margaret Hedderman and this week on the Startup Colorado Podcast, we’re headed to Craig, Colorado, where we’ll meet one entrepreneur leading the community’s transition from the energy economy to outdoor recreation.
Josh: That's the process of putting on these, these are going on crossbar duffels so that's going to be the bag that you would hang off the front crossbar of your raft. And you'd throw in your sunscreen your sandals, maybe some like light snacks or soda or something…
Margaret: That’s Josh Veenstra, the co-founder of Good Vibes River Gear, a mesh rafting accessory manufacturer in Craig, Colorado.
Josh: Good vibes is was a dream that I had on a river trip, and it slowly developed into this kind of dream come true, I guess you could say. I'm kind of still in awestruck on how well it's going, but a lot of the success is because of my wife and stuff.
Margaret: Josh’s wife and business partner, Meagan, is on the other side of the shop chatting with customers. Their sew shop is also a retail space, where they sell and rent gear for river trips.
Before founding Good Vibes, Josh worked as an insulator at TriState Electric and then with another energy company in town. It was a good job, good pay, but it really started wearing on Josh after a while. He started thinking about what was important to him and what he really wanted to be doing in life.
Josh: So, eventually, it was like just dealing with very stressful people that didn't like what they were doing, really forced me to go, like, I'm gonna follow my dream before I fall into that rut.
Margaret: It all came to a head on one fateful river trip.
Josh: I had a wild hair midlife crisis to try to float the river from Deer Lodge Park to Lake Powell.
Margaret: Along the way, Josh and his rafting buddies picked up different people who were helping them to resupply. And he noticed that all their gear was mostly made by the same brands. It was all the same color. And just didn’t like it was really good quality.
Josh: And I was like, man, I think we should I should open up a company and make colorful gear and call it Good Vibes. And that was kind of the joke on the raft trip. But here we are, you know, seven years later or whatnot. And we're still laughing about it.
Margaret: Now, Josh has had a lot of business ideas over the years.
Meagan: Yeah, so, Josh is wanting to start his own business for quite a while, and he’s had many, many ideas.
Margaret: That’s Josh’s wife, Meagan.
Meagan: Josh wanted to start a bike repair shop. He wanted to start mountaineering shop…
Margaret: Josh chimed in from the other side of the room…
Josh: I wanted to open up a dive shop because me and Meagan are just… we’re really adventurous, we’re really advanced open water divers, we just love it and one of my dreams, I was like, “Let’s do a dive shop!” And Meagan’s just like, “In Craig?”
Meagan: He he goes so far to these businesses as making shirts. So, I have shirts for his bike shop, and I have shirts for his mountaineering shop. Not that any of those things happened.
Margaret: Meagan basically said no to all those ideas—although it is worth noting that she is selling the t-shirts for Yampa Valley Mountaineers. Anyway, there was something about the Good Vibes idea that stuck.
Meagan: And when he brought the rafting idea to me, I looked at how many businesses were in the industry, and it looked like it was a not a saturated market. It looked like something we could actually make money at. And I was excited to add some color and spice to the drab market that it was.
Margaret: Josh borrowed some work tables from his parents, bought a $1000 sewing machine, and setup shop in his garage.
Josh: I remember just sitting in my garage sewing these bags up and going, wow, this is what I'm doing? It was kind of it was kind of it was kind of scary. But at the same time I, I felt this freedom, the freedom I feel now was so much, it's so worth being scared then.
Margaret: He started selling bags on Facebook and not long afterward the owner of a rafting shop placed an order for 50 bags.
Josh: So, I made all these bags piled up to the ceiling, in the garage, head down there, and the guy, I show up, and he's and he's, he's obviously having some issues. And he's just like, nope, closing up shop, I’m done. Don't need any of your bags.
Margaret: So here Josh is. He just spent a ton of money on material and all his time building these 50 bags for… no one.
Josh: And, I got on the phone with Meagan and I said, we're opening up a shop, I'm coming home and we got home and started looking for a building called around a bunch and found this little shop, the little garage.
Margaret: Little by little, Good Vibes grew by offering custom sewing projects and specialty items. One such project was a hand wash station, which was commissioned by the whitewater outfitter, OARS.
Josh: When they do groups of 25 plus, they have usually two or three hand washers. And so they needed some sort of bucket carrying system to figure out how to sandwich all those together that wasn't just a bag. And so, I came up with this thing. And it is a, it is just one of our round bags with a lid, and three cam buckles. And so, it'll extend out to almost four feet high. And you can then they can stick all their buckets in there. And then they cinch it down. And it keeps all that stuff that usually would just be floating around loose lids and stuff. And it keeps it really nice and tight.
Margaret: Eventually, they moved into their current location, which gets great traffic from rafters coming and going through Craig on their way to the river.
During the time I’ve spent in their shop, there’ve been customers coming and going. Meagan and Josh take turns greeting them.
Josh: She's the crepe lady.
Margaret: Did you bring crepes?
Josh: Oh, no, no, she she has a little truck.
Margaret: Oh!
Josh: Isn't that what she was…?
Meagan: Yeah, she wants to set up her crepe truck over the winter here.
Margaret: Cool!
Josh: Yeah, so what we do is like we offer underneath our awning food trucks if they want to pull up. They're more than welcome to pull up and sling some food. And last year, we had a little cheesesteak dude here and he was really successful.
Margaret: Food trucks, gear stores, and as we mentioned in the first episode of this season’s podcast, there are new restaurants, distilleries, and boutiques popping up in Craig. This town in the far northern part of the state is experiencing a lot of changes, almost overnight.
And, as I mentioned at the beginning, there’s a big one coming down the pike.
Historically, Craig has been a coal town, but both the power plant and mine will be closing by 2030. That equates to hundreds of jobs and a huge chunk of the tax base that are disappearing.
But at the same time, Craig is seeing an influx of new residents.
Meagan: So, Craig saw a lot of people moving here during COVID. The cost of living is fairly low here. And people no longer need to live where they work. So, I'm starting to see a change where, you know, the people who were working at the power plant, they're starting to have to leave. And younger people are coming in who want to do, you know, more niche businesses, little mom and pop shops and art stuff and things that Craig kind of needs. And so, the face of Craig is starting to slowly change with new people moving in and old people moving out.
Margaret: Both Josh and Meagan are from Craig and are excited to see some of these changes taking place. In fact, Good Vibes River Gear has been playing a large role in promoting the area’s outdoor recreation opportunities.
Josh: We're actually got a grant for $3.3 million to start the process of actually constructing the whitewater park. It's a two year construction program plan.
Margaret: Just to be clear, it’s the city of Craig that received the grant, not Good Vibes. But Josh has been consulting with the developers on how to build the best wave possible that will attract not only rafters and kayakers, but inland surfers as well. Construction is slated to begin as early as this fall.
Josh: The outdoor rec is influencing Craig to, to put in these parks to put in the concert venues to put in kinda, you know, an identity where all the only identity we had was the coal mine and the power plant. Now, we have just come up with the Yampa River as our identity.
Margaret: As Craig grows, Josh and Meagan plan to tap into all that new energy and continue expanding Good Vibes.
Josh: My dream is really have, you know, 10, 10-15 seamstresses working full time and just knocking out product.
Margaret: He added…
Josh: I definitely would like it to have our retail but also be set up sort of like Melanzana, where you have to have an appointment to come in, you can order your stuff, you can pick up that and then you have option to shop our full catalog of mesh products. But then we have just the regular store that you can get all the other things.
Margaret: Thanks for listening to this week’s show. You can find links to Good Vibes River Gear, as well as pictures and more information on our website, StartupColorado.org.