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It began with a 9-month, 7000-mile mountain bike tour we made from Seattle to La Paz, Bolivia. Having sewn much of the equipment for our trip we returned with many ideas for improvement. With the mission of building the best possible bicycle panniers we bought our first industrial sewing machine and set to work on our designs.
Over the next few years we clocked long hours in our Lopez Island studio as our product line grew—just the two of us building each pair of panniers by hand. In 1993 our efforts gained national attention when Bicycling, Outside, Backpacker and Adventure Cyclist magazines published glowing reviews. Our business boomed as we took orders from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, Germany and Japan.
But growth also brought some difficult decisions. Having reached the limits of what the two of us could produce alone, we were still struggling to earn a living from our work. Faced with the tough choice of cheapening our designs, producing our goods offshore or hiring low-wage employees our business stalled.
In the end it was decided that none of those choices felt right, so in the fall of 1994 we filled the last backorders and quietly closed the door to our shop. It had been an occasionally exhilarating, often tedious education in small business ownership, but we moved on feeling proud of what we had accomplished together.
Although it’s been nearly 20-years since the last Mountain Minded pannier was sewn we still receive emails from cyclists using our products. If you have a story to share about your experience with Mountain Minded equipment—contact us, we’d enjoy hearing from you too. If you’ve arrived at our site hoping to purchase a pair of panniers—sorry, you’re too late, they’re long gone!
In the Mountain Minded spirit of human-powered adventure we’ll keep exploring wild places and you can be sure we’ll be watching for our label. Hope to see you out there!
Rob & Karen
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