Colorado outdoor businesses are struggling under tariff uncertainty
At a Denver U.S. Senate committee hearing on small business last week, three Colorado outdoor entrepreneurs told Sen. John Hickenlooper their businesses were threatened by the Trump trade war
Jason Blevins/Colorado Sun
Travis Campbell bought a soon-to-be-shuttered Eagle Creek from VF Corp and moved the travel gear brand to his hometown of Steamboat Springs in 2021, joining nearly two dozen other outdoor companies in the city renowned for outdoor innovators. The former head of Smartwool and VF Corp executive said Eagle Creek “is the kind of small business that America should be proud of.”
“But with these tariffs,” he told U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper at a U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship hearing in Denver last week, “it feels like our country is systematically working against small businesses like ours.”
Right now Campbell has $1.8 million in Eagle Creek gear — burly packs, luggage, duffels built in Indonesia — that is about to be shipped to the U.S.
When Campbell ordered that gear — which retailers have already signed up to put on their shelves — he was set to pay about $226,000 in tariffs. Under the most recent tariff plan proposed by the Trump administration, that duty would increase by $580,000.
Read more from Jason Blevins at ColoradoSun.com.
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