The business truly began in 2015 because of my decade-long role as General Manager for Fly Fishing Outfitters, an Orvis-endorsed fly shop and guide service in Avon, Colorado. As the GM—and the “shop dog” who lived and breathed the daily rhythm of anglers coming and going—I realized something important: most maps on the market didn’t give fly fishermen the detail they craved. Access points, river structure, hazards, and wade-friendly areas were either missing or poorly marked.

The spark for a solution came unexpectedly. One evening my wife saw a television commercial for a small microfiber lens cloth printed with the Vail Ski Area trail map, known as The Spanky. The idea lit a fire in me. I thought: what if river maps, hiking maps, and national park maps could be printed on a larger microfiber cloth—something waterproof, readable in the field, wearable as a bandana, and even useful for cleaning glasses or lenses?

I began experimenting with public-domain maps produced by the National Park Service. Around that same time, I traveled to China with a friend on a separate business venture and met a textile manufacturer. When I returned home, I sent them the Arches National Park map and asked for a prototype. A few months later, I had samples in hand.

Armed with nothing more than those samples, a hope, and a prayer, I attended the Association of Public Lands conference. There I met buyers for several national park stores. One, from the Canyonlands Natural History Association, decided to take a chance. They ordered several hundred microfiber cloth bandanas—and with that single order, the company was born.

Building Momentum: Rivers, Hunters, and the First True Sales

In 2016, we began designing river maps for fly fishermen, starting with my home waters: the Eagle River, the Colorado River, the Roaring Fork, and the Fryingpan. Our first products were digital mobile maps, uploaded to our storefront on the Avenza Map platform. Encouraged by early traction, we added more of Colorado’s most beloved rivers—the Animas, Arkansas, Blue, Cache la Poudre, Gunnison, South Platte, Taylor, and Uncompahgre.

By the end of 2017, we expanded beyond fly fishing to serve hunters. We produced mobile maps for the big game hunting units west of I-25 in Colorado, all made available through Avenza.

We also decided to bring our digital river maps into the physical world. Leveraging my overseas contacts, we partnered with a map printer in Hong Kong to produce 12 paper map designs for Colorado rivers. We printed 300 copies of each title, which generated $15,000 in sales through regional fly shop retail partners.

Meanwhile, our original Handy Map microfiber cloth line gained momentum, with the Canyonlands Natural History Association emerging as our largest customer.

With the initial success of 2017 behind us, 2018 became a year devoted primarily to design and catalog expansion. We knew that in order to build long-term success, we needed depth in both our mobile and paper map offerings.

Expanding Mobile Maps

We invested months into developing big game hunting unit maps for Wyoming, New Mexico, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. These mobile maps, uploaded to Avenza, gave hunters across the West access to accurate, GPS-enabled boundaries and terrain data.

At the same time, we expanded our river maps—both mobile and paper—to cover waters across the western United States. By the end of the year, our paper river map inventory had grown to 38 rivers, while our Avenza catalog exceeded 1,100 mobile maps, spanning national parks, hunting units, and fisheries.