They have a niche for adventure – Rocky Road Outfitters offers custom-built trips

SHAWN SMITH left Napa, Calif., early this year and plunked his new company, Rocky Road Outfitters, in Spokane. "We looked all around. After seeing what’s here, we knew this was a great place to be for what we do."

Tom Sowa
Staff writer

Nine months after relocating, the 32-year-old Smith is sure he made the best choice for a company that tries to appeal to a certain kind of outdoor funseeker.

Rocky Road hopes to be an outfitter’s version of Amazon.com. Seattle-based Amazon succeeded by morphing from an online bookseller into a middleman, linking online buyers with hundreds of separate retailers who make clothes, toys, sporting goods, kitchenware and tools.

In the same way, Smith hopes to make Rocky Road the middle guy that arranges outdoor trips for travelers with well-used credit cards.

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At a glance

Address: 16725 N. Madison, Spokane

Owner: Shawn Smith

Employees: three

Expected 2004 revenue: $900,000

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Rocky Road sets up a trip schedule and itinerary, then contracts for local guides and cooks to take care of the needs of the paying customers.

"We are the furthest thing from a specialized outfitter," Smith said from his company office several miles from the top of Mount Spokane.

"We custom-build all our trips" and the intent is not to compete with local area outfitters, he said.

Instead of just offering hunting or flyfishing trips, Rocky Road’s mission is to send funloving folks anywhere, nearly anytime. The company’s Web site says its offerings include hiking, whitewater kayaking, mountain climbing, rafting, skiing, golfing and hot-air ballooning.

Smith is arranging a weeklong early winter golf trip for a group of Minnesota residents. The trip will send the golfers to five different Southwestern golf courses over six days. The cost will be about $2,000 per golfer, which covers transportation, meals and other expenses.

Smith has three employees, all of them young and outdoors-focused. But none of them are full-time guides.

"None of us is qualified to be a specialized guide," he added. "We’ll go in and find and hire whoever we can find who is a well-known guide, whether for rafting, flyfishing or whatever."

Next year will be the company’s first full 12 months of operation. Smith hopes to generate about $900,000 in total revenue.

He hopes to attract business with the ultimate summer road trip for high schoolers. Rocky Road will offer a 14-day trip aboard cushy, rock star-style motor buses.

The deluxe caravan will follow a West Coast itinerary — surfing one day, hang-gliding the next, mountain biking the day after that. The buses will haul the group each night, giving the teens the comforts of home while rolling from site to site.

Expected cost: about $3,000 per participant, said Smith.

Half the fun, added company transportation manager Matt Griffith, will be introducing customers to the pleasures of high-end motorcoaches.

Griffith has been driving such rigs for years, having been the driver for several music acts out of Nashville.

People may think bus travel is a back-breaking experience, but Smith and Griffith said that’s not true.

"This is not a regular chartered bus with seats. They hold couches and 12 bunks, with refrigerators and satellite TV," said Griffith. "And they drive like a Lincoln Town Car," he said.

Rocky Road will lease road buses as needed. But it already has spent $175,000 on a huge, 75-foot-long transportation van. The transport rig can carry a regular passenger van inside, plus dozens of kayaks, canoes, skis and anything else the company needs to haul for a trip.

Two years ago, Smith was toiling in Napa, Calif., as a finance department worker for a nationwide resort company. He’d meet his friends after work and talk about finding more rewarding work. He kept hearing others say what he’d been thinking: there must be a way to work outside, enjoy nature and share adventure.

He spent about a year preparing a business plan. By the end of 2002 he launched the company in Napa. He, his wife and three young children decided to abandon California and settled on Spokane after searching the Northwest for a good business climate.

He recruited young workers like Griffith, 26, and 25-year-old Brandon Lee, the operations manager. "That means I do just about anything," Lee joked.

Smith believes the company evolved at a good time in a business sector with strong growth prospects.

"Adventure travel is the fastest growing segment in the entire travel industry," Smith said.

Analysts estimate about $200 billion worldwide is spent annually on trips that take people to out-of-the-way sites.

Rocky Road, Smith added, won’t target short weekend trips for four guys from Idaho who want to catch ocean salmon. That’s what the local area outfitters do best, he said.

His company wants to do business with the fairly well-heeled from Florida who want to spend a week in Alaska, with all the trimmings provided.

"We’ll provide the grub, the fun and the equipment. Doing this is a dream job, something I’ve always wanted to do," Smith said.

•Business writer Tom Sowa can be reached at (509) 459-5492 or at [email protected].

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