From the Van
This is the first part of an ongoing series about how Loon'r came to be. The decisions, the detours, and the moments that mattered more than we realized at the time.
There's been a lot going on over at Loon'r since we first launched this thing.
After the whirlwind of the holiday season, we realized that we never really introduced ourselves... or explained how this whole thing actually started.
Truthfully, there wasn’t much of a plan.
It was late March 2024, we were in our van in Silverton, Colorado. Mud season. Dogs. Gear everywhere. Late nights. Early mornings.
The kind of trip where you’re mostly just trying to stay dry and keep things moving.
Silverton is a special place for me. It’s the town where I moved straight out of college.
What started as a summer internship at a tiny ski startup somehow turned into leading engineering, designing skis, learning manufacturing the hard way, and eventually spending months in factories overseas.
A lot of skiing. A lot of tinkering. Breaking things. Fixing them.
It shaped how I think about products - and taught me to care less about how things look on paper and more about how they feel and perform in the real world.
Fast forward a few years and a lot of life later, and we were back in Silverton, in the van with two pairs of winter boots we’d picked up on a trip to Japan.
Boots we hadn’t thought much about when we bought them.
Boots that quietly became the MVP of the entire trip.
They were light. Easy. Warm. Waterproof. No fuss.
Perfect for dogs at midnight, muddy parking lots, ski days, errands - all of it.
People kept asking about them. Not politely. Genuinely.
Over and over.
And somewhere between managing wet dogs and drying gloves on the dashboard, the wheels started turning. Not in a “we’re starting a company” way. More in a “wait… why isn’t this a thing here?” kinda way.
That was it. No business plan. No brand deck. Just a very practical problem and a very obvious solution.
We’ll share more of the story soon... the good decisions, the bad guesses, the moments where this almost didn’t happen. But before we do, we just wanted to say thanks.
Thanks for being curious.
Thanks for being here early.
Thanks for helping us build this the long way.
More soon.
Mike
Founder, Loon'r
Founder, Loon'r
The original boots from Japan. On the floor of the van getting photographed and sent to factories overseas to start the sampling process. March 25th 2024, Silverton, CO. |