Business built on a lifestyle.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: Big Agnes - Honey Stinger - BAP!

Bill Gamber is an outdoorsman and triathlete who lives "off the grid" in a solar-powered house with his wife and two kids outside of Steamboat Springs.

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He also runs three businesses, which would seem to leave little time for recreation, if not for the fact that all three of these businesses are tied to activities he loves.

Gamber's primary company, Big Agnes, makes tents, sleeping bags and sleeping pads. Another enterprise, Honey Stinger, makes honey bars and gels for endurance athletes in need of quick calorie and energy boosts. A third company, BAP!, which Gamber launched 19 years ago as a college student, makes custom fleece vests.

He has 18 employees; some of whom work in all three businesses, sometimes all in the same day.

"A lot of people get into the outdoor industry or the bike industry thinking they're going to have fun because it's their passion," says Gamber, 43. "And in one way that's true. We all go to the outdoor retailer trade show, and nobody's wearing a tie. Even some of the bigwigs--their history has been that they used to climb or whatever, and then they got into it as a business."

On the other hand, sometimes at Big Agnes a camping trip is not just an adventure but a job. One recent "business trip" for Gamber was a four-day ski tour in the Grand Tetons with a writer for Backpacker magazine to test out some of Big Agnes' new products. As much as Gamber appreciated it, he had mixed feelings about leaving the office at such a busy time.

"Our sales are above projections, so we're trying to increase our production in Asia, and it's like, 'Here I am going skiing for four days,'" Gamber says. "On the other hand, I slept in our brand-new sleeping bag design with our brand-new mountaineering tent that we're working on, and that's more important than not getting out."

Gamber launched Big Agnes in 2001 with a partner, who a year later was bought out by his two current partners. "Big Agnes is going great," Gamber says. "We couldn't be more fortunate right now. It's six or seven years old and profitable and growing like crazy."

Honey Stinger was conceived out of Gamber's triathlon experiences--he's completed 15 or 16 full Ironman-length races--and was helped into production by the fact that his family back in Pennsylvania operates the nation's largest independent honey packer, Dutch Gold Honey. In fact, his grandfather, Ralph Gamber, who founded the company after purchasing three beehives at a barn sale for...