In 1980 I was working in Houston, TX for the investment banking firm, Cowen & Co. My career by then had brought me everything that a 29 year-old could have hoped. I was now Senior Vice President and the company had recruited me by offering $37,500 per month for six months PLUS 70% of my commissions for any two of those six months. The problem was that I hated it! No, not the money, but the securities business: Anyone with a brain could see that a stockbroker was a dinosaur.

That’s when the idea of starting my own business began. For a moment I dreamed it was going to be a securities firm, but my first love of the outdoors continued, like the Sirens, to beckon. The outdoors is not a passing fancy to me. My friends and I had walked most of the Pacific Crest Trail after college. One part of the trip was 63 days; we never went anywhere without wool. Then there were skiing and rock climbing and fly-fishing and duck hunting. I have shot a bow since childhood; competed with a shotgun since I can remember and then a friend of mine brought over a new- fangled compound bow. I was again hooked with bowhunting and bought a Bighorn recurve.

And now I was freezing my ass off. By 1981 I was damned tired of freezing. I hate being cold, but I love being out in it. You’ve never been cold like you can get hunting elk in Oregon rain or ducks in the Tule fog of the Sacramento valley. Chilled- to- the- bone cold; anxious to try something different I ditched my US Army BDU woodland camo stuff and put on my wool knickers and a Woolrich Alaskan shirt. The rest, as they say, would be history except that history as you know depends on who is telling the story.

It’s true I suppose that all I really ever wanted was a tax shelter, a pair of camouflage wool pants and a wool camo shirt that didn’t shrink. Wall Street invented tax shelters for people with too much money and too little brains- they're like a black hole. So not to be outdone by Wall Street I opened my own black hole in 1981 and named it King of the Mountain Sports, Inc.

Now this is important: King of the Mountain Sports, Inc. was my idea. Wool camouflage was my idea; the company was my idea; all of the money was my money. The house, the kitchen counter and the wall phone it all started on were also mine. The determination to stay the course without giving up at every obstacle was my determination against fear at each turn. There was no co-founder. There was a design company also started by me that was to employ my best friend at the time; he needed a job and I had an idea and the money to fund it. That design firm’s only client was King of the Mountain Sports, Inc.

In retrospect, I guess I should have developed only a camo pattern and trademarked it like Jim Crumley’s Rebar. Treebark was then the only choice other than military camo. Or maybe I should have just put all the money in Intel or Microsoft, but I didn’t. By 1984 when I totally ran out of money I had poured almost ½ million dollars into my own little black hole. I was broke.

We were all living in Jackson Hole by then. My wife, Karen, was pregnant with our second boy, Beau. Sutton (my eldest son) and I waved as she drove the leased Saab back to the bank in San Francisco. Then the deluge started. I was served 16 times by the sheriff in 12 months. Creditors don’t like it when you go from $500K per year income to $0 regardless of the reason. The reason was simple enough, my firm, E.F. Hutton reneged on our deal in an attempt to steal my accounts. There was only one logical choice- move back to San Francisco and go back to Lehman Bros. Kuhn Loeb with my tail between my legs. Bullshit.

That choice has profoundly affected the rest of my life. The other choice, that is, the choice you finally have to make between your dreams and, well, whatever else was, for me, not an option. Sure I’m pigheaded. I had two babies to feed and plenty of friends and family to remind me of that reality. Not to mention my wife, Karen, who was scared out of her wits the whole time and HATED Jackson Hole. Yeah, it is cold there and we had to tool around in one truck for about a year. In 1986 I filed a personal financial statement with the San Francisco District Court of the State of California showing a negative net worth of $1.4 million.

It is important to note that in all the time since then, no one else ever put one dollar into King of the Mountain Sports, Inc: No co- founder, no co-developer, no partner, nobody—period. Maybe it’s also important to note that I’ve also never been declared bankrupt. Then another friend of mine who had lost his business to California air regulations but had a little dough called at just the right time. We were literally hunting and fishing for food by then. We used the sales from one shirt and pants to make the shirt and pants from the order before and were getting all of 6-8 yards of fabric per week from our old looms in the now defunct Stayton Woolen Mills in Oregon. At the time it was a real break- one for which I’ll always be thankful. Stayton was going bankrupt and without that capital we would have never been able to move our production.

Fortune favors many, but no one I know quite like Mr. Lucky himself, Bill Phelps. Bill and Mike Eastman hitched up their wagon and went to the Sportsman’s Show in Lansing, MI. They threw some pants and a shirt on a table and to no one’s surprise but to everyone’s delight a “star” was born. Since that humble beginning Bill and I have ridden miles and hours on horseback around Wyoming hatching what is now Omnitherm®, Omnilite®, D-EYE-Version®, Direct Outfitters, spring meetings, whistling gophers and about anything else you can think of about our company.

Hunting always gives me plenty of time to think. Two years later I had just come back from an elk hunt in the Bighorns when it happened. King of the Mountain had missed delivery of the entire line for the third hunting season in a row. We were sewing all of our own styles except hats then. My old partners ran production and design then and were convinced that we needed the “control” that only in- house sewing could provide. Nuts to that and strike three you’re out- I asked for both their resignations that day. I’ve never looked back, but others have spent the balance of their lives proclaiming that they used to be King of the Mountain. Now there’s an oxymoron- or maybe just a bunch of lying chiefs.

Funny thing was that they had been conspiring with a guy close to the Forbes family. The plan was that if KOMS was bankrupt then they could take over under a new name. I remember sweeping the empty shop, closing the empty office, moving the furniture to a warehouse and wondering how the hell I was going to produce enough to fill the backorders. In the meantime, they were busy contacting each Proline Outfitter (we changed to Direct Outfitter after buying Bighorn) to tell them that I was bankrupt with absolutely no hope of surviving. They sent them all copies of the newspaper article about how they were going to put KOMS into receivership.

That’s the second time that Judge Robert Ranck saved my bacon. In their haste and anger they missed the one thing that could have done me in- we weren’t a corporation in good standing- we had stupidly forgotten to file with the state. Luckily my accountant caught it and we got it done- fast. I learned something about the poisons of greed, anger and stupidity then. That was over a decade ago.

The year 1991 opened with the Gulf War and the worst show season we’ve ever had. Nobody came! My friend G. Fred Asbell was having trouble with Bighorn Bowhunting Company. I bought it to keep Bighorn from going bankrupt and taking G. Fred along with it. I’ll never regret that decision.

It not only forced me to look hard at why we were trying to run a manufacturing business in “Aspen” Hole (where the rich have all left because the super-rich have driven them out) but also cemented our commitment to hunting in its most pure form. Like ham and eggs in breakfast (where the chicken is involved but the pig is committed) hunting is our business. For some that means deadly, two- legged prey. For others it is four- legged prey, but it is not ever sport for us. We are committed to the hunt as a way of life. (Note: Anybody wanting to debate this ‘pure form’ concept, please step- up whenever you’re feeling fresh.)

Bighorn had to be moved and the plant manager lived near Loveland. The banks owned a lot of real estate on the Front Range then. We moved Bighorn to the current location. Then the bank almost gave me a house to entice us down here- and it worked. At the time I had been under an IRS Federal tax lien for seven years. Absolutely nobody could probably ever be that fortunate again. For those of you who don’t know the ramifications of an IRS lien- just try getting a mortgage or even a credit card with an IRS lien filed against you. Let alone try buying a house from the bank and get the bank to give you a mortgage!

By 1994 I had forced the IRS to settle for the amount that I originally owed them. It was still a bunch but it was a bunch less than the $387,000 that had piled on top of the bogus amount they had claimed that I owed (plus penalties and interest). What was my ace in the hole? I didn’t have the money and they couldn’t prove that I owned squat! Otherwise they’d have gotten it- in those days they could seize everything. Then you had to sue to get it back.

1998 and 1999 were real watermarks in my life. First, I have always wanted this business to be consumer direct. My staff at the time wanted to disband the Direct Outfitter program and market direct to the consumer for our own account only. That difference has been a decision that has caused a total transformation in our company. That decision had to be made at a time in my life that compounded the personal pain of divorce and lost friendships.

To make matters worse we lost the legal battle King of the Mountain vs. Chrysler Corp., Eclipse et al. What a classic big company ass kicking. First they buried us in paper; cost us almost $250,000. Then they stretched it to appeals and won because my trademark attorney didn’t register the “words only” King of the Mountain (without the design and font). We did that later, but it was too late to recover the lawsuit. Later Jeep dropped the Jeep/ King of the Mountain Downhill Series. Ford picked it up, but by then Ford figured out that Ford Downhill Series was catchy enough.

We all suffer what there is to suffer and enjoy what there is to enjoy. The result always depends solely on our own determination. One day it all became so incredibly clear.

Omnitherm®, Omnilite® and Bighorn Bowhunting have become the benchmarks against which all others are now measured. Everything for which I have worked, struggled and sacrificed so long has become a foundation. It’s like that $1.4 million hole provided a place in which to pour a very broad footing.

The Direct Outfitter Network enables avid enthusiasts and professional hunters alike the chance to fulfill their clients needs with our products and grow their business. It’s up to us at King of the Mountain, Inc. to make this company the benchmark for our manner of business.