Beyond the Trailhead: Supporting Outdoor Recreation in an Uncertain Economy (Senate Small Business Committee hearing, May 30, 2025)
Summary
Transcript of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship field hearing Beyond the Trailhead: Supporting Outdoor Recreation in an Uncertain Economy, S. Hrg. 119-97 (GPO 60-615), convened May 30, 2025 during the 119th Congress, First Session, at the History Colorado Center. Senator John W. Hickenlooper presided, noting authorization from Chair Joni Ernst and Ranking Member Edward J. Markey. Witnesses were Travis Campbell, CEO of Eagle Creek in Steamboat Springs, Colorado; Mike Mojica, Founder of Outdoor Element in Englewood, Colorado; and Trent Bush, Founder and CEO of ARTILECT Studio in Boulder, Colorado. The hearing examined challenges facing outdoor recreation small businesses, including tariffs.
Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used
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“Beyond the Trailhead: Supporting Outdoor Recreation in an Uncertain Economy (Senate Small Business Committee hearing, May 30, 2025).”
Original at www.govinfo.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/beyond-the-trailhead-supporting-outdoor-recreation-in-an-uncertain-eco-504c1b8285/
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S. HRG. 119–97
BEYOND THE TRAILHEAD: SUPPORTING OUTDOOR
RECREATION IN AN UNCERTAIN ECONOMY
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
OF THE
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
MAY 30, 2025
Printed for the use of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
(
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
60–615 WASHINGTON : 2026
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COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
JONI ERNST, Iowa, Chair
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts, Ranking Member
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
RAND PAUL, Kentucky JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
TIM SCOTT, South Carolina CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
TODD YOUNG, Indiana CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
TED BUDD, North Carolina JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
JOHN R. CURTIS, Utah JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado
JAMES C. JUSTICE, West Virginia ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
JON HUSTED, Ohio
MEREDITH WEST, Republican Staff Director
SEAN MOORE, Democratic Staff Director
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CONTENTS
MAY 30, 2025
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
John W. Hickenlooper, U.S. Senator from Colorado ............................................. 1
WITNESSES
Mr. Travis Campbell, CEO, Eagle Creek, Steamboat Springs, CO ..................... 4
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 7
Mr. Mike Mojica, Founder, Outdoor Element, Englewood, CO ........................... 9
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 11
Mr. Trent Bush, Founder and CEO, ARTILECT Studio, Boulder, CO ............... 13
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 15
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BEYOND THE TRAILHEAD: SUPPORTING
OUTDOOR RECREATION IN AN
UNCERTAIN ECONOMY
FRIDAY, MAY 30, 2025
UNITED STATES SENATE,
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:11 p.m., in Lanny
and Sharon Martin Family Foundation Room, History Colorado
Center, Hon. John Hickenlooper, presiding.
Present: Senator Hickenlooper [presiding].
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HICKENLOOPER
Senator HICKENLOOPER. We’ve now officially gaveled in. Wel-
come, all of you. I appreciate you to come and join us for this field
hearing for the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneur-
ship, basically, about the challenges and opportunities that are fac-
ing entrepreneurs and small businesses in the outdoor recreation
industry.
Before we get started, I want to thank History Colorado for this
amazing space, this amazing building, and all that they do to make
sure we understand where we’re coming from. And actually, each
of these entrepreneurs has origin stories, and I’m sure we’ll hear
a lot of that today. Understanding how we got to where we are, and
how we should take facts and use evidence to make sure our future
is better, is a key part of what these hearings are all about.
I’d like to also give thanks to Chair Joni Ernst, Senator Ernst
from Iowa, and Ranking Member Markey. Neither of them could be
here, but they signed off on this, and are supportive of making sure
that we take the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee
out into the country, and get all the information we can.
Also want to talk to committee staff for the Small Business En-
trepreneurship Subcommittee, because they do the real work and
my own staff as well, who you guys have met, and spent countless
hours putting all this together. So, the committee staff, our staff,
it’s a great partnership.
I’ve always been proud to represent small businesses in Colorado.
Up and down Main Street, we’ve had a wonderful—this process of
creating ecosystem that welcomes and celebrates entrepreneurship,
is something that we were very intentional about, starting 20 years
ago. And there are literally thousands of people that own that, that
have put time and effort and created businesses, that prove that
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this not just the backbone of our country, but it is the heart, it is
the lungs, it is the digestive system—I’ll cut it off. [Laughter.]
Anyway, I came of age in small business. I started the first brew
pub in Colorado, my gosh, 1986. I don’t even want to say how old
that is, that’s almost 40 years ago. I guess it was 88 we finally got
it open, it took me two years to open the thing.
I understand a lot of the challenges that these guys are facing.
We were just in there talking about some of the challenges that
we’re going to go over today. I lived a lot of that; the anxiety that
envelops real challenges when you’re in small business. And you
know that each decision is not the last decision, it’s a decision
that’s going to either make things a little better or maybe a little
worse, if you don’t get the right decision, and you don’t have time
to sit and think about it. You’ve got to keep making the decision,
keep moving your business forward.
Our small businesses are economic boosters to our rural commu-
nities, to our urban communities, our suburban communities. They
improve healthcare, they drive innovation, they create jobs, they
improve our education system.
Here in Colorado, if you just look at the outdoor recreation indus-
try, we’re talking in excess of $17 billion of the state’s, GDP. And
there are some people that think that’s conservative. We’re in a
time now with this notion of tariffs, where I think those policies
threaten many of our small businesses, not all, but many, many of
our small businesses.
And I think the more we can hear those stories, and recognize
you know—I’ve talked to people in the trade office and I’ve talked
to other Republican Senators, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a place
where the types of tariffs that have been discussed, were effective.
These large mass scale tariffs that have been contemplated, not
just for China, but even for NATO—our allies. This is the kind of
tariff environment that we saw when I was a kid in the ’60s and
’70s. South American countries, other developing countries, used
similar tariffs to try and protect—they wanted to limit their im-
ports, and they wanted to push forward and hope to stimulate their
own indigenous industry, and it never worked.
They ended up with spiraling inflation and interest rates. Basi-
cally, there was a freezing that took place in their entire economy.
So as their economy stagnated, the value of their currency, what-
ever it was, would diminish. And I think we face the same things
here. We’re going to look at weakening the dollar. And at the same
time, all the uncertainty is, this making people hesitate and, in
many cases, put off any significant decision. They won’t commit to
a purchase or a new project because of all the uncertainty.
I think these guys, all small businesses, want to focus on serving
their customers. But having to navigate the chaos we see right now
is a real challenge. And I think the tariffs are a blunt instrument.
I understand where they’re coming from, but I think there are bet-
ter ways we can deal with this. Certainly, the people that are going
to elegant dinners in Mar-a-Lago or anywhere, this isn’t as much
an issue for them. But many small businesses are really caught up
in this storm and struggling to survive.
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Along with my Senate colleagues, we introduced the Small Busi-
ness Liberation Act, which would exempt small businesses like
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these from these reckless tariffs. Again, we’ve been pushed back on
that and on and so many things.
Last week, we had Kelly Loeffler, who’s the Administrator for the
Small Business Administration. She was talking about how the tar-
iffs really were good news for small businesses. But I think I’ve
been going around the state this whole week, and I’ve talked to a
dozen small businesses and haven’t heard anyone say that yet, that
they look at this as any kind of a benefit.
The recent CNBC survey, only 30 percent of our small business
owners believe our economy’s heading in the right direction. 70 per-
cent felt that our economy is heading towards a recession. They
think the country is going the wrong direction. We haven’t seen
pessimism like this since COVID, which was a global pandemic, ob-
viously. But I think that we are on the precipice of a recession, and
it could be a serious recession. And the losses we will all endure
will be structural, in other words, they will have a long tail.
Obviously, tariffs aren’t the only challenges these guys face.
Many of the components of this bill that was passed in the house,
the budget bill, are also going to be structurally challenging.
There’s a plan in there, it was pulled out, but once they put some-
thing in, they pulled it out of this budget bill, but it’ll probably find
its way back into something else. But they had a plan to sell hun-
dreds of thousands of acres of public land. And once you start that,
it’s hard to say where it’s going to go, but it’s certainly not going
to go in a good direction.
In that budget, it’s hard not to see labor shortages. They’re re-
ducing or eliminating a lot of the money used to address climate
change. It is a challenging time. Anyway, I’m excited to be joined
by these guys, if I’m any good, which is debatable, but any good
at this senate business, I’m going to hopefully leave this today on
an upbeat.
Because it took me two years to raise the money when I first
started Wynkoop, I couldn’t get my own mother to invest. [Laugh-
ter.]
But I always said, sometimes I’d have to get out of bed and paint
a smile on my face. I’d have to look in the mirror and say, all right,
let’s go get them, because I’ve never succeeded at anything that
mattered, if it was really challenging, by thinking I couldn’t do it,
or by thinking it would look like, you know, it wasn’t going to hap-
pen.
I loved talking to these guys for 20 minutes before we started
this. This panel of witnesses embodies that determination and com-
mitment that it takes for small businesses to succeed.
Our first witness is Travis Campbell. He’s the owner and CEO
of Eagle Creek, an adventure travel gear company that’s based in
Steamboat Springs. It’s a little unfair that he gets to live in Steam-
boat Springs, and most of us don’t. Prior to his time at Eagle
Creek, Mr. Campbell spent time at VF, working at North Face and
Smart Wall.
He’s got a Bachelor’s of Science in Civil Engineering from Duke
University, MBA from Northwestern. Which is where my wife also
went, to Duke. She did not study engineering, but she also got an
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MBA from Northwestern.
Mr. CAMPBELL. Fantastic.
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Senator HICKENLOOPER. What a scary world. [Laughter.]
Next up, we have Mr. Mike Mojica, founder of Outdoor Element,
an adventure survival gear business based in Englewood. Mr.
Mojica spent the bulk of his career as a mechanical engineer in
aerospace, real engineer, I’m just kidding, this is still real engineer-
ing. But he was a mechanical engineer, before turning his small
business dream into a reality. And he had older degree, an engi-
neering degree from the University of Texas at Arlington.
And then, rounding out the group is Trent Bush, founder and co-
CEO of ARTILECT Studios, based here in Boulder. Mr. Bush
comes from a family of outdoor recreation entrepreneurs, and has
served in previous roles at Mountain Hardware, Black Diamond
Equipment, and Burton Snowboards. He has a degree from the
University of Colorado Boulder and started his first business while
a student in Boulder High School. I mean, is it possible that boul-
der’s always been a hotbed of entrepreneurship? I think it is.
So, we’ll start, with each one just about five minutes to make
your opening statement. We’ll start with Mr. Campbell, and I’ll
turn it over for five minutes for your opening remarks.
STATEMENT OF MR. TRAVIS CAMPBELL, CEO, EAGLE CREEK
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, COLORADO.
Mr. CAMPBELL. Thank you, Senator Hickenlooper. Appreciate the
opportunity to be here to testify today about the impacts of the cur-
rent trade and tariff policy on the outdoor recreation economy.
As you said, my name’s Travis Campbell. I’m the owner and CEO
of Eagle Creek, a small business. I’m based in Steamboat Springs.
This is our 50th anniversary as a business. My wife and I, and a
few others have been the owner of this business for about four
years now. As mentioned, we design and sell adventure travel gear.
We make most of our product primarily in Indonesia, and then we
sell it all over the world.
We’re the kind of small business that America should be proud
of; we pay our taxes, we comply fully with our duties and regula-
tions, we strive to be a responsible employer, a committed partner
to our customers, and a steward of the planet.
Yet in the wake of the newly announced tariffs or recently an-
nounced tariffs, it feels as though our country is systematically
working against businesses like ours, raising our cost dramatically
while fueling consumer anxiety that suppresses demand. And I’ll
make note that that demand is global demand, not just demand in
the U.S.
Eagle Creek in the vast majority of the $1.2 trillion outdoor in-
dustry, which is responsible for 5 million American jobs, depends
on a complex global supply chain to manufacture the highly tech-
nical products that we sell. These goods require years of skill and
specialization to produce and those capabilities do not exist in the
U.S., at any level of scale required to make the goods that we
produce. Building that capacity would take domestically years, if it
were even possible to do.
When the reciprocal tariffs were announced on April 2nd, we had
as a business, we had about $1.8 million of purchase orders out-
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standing, due to ship into the U.S. in the next four months. Under
our normal processes, we would pay about $260,000 in traditional
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duties and tariffs on that. And that cost is built into our business
model that’s existed for a while.
When we did the math on the incremental tariffs, the new bill
would be an additional $580,000. And so, if for a business our size,
we don’t have $580,000 sitting in our bank account just waiting to
pay that extra. And so that’s a kind of shock that is simply
unsustainable for a business like us. What we say is, in our 50th
year of operations, we could be possibly put out of business through
these kind of ill-conceived tariff plans.
Eagle Creek immediately took dramatic steps to stay afloat. We
froze salary increases that we had just implemented to our teams.
We halted the hiring of two really exceptional new people that we
planned to bring on board. We cut spending across the board—so
on vendors, on travel, on investments that we were making in
growing our business this year. We’ve revised our sales forecast
significantly lower for the year. So back to that global consumer de-
cline in demand that we see going on. And so, when you add that
all up; lower wages, fewer jobs, and less spending in the economy,
I don’t think that’s what we’re aiming for.
So, the current pause in tariff implementation does give us some
breathing room. But I would say only barely. And I’ll go a little off
script here and say, this week there was a court injunction, I’ll say
around the tariffs that have changed the scenario again since I
submitted my testimony three days ago. And so, I find it remark-
able that today I actually have no idea what the tariffs are on my
goods. And so, as a small business, to have no idea what primary
input costs look like in your business, is terrifying and chaotic.
So, the uncertainty and instability continue to wreak havoc on
our business. I think it’s important to note it’s wreaking havoc on
our people. Like our teams are tired. You know, this is a stressful
environment. We’re asking a lot out of people to essentially plan
and replan our business, what feels like almost daily. And so, it’s
a constant struggle to not have a view on what’s going to happen
and either tomorrow or let’s call it July 9th.
So, it’s important to understand that our outdoor products are
not interchangeable with general consumer goods. These are tech-
nical complex items built to withstand extreme conditions. There’s
very little of U.S. manufacturing to support that. Yet technical
goods are among the most heavily taxed imports we bring into the
U.S. So, the trade weighted duty average for outdoor gear is over
14 percent, compared to just 2.7 percent for other consumer goods.
Products like waterproof backpacks and footwear are especially
hard hit.
Historically, the outdoor industry has had bipartisan, congres-
sionally-approved tools like the Generalized System of Preferences,
GSP, and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bills, MTB, to provide relief for
products that aren’t made in the U.S. But both programs expired
at the end of 2020.
Since then, the outdoor industry has paid over $2 billion in du-
ties that were not accounted for when sourcing decisions were
made years ago. Eagle Creek alone has paid over $4 million in ad-
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ditional tariffs since 2020. If we had that $4 million back, we would
be in a much better position to weather this current trade storm.
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This is not just a matter of cost—it’s about predictability in our
businesses. Our production cycles last summer between 12 and 24
months, and so right now we’re in the process of planning our
spring 27 season. So, if you think about that, it takes a long time
to change suppliers, to shift operations. You need a lot of capital
to make that happen, and you need certainty to make that happen.
We can’t adapt overnight to rapidly changing policy.
So let me be clear, U.S. importers pay the taxes on tariffs. Those
taxes are not paid by foreign countries. They’re paid by small busi-
nesses like ours. And with many businesses still recovering from
COVID-era disruptions, we simply did not have the financial cush-
ion to absorb these shocks.
So, what are our options? We can go to our supply chain partners
and ask for discounts, which we’ve done. Generally, if you could get
a 10 percent discount out of a factory, you’d be feeling really great
about that. At the end of the day, that makes a very small dent
in the incremental tariff bills that we’re dealing with.
Our other option is to increase prices to our consumers, which if
anybody’s studied economics, when you raise prices, demand goes
down traditionally. And so, it becomes this vicious cycle and it’s not
ultimately a sustainable path forward for anyone in this industry.
So, I’m here today to ask for leadership. Small businesses like
mine cannot fix this alone. We need long-term stable trade policies
that recognize the realities of modern supply chains, not punitive
tariffs, and uncertainties. We need programs like GSP and MTB re-
stored, to give businesses like ours the tools to survive and grow.
The outdoor industry stands ready to work with the committee,
with the Senate, Congress. Our company is prepared to be part of
the solution. But let me be very clear, what’s happening right now
is not working. And thank you for your time. Appreciate the time
and happy to answer any questions when the time comes.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Campbell follows.]
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Senator HICKENLOOPER. Great. I appreciate that, and thank you.
You summed it up pretty nicely. Now we’ll hear from Mike Mojica.
Your five minutes begins.
STATEMENT OF MR. MIKE MOJICA, FOUNDER, OUTDOOR
ELEMENT, ENGLEWOOD, COLORADO
Mr. MOJICA. Senator Hickenlooper and distinguished guest and
friends and family, thank you for this opportunity to speak with
you today.
Again, my name’s Mike Mojica. I was born on an Army base in
Nurnberg, Germany where I saw my father salute, all shades of
skin and all shades of skin salute him back. And that imagery has
always stuck with me my entire life. It taught me what this great
country is all about unity, opportunity, and the confidence to chase
dreams with grit and courage. This country, while not perfect, has
long inspired dreamers and doers, and I consider myself one of
them.
By education, I’m a mechanical engineer, as you mentioned. For
years, I had the honor of designing for the U.S. Army and the Air
Force. In 2012, I had the opportunity of moving to Colorado, where
I rediscovered the outdoors, and I started something on the side;
Outdoor Element. My native name is Bodaway, which means fire
maker. And that sparked turned into a mission-creating rugged, in-
novative gear that helps people explore with confidence themed
around fire.
About seven and a half years ago I left my stable job in aero-
space to go all in with Outdoor Element. I’ve gone through accel-
erator programs with Moosejaw and REI. I’ve secured 10 patents,
I have a few pending, and we just came off our best year ever. And
then a couple of months ago happened. Overnight tariffs on our
core products jumped to 145 percent. That’s not a misstatement.
What felt like a mood swing for my commander-in-chief now feels
like a knife in the back.
What I thought was an approachable path to the American
dream has suddenly turned into quicksand. We are now down to
30 percent additional tariffs, 10 for reciprocal and 20 for fentanyl—
fentanyl, I’m paying the price for a crime I did not commit. I’m just
here in my quicksand drowning a little slower.
We had to pause production, tell our factories to simply hold the
goods and not ship them. And what I am shipping is to fulfill
wholesale pre-orders. I’m doing little or no profit. I’m doing it to
keep relationships alive. I’ve lost a wholesale account, a key whole-
sale account right now, because we had slightly increased our
prices.
I had to lay off some team members. I’ve asked others to work
less hours. My wife now works for free, indefinitely. My kids who
are here today, they help me pack out orders. And I don’t mean
this to be a pity party or pity story. I’m here not to scream or yell.
In fact, my spiritual mentor said, ‘‘Anger, never persuades. Hos-
tility builds no one and contention never leads to inspired solu-
tions.’’ So, I’m here for a plea of conversation of clarity. Let’s come
together. Let’s be inspired.
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I understand that we operate in a global economy. It’s complex,
but small businesses like mine cannot plan for success when the
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rules change overnight, again and again without warning, without
clear strategy or line of communication.
This country’s supposed to build and promote small businesses
and not crush them. I’m not asking for a handout; I’m asking for
a plan. I’m asking for transparency that inspires confidence. Chair-
man Mike Crapo recently said, ‘‘Trade is supposed to provide busi-
nesses with the certainty we need to make long-term investments
to drive growth.’’ And I couldn’t agree more. Today, that certainty
it’s missing. I’m no longer thriving. I’m working on surviving.
In the past, I’ve tried to reach out to leadership at USTR doing
the 301 punitive tariffs, and it just fell in deaf ears. I’d welcome
a conversation from Ambassador Jamieson Greer. Let’s forge a
path that’s smarter together. One that doesn’t treat small busi-
nesses as collateral damage, but rather invites the small busi-
nesses as an important part of the economic equation, part of the
economic solution.
Ambassador Greer also said recently that he wants what’s best
for America. My question is, what part of America? Do I need to
be building microchips or being in the auto industry to matter? The
acts of my government indicate that I currently don’t matter.
Right now, my food, my fuel, shelter, cost a little bit more. Profit
margin has gone down and that’s just not sustainable. Not for me,
not for hundreds of other outdoor small brands facing the same un-
certainty.
Now, I’ve begun to shift production outside of China, and where
we can we proudly build here in the U.S., like our newest fire-
starting product, Fiber Light. But that’s a journey, not a switch,
that anyone can just flip on.
And I also believe this, that international commerce promotes
peace. It’s not a new idea. In the 18 hundreds French economist
Frédéric Bastiat, he said this, ‘‘If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers
will.’’ Phil Knight echoed this same idea in his memoir saying that
Nike would rather build boots in Vietnam than see combat boots
there. And I agree. So, for every international purchase order that
we place, that’s my vote for peace and partnership, not conflict.
Collaboration over conflict is where I stand. So, let’s use our forum
policy to foster a bridge that we’ve spent decades building.
Outdoor Element was born from a spark—literally. We designed
survival and adventure gear themed around fire that helps people
explore the great outdoors with confidence. But behind every piece
of gear are real people, families, teams, communities, friends.
If you are a believer in our gear, thank you. If you light fires on
cold nights with our firebiners or a scout feather knife or simply
believe in small business, you are part of my equation, you are part
of my story. So, thank you for that.
To this committee, please don’t forget or undermine small scrap-
py companies who form the backbone of America. Let’s build our
futures one spark at a time and keep the fire going. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mojica follows.]
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13
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Well said, well said. Mr. Bush, you’re
up.
STATEMENT OF MR. TRENT BUSH, FOUNDER AND CO-CEO,
ARTILECT STUDIO, BOULDER, COLORADO
Mr. BUSH. Great. Thank you, Senator Hickenlooper. My name is
Trent Bush, and my life has revolved around Colorado outdoor in-
dustry since my childhood. Growing up, my dad was one of the first
employees at Boulder-based Frostline Kids, which was an innova-
tive outdoor brand that started in the ’60s and lasted through the
’70s and early ’80s.
Frostline enabled countless American families, from diverse eco-
nomic backgrounds, to enjoy the outdoors affordably, making their
jackets, sleeping bags, tents, and packs at home, since back then
most American households actually had sewing machines and knew
how to use them.
Unfortunately, market conditions dramatically shifted in the
early ’80s and Frostline, along with other Boulder-based innovators
like Holubar, Gerry, and Altra, became obsolete as competitors le-
veraged overseas manufacturing to deliver finished products, that
significantly lower costs with no sewing necessary.
In the mid-80s, I started my own career at Wave Rave, which
was a really small snowboard shop in Boulder where I’m from. Al-
though we initially produced our own jackets and pants locally, our
limitations started to become apparent when competing brands
began to source their products overseas, bringing a new level of
quality and performance that we couldn’t achieve ourselves.
At Boulder High in 1989, my brother, a friend, and I decided to
launch our own brand called Twist. We were determined to produce
domestically at that time because even though it was harder, that’s
what we believed in, and that’s what we knew from my prior gen-
eration. We soon outgrew Colorado’s limited capabilities and moved
to the Bay Area aiming to utilize factories abandoned by large
American outdoor brands that were already offshoring at that time.
At just a few million dollars in sales, Twist lacked the scale to
sustain these factories, and they quickly shuttered, forcing us to
try to move our goods to Los Angeles factories, which were more
accustomed to producing Halloween costumes and denim jeans,
rather than technical outerwear.
Without the necessary specialized equipment or solar sewers
available, our products faced severe quality issues. The waterproof
coating failed on our U.S. sourced fabrics, snaps fell off, the seams
leaked, and even back then, the know-how had already moved on.
Ultimately, survival forced us to move our manufacturing overseas,
but it was too little, too late, and we ended up pretty much losing
everything at that point. And that was way back in the nineties.
US-Based performance apparel manufacturing capabilities have
only really decreased since that time. Definitely not increased.
I know this is true because after Twist, the past 30 years of my
career have evolved around senior roles and design and develop-
ment, for global performance brands, as mentioned, like Burton
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Spyder, Oakley, Outdoor Research, Mountain Hardware, Black Di-
amond Equipment, and my most recent startup, ARTILECT.
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14
At each of these brands, we actually did make sincere efforts and
attempts to reshore partial production, but most of those have ac-
tually ended in costly failures with only basic products like t-shirts,
socks, those kinds of things being successful.
Today at ARTILECT, we create innovative high performance me-
rino wool apparel in Vietnam, because domestic production remains
impossible due to the lack of merino sheep, specialized yarns equip-
ment and infrastructure.
And because of those reasons, and even with the interest of U.S.
military, we can’t comply with the Berry Amendment because the
necessary domestic supply chain simply doesn’t exist, and it leaves
our brand without a valuable business opportunity, and it actually
leaves our military with substandard equipment.
While the post COVID outdoor market has already been harder
than any that I’ve ever faced in my entire career, our entire indus-
try faces new unprecedented crisis, amplified by recent U.S. tariff
policies. For a small wholesale-focused business like ours, these
tariffs dramatically inflate landed product costs, forcing us to ei-
ther to raise retail prices or accept significantly diminished mar-
gins, or most likely both.
Our retail partners can’t absorb these price increases without re-
ducing their orders significantly, and their customers are unable to
pay more, endangering both their own businesses and ours at the
same time.
Additionally, these tariffs severely undermine ongoing industry
efforts towards greater equity and inclusion, making outdoor par-
ticipation much more expensive and illusive.
Even if Tuesday’s ruling against the tariff stands, the uncer-
tainty of U.S. trade policies have also sparked anti-American senti-
ment in our foreign markets, causing outright rejection of Amer-
ican brands, and severely damaging our global competitiveness.
This is all super hard for me personally. I held onto producing
in the U.S. as long as I possibly could, and I feel I’ve done every-
thing I was asked to do since, including moving production out of
China six years ago. Now, even those staggeringly high tariffs out-
side China may force my business to close. This just isn’t the
American dream I believed in, and I’ve tried so hard over all those
years to achieve. The rules keep changing and we just can’t keep
up.
So, I respectfully urge Congress to reconsider these policies that
cripple small outdoor businesses like mine, recognizing the unin-
tended damage they’re causing. Thank you sincerely for your time,
consideration, and thoughtful understanding. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bush follows.]
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17
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Thank you, all three of you. I think
those are so distinct and yet compelling and some of the calculus
you have to use, and no matter how good you are at your business,
if you have to raise your prices three or 4 percent, that doesn’t
mean you’re going to lose three or 4 percent of sales. You don’t
know what you’re going to lose, at what point that people feel they
can’t afford what you’re selling. And you can raise your prices 3
percent and lose 10 percent of your sales. And I think I heard vari-
ations of that through each of you.
I’m going to go back up and forth and ask a bunch of questions.
I’ll start with you Trent, just because you spoke last. You’ve obvi-
ously had quite a career across a number of apparel brands. You’ve
obviously been diligently working towards American Made in every
way you could. And I think as you said, we share that desire to
get all America, but there’s no switch that you can flip. It really
is a journey, as one of you said.
You said there’s a lack of merino wool supply, is one thing in
terms of necessary machinery available. Maybe go a little further
in detail, the infrastructure, labor, technology, if you want to bring
all of your manufacturing state side. I mean, you can summarize
it. You don’t go through too much of the details. If you ask a true
entrepreneur a question like this, you could be here for an hour.
But what would that do? Just kind of run through that. What
would that do to the cost for your consumer?
Mr. BUSH. Well, first of all, it wouldn’t be possible even if I want-
ed to. Okay. The Merino sheep in meaningful quantities only grow
in the Merino band, which is Australia, New Zealand, South Africa,
Argentina. There’s a certain latitude where Merino can be raised
in meaningful numbers.
Machinery wise, and we were actually joking, sort of in the green
room before, that there’s only one in Denver as far as I know.
There’s only one Ralph sewing machine. I don’t know if they’re still
even here, but there’s one place you can actually buy sewing ma-
chines, industrial sewing machines.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. That’s for the whole region?
Mr. BUSH. That’s for the whole region, kind of for the mountain
west. And they’re the only people that can actually even service
them. And it’s not just about, you know, having people who know
what they’re doing, people who know how to sew, and people who
know how to sew at a very high level. To be efficient, it means hav-
ing the machinery, it means having the trajectory of innovation in
the machinery side. That again, all that left the U.S. decades ago.
And so, you know, not to go into every little detail, it actually
isn’t possible. And that’s kind of what I mentioned with the mili-
tary thing. We were working with the U.S. 10 special forces and
they really liked our product and that kind of thing, but we can’t
be very compliant. And our technology, especially with the yarns
that we use, a process called New Yarn, those machines do not
exist in the U.S. to even make the yarns. So even if we had the
rest of them, the machines don’t exist here. So, it’s a losing equa-
tion.
I think the last thing I would say is, we can do a much better
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job as a business, when you talk two or 3 percent raise, we’re talk-
ing 20 or 30 percent raise in most cases, from a cost perspective.
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And that’s all money that we’d literally pay to nobody, right? Or
to our government, right?
I would rather spend every one of those dollars on a high paying
job here in the U.S., because all of those dollars will go to mar-
keting, they’ll go to sales, they’ll go to distribution, all the things
that we need to support, instead of paying a low wage, so sewing
job, I think that’s a much better way to spend those dollars, right?
Senator HICKENLOOPER. And that 10 or 20 percent largely at
least in this situation, is going to go—some chunk of it will go to
tax breaks for very, very wealthy people, many of whom don’t want
the tax breaks. That’s the one thing that never really comes out.
I’ve talked to a dozen, or maybe not quite a dozen, but very
wealthy people in Colorado and asked them about these budgets in
the tax cut. Most of them go, you know, you’re really wealthy, a
couple hundred thousand dollars, which sounds enormous to the
rest of us. They’re like, no, not if that’s going to hurt people like
yourselves.
Mr. Mojica, I understand exactly what, as you were describing
that small business anxiety and challenge to juggle all the prob-
lems. And one thing I remember vividly was when you have some-
thing inserted into your world that demands a certain amount of
your attention, everything else gets diminished. In other words,
you’re not doing everything else that you are accustomed to doing
in order to grow and thrive.
So as is, tariffs have rendered your business uncertain in the
short term. How have you found, or have you been able to find
enough time, to do the growth and to thrive as you want? How
much of your time, I guess as a percentage is what I’m asking, are
you having put towards navigating this intrusion that the tariffs
are creating for your business?
Mr. MOJICA. Great question. I don’t know if I can give you exact
percentage, but I know that there’s been lots of sleepless nights
and just staying in the office wondering like, how am I going to
make the ends meet? Gratefully, I have an awesome support family
that comes in and starts packing packages and learning different
parts of the business. I didn’t know I needed to be a tariff expert
when I started this business. [Laughter.]
But it’s definitely something we learned to navigate. I’ll say that
all of us here, I think we, the beauty of America is we get to choose
our own hard, right? And it’s like working an eight to five is hard.
But I chose this hard, and I’m willing to accept the obstacles that
comes with it. Now, I feel like this is kind of a curve ball that I
didn’t expect to see, and so I’m trying to learn how to navigate.
I’m a part of a couple of entrepreneurial support networking
groups, and I found that it’s like reaching out and sometimes we
share each other’s pity party just to get it off our chest. Like, okay,
it’s time to move on. But it’s been a struggle, the struggles are real.
If I had to guess, probably 30 percent of my time is just trying to
understand, reading articles about like, what could happen next,
what’s the ramification?
I was reaching out to a broker yesterday, trying to figure out
what the taxes or the tariffs are. I have something coming in right
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now and I’m like, hey, what am I paying? I don’t know. You know,
like, what does this mean? And so, it’s the uncertainty. It’s hard
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to create a business plan around when you have a big ball of uncer-
tainty. And that’s what’s driving me crazy. That’s why I want a
plan that, just inspires like, we have something stable, let’s move
forward. And what I don’t see is anything stable. It’s a disaster.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Yes. Well, and that’s, so much of small
business is based on assumptions. And you’ve got to have a fairly
good set of assumptions to make sure that the things you don’t
know, like, what are my sales going to be, is there going to be some
weather event or something that’s going to come out of the blue?
But when almost everything is up in the air, that I think you all
three of you talked to that that point.
Mr. Campbell, I want to switch gears for just a minute. Obvi-
ously, there’s so many threats that are facing the outdoor recre-
ation industry right now. We’re seeing drastic cuts to pretty much
every federal enterprise that manages our public lands. And these
are large unsustainable cuts. I don’t think you can argue that.
And whether you’re talking about national parks or national for-
ests and all those recreational opportunities, this transition away
from responsibility that the federal government has historically al-
ways exhibited around our public lands, I see as a genuine threat.
They’re even talking about taking some of our smaller national
parks and turning them over to states, without a plan, without any
guidelines or accountability. Obviously, they’ve fired or forced out
thousands of employees from, not just the National Park Service in
our parks, and they’re all going to be down 10, 20 percent. Who
knows what the bathroom conditions will be. Although I think ev-
eryone should still go to our National Parks. You need that time
and a beautiful place to get restored these days.
But U.S. Forest Service, the campgrounds, the fish, and wildlife,
I mean, how we take care of our habitats in the original budget bill
that was taken out, but there was a part of that bill that was going
to sell off over 500,000 acres of public lands mostly in Nevada but
also in Utah.
And that should be sobering, because once you begin that proc-
ess, you’ve taken an absolutely in violent line that we’ve never
crossed, of selling off, letting the executive branch sell off public
lands. And suddenly that line no longer exists and is blurred.
So, I want to—because your business really does directly bear on
this, but also your business and the industry as a whole. How de-
pendent are you on safe, accessible, protected public lands?
Mr. CAMPBELL. Yeah, I mean, I would say wholly dependent. You
know, as the outdoor industry, I can’t speak for everyone, but we
think of public lands as the core infrastructure of our business, in
the same way that like, machines might be the infrastructure of a
steel manufacturer, public lands are the infrastructure of the out-
door industry.
And so, you know, from my lens, outdoor industry has been grow-
ing, thriving for years. The demands on our public lands have been
increasing. We actually have way more demand than we have sup-
ply today of public lands. So, to me, it’s actually sort of antithetical,
right? We should be buying more public lands because there’s the
demand to justify that as a country. And frankly, more public lands
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or better maintained public lands, either of those would be an in-
vestment in the health of this industry.
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And I already said in my testimony, $1.2 trillion of economic ac-
tivity for the country, 500 million U.S. jobs, like you know, I’m a
business person. If I see that kind of growth and opportunity in en-
ergy, I want to invest behind that, not tear it down and sell it off.
And so, there’s no question that even the conversation about di-
minished staffing in the parks or BLM campgrounds being closed,
are going to decrease demand. You know, a big part of our inter-
national tourism, bringing it back to my business which is depend-
ent on travel, and global travel, like lots of people come from out-
side the U.S. specifically to visit our national parks and our public
spaces.
And the quality of the experience they have in doing that directly
relates to whether people are going to come the next time and how
much money they’re going to spend while they’re here. And so,
from my lens again, very much shooting ourselves in the foot in
terms of economic activity.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Yeah, I’m sure each would’ve a version
of that same response. Mr. Bush, I’ll come back to you, Trent. I call
him Mr. Bush or Trent. I go back and forth, Trent Mike, you go
whatever. Trent, everyone in this room knows that the benefits in
outdoor recreation go far beyond just the immediate activity that
you’re engaged in and beyond just the economic measure—of eco-
nomic impact.
You know, when I first did my first summer field work, when I
was getting my master’s in geology, studied volcanic rocks north of
Yellowstone Park. So, I went out for a whole summer, two years
in a row. And that first summer I would go out for 10 days at a
time and then come back in and go to a place called Chico Hot
Springs and have a great meal. And then I would go and take a
shower, meal first.
When I came back to where I was in school in Connecticut, a lit-
tle small school there and my father had died when I had just
turned eight. And it was my mother’s second husband who passed
away, so no one really talked about my dad. But the one thing that
was good about all that, it was a dark period, but we didn’t have
to go to Sunday school. We didn’t have to go to church.
And it’s funny, I came back from that first summer in the high
of—in the Beartooth wilderness. And without even thinking, I
started going to church. And I think that’s something that we don’t
often, or don’t always consider, is that the other benefits of being
outside and into wilderness are profound.
And it improves public health, obviously hiking, the exercise,
climbing, but also combats loneliness. It diminishes anxiety, re-
duces stress. Many parts of Europe now, doctors prescribe an hour,
you know, three times a week, taking a walk in the woods. In
many cases though, the cost of the gear even for basic access is a
barrier.
And so, you brought up Travis, Trent, sorry, the TRs, those who
were dyslexic did not set up this line. [Laughter.]
Trent, you brought this, the tariffs are causing economic uncer-
tainty, but it’s also rising costs, I think undermine our efforts to
create more access. And again, there’s a price point for everything.
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And if we really believe this is a public health situation, that be-
comes a valuable equation.
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So, Trent, can you speak a little bit about the benefits of getting
more folks outside from the industry perspective, and how these
costs could affect more people getting access to the outdoors?
Mr. BUSH. Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot there. You know, I think
just to pull it all the way back to the most important benefits of
being outside, there’s probably no real—it’s hard to look at a graph
maybe of the rise of our mental health crisis in the U.S. and things
like phones, right? The more people have been on social media
doing whatever, the less that they’re out in the outdoors. And I
think that that is something—I think those are totally hand in
hand.
Being in the outdoors resets you, it resets everybody I’ve ever
met. We have in my family alone, we have struggles with anxiety
and depression and things like that. And the times that those are
not as apparent as maybe they would be otherwise, are when we’re
outside. I mean, anybody that tries to go skiing or snowboarding,
something like that in Colorado, it’s already prohibitively expensive
for a huge part of the population.
These policies have not made that less expensive or made access
easier. You talked about selling off public lands, that’s less of a
place for us to be, to reset our clocks and reset ourselves and, you
know, maybe not go to church, but that could be a church for a lot
of us. So, you know, you can’t even put a measure on how impor-
tant that access is to the health and welfare of people and all of
these, everything that we’re doing right now is totally antithesis of
that happening.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Right. I agree.
Mr. MOJICA. May I add to that?
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Sure.
Mr. MOJICA. This is part of my origin story here. [Laughter.]
Me discovering the outdoors again. So, I’m a Texas defect, you
know, hopefully you’re okay with that, guys. God bless Texas. But
I discovered Colorado and just amazing things happened. So, the
year I started Outdoor Element, I had moved up to Aurora area
and my neighbor’s like, hey, Mike, you want to go hike a
fourteener? And I was like, yes, let’s do it. And then I said, what’s
a fourteener? Right? I had no idea what that meant. And he ex-
plained the altitude thing. And we did Mount Yale.
And we did hike mount Yale and two things happened to me on
that hike. One, I met a young lady, she was hiking down. She went
up for a Sunrise summit and she was coming down, I was coming
up, we just passed tree line, and she was like, all hobbling. And
I was the weird guy that got right in front of her room, like, hey,
what’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you? And she’s like, I
rolled my ankle, obviously, you know, get out of my way. And I
know. So, I sat her down and I had first aid kit and took off her
boot, and I wrapped her up and sent her on her way.
And then when I got to the top, I was with like three other guys.
And I’m small, but I feel like I’m a strong dude. I’m a man, right?
I got to the top and I’m like, why do I want to cry right now? And
like, I had my little Moses moment, if you will. And I’m just like,
I’m going to look over here guys because I can’t hold my emotions
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together. And it was just like, it was this beautiful, peaceful, revel-
atory moment in my life.
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And I came down with two lessons. It was like, hey, let’s be pre-
pared. I feel like fire is a lifesaver, so I built it around my native
name Bodaway. And then let’s get outdoors more. Let’s get in touch
with these beautiful moments in life that we just have the land-
scape for here in Colorado, but this can happen anywhere.
In addition, one of my kids suffered from anxiety as well, and we
went through therapy, and then we discovered the Tetons. We
went camping for nine days and just throwing rocks in a lake like
cured my daughter. It was just like this beautiful thing. So, you’re
right, it’s unmeasurable. Like we need the outdoors. Like, don’t
take this away from us.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Right? Well put, well put. Mr. Campbell,
you, or Travis. You mentioned having to freeze salary increases
and pull them back. You were going to hire two people, cut spend-
ing every way you could to try and make up for the tariff expendi-
tures. I thought the part also, when you’re doing that, at the same
time, you’re revising your forecast down. You know, when your
numbers are down across the board, that’s the hardest, I think.
Are there other long-term implications, let’s just specifically talk
about staffing. Are you losing or potentially going to lose long-term
employees that in many ways become irreplaceable?
Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes. My hope is that we don’t lose any more em-
ployees fundamentally, that we find a way to navigate our way
through this in a way that doesn’t cost more roles for us.
You know, you had mentioned long tail consequences from this
disruption, somewhere along the way. And I think there’s lots of
long tail consequences to this, like lots of the damage, even if we
like, snap our fingers and tariffs go back to their normal levels you
know, at some level we’ve scared the global consumer. We’ve al-
ready at some level damaged our businesses through just like this
level of disruption.
Like a good example is we’ve paused some of the product intro-
ductions that we were planning to do over the next six to 12
months, because just for a variety of reasons that didn’t make
sense to bring in the inventory and have the risk. And so, you
know, again, if we snapped our fingers in this resolve today, our
business will actually deal with the implications of this for prob-
ably 18 more months at a minimum.
And our industry is built on innovation. People like Mike who
have these amazing ideas for the next great product. And same
with Trent, right? Like, building this incredible product that we
want to be bringing to market. And these are complex, long
timeline things, like I said earlier. And so, there’s going to be an
implication to that innovation pipeline because people have frozen
those investment choices.
And so, whether it ends up costing our businesses more people,
it probably will. We’re sort of, I think in our business, destined to
have a bad sales year, there’s not much that we can do to change
that at this point. It’s really about how do we plan for the next
year and the next year and try and make sure that we get out of
this cycle as quickly as we can.
But I think it gets lost in a lot of this, right? Because we’re so
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focused on right in front of our faces right now because the tariffs
are so immediate. I think that long tail impact for it’s going to rip-
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ple out for a long period of time. So, the faster that we can resolve
this, the better we can move through.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Yes. Mike, let me come back to you and
then I’ll have a question for all of you. We’ll work towards this.
Mike, you’ve talked a lot about, you’ve been part of trying to be the
solution. You reached out to officials; you’re trying to collaborate,
which will get you into trouble, that’s how I first got into the gov-
ernment. [Laughter.]
And I think your willingness to share your experiences and to
collaborate is really important. Phasing out manufacturing in
China, manufacturing domestically wherever as much as possible.
But again, you’ve had to shift from thriving to surviving.
What would you suggest to Congress? And you actually all can
chime in on this. What would you suggest that Congress and the
Administration could do to ensure the small businesses aren’t left
behind in these discussions? Small businesses of all stripes? Right
now, we’re just talking about outdoor recreation, but I think we’re
probably at that point where we need to start thinking about a
structural process or solution that we can say, all right, this isn’t
going to solve it tomorrow, but this is something down the road.
What’s your response to that?
Mr. MOJICA. I think we’re doing it right now, by you inviting us
to the table and having an open conversation is, I think, critical to
find a good solution. To feel like I have a voice, to feel like I’m
heard, is for me it’s volumes.
Now love for—see some policy change. And I know it’s a complex
system, you know, I’m hoping, why couldn’t there be a threshold
for exclusions for either top line or number of employees, or if
you’re doing something for the environment. Like we work with a
lot of recycled materials and we’re trying to single use plastics from
our packaging. There’s like all these little things that are like, hey,
this could be a viable solution. I have these ideas; I want to share
them with someone. And just, you know, Katherine Tai never an-
swered her messages and, you know, and so I’m just like, who can
I speak to?
So, I was more than excited to get a phone call. I think Connor
Hall’s the one who texted me and said, hey, let’s have a conversa-
tion and then got me on this panel. So, thank you, sir. But I think
the biggest thing is like, let’s, make it real, let’s turn this, not com-
panies, as like a dollar sign, but as people, like who hire employees
who often use family as employees. And if we’re going to be the col-
lateral damage because of that, I think it changes the equation
when you see us as people and not just as a transaction, right?
Well, this needs to be a relationship.
I feel like Stephen, I think is—‘‘It’s like everything happens at
the speed of relationships.’’ Like have a relationship with small
business, call us up. Like we want to be heard. I don’t know who
to call. I’ll email, text, and tweet or whatever. And it’s like, it just
falls on deaf ears. But having this moment, I feel like is a sign of
progress, in my opinion.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Right?
Mr. BUSH. Yes. I mean, I would just say maybe this is a—do your
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research before you act. Because if the goal, or one of the goals that
I’ve heard of sort of all this tariff thing was to bring manufacturing
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24
back to the U.S. Make sure that it can happen before you make it
impossible for anything to happen for us.
I could have told you, obviously if somebody would’ve called, told
them that there is nowhere to make those products. You were talk-
ing about, trying to make a dog leash, your daughter. Locally, you
can’t even make something that simple here right now. So do the
research before you kind of turn off our lifelines, I would say.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Yes.
Mr. CAMPBELL. Those are great answers. I mean, I think I would
say something similar to what Mike said. Small businesses are by
their nature small and fragmented. And so, it’s hard for us to
speak as a collective voice. So, scenarios like this are what allow
us to somewhat speak with a collective voice. And your committee
allows that at some level. And so, you know, we’ll never be able to
hire lobbyists to be able to get access that the larger companies can
pay for. And so, any opportunities like this where we can come to-
gether and use our voices and humanize our businesses is just
super valuable.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. I’ll never take any campaign donations
from those large corporations either. Last question. We were in the
green room, a couple of you touched on this, but I do think it’s in-
teresting that within the tariff conversation there is other inter-
national negotiation and drama. And I wanted to ask each of you,
because you all have international customers as we talked about.
Have you seen people, and you can say both retail and wholesale
customers who are saying, we can’t do business with the United
States anymore because of whatever. There’s I’m sure multiple, you
don’t have to go into details, but is that something that’s also part
of the challenge and is it one or 2 percent or is it for your business,
you know, five to 10 percent or just kind of again, run down on
that?
Mr. CAMPBELL. I mean, I can give a quick answer. I couldn’t put
a percentage on it. We always think from a customer service stand-
point, when we hear from one person, there’s at least 10 others,
right? Like there’s a heuristic idea of if somebody takes the time
to call or send an email, then there’s probably at least 10 more peo-
ple who feel the same way.
And so, I’ve gotten a number of emails from our friends up in
Canada, who’ve sent through and basically a note saying, I love
your product, I’ve used it for years and years and years, I’m never
buying another one. Sorry. And those are not the emails you like
to get. Right.
And so, I don’t know how large of a scale that is. I know Cana-
dians in particular have been speaking with their wallet and not
traveling to the U.S. and so you know, that in a very small way
has a significant impact on our business.
Mr. MOJICA. In my case, I feel like what’s happened is I am no
longer fostering my international accounts where I should be, be-
cause I’m trying to juggle, trying to learn how to deal with the tar-
iffs here. I got an email last week from our Japanese distributor
that says, hey, we never got this, your new pricing structure. How
does it look for international? I’m like, whoa, that’s a great ques-
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tion. So, I admittedly have not done the analysis to update pricing
for my international accounts.
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25
Some things will slip through the cracks when you’re in survival
mode. And I feel like that’s where I am, where I need to take a
step back and reanalyze and possibly like, get some hired help,
some part-time help. Like, hey, let’s look at this. I need someone
smarter than me to come to the table and be like, how do we or-
chestrate this, what’s the step forward?
So yes, I feel like international accounts right now,—they weren’t
the bulk of my business. We’re talking like 5–8 percent. And be-
cause of that, where I wanted the plan was to foster them this
year, next year, it’s on hold. And so, my growths on hold and so
is my R&D deck. Like I’ve been waiting to like bring more things
to the market and I had a few customers say, hey, you showed me
this R&D deck, like, when’s that coming out? I’m like, well, I put
that on pause for a while. So, I don’t know yet. So, it’s a lot of
things are on hold right now.
Mr. BUSH. And we are different than a lot of brands, especially
kind of startup and small brands where we take a little bit more
of a wholesale approach. I’ve always really believed retailers have
done a great job building their communities, and our job is to sup-
port their work with the end consumer. That now has sort of ended
up in a situation where we’re actually bigger in Europe, in Scan-
dinavia than we are in the U.S.
Mainly European marketplace typically is a little more forward
on buying on performance, sustainability, quality, longevity, things
like that. U.S. consumers or retailers, hype and price are usually
a big driver of a lot of things. because it makes their job much easi-
er to sell the product.
So, we’re in a position right now where there’s major anti-Amer-
ican sentiment across the European Union, of course. And there
are Reddit pages. You can Google all this stuff and really the boy-
cotts on American outdoor brands in particular from a consumer
perspective. So, if those really take hold with those bigger retailers
we work with because we are focused on retail relationships, then
that’ll be the end for us because we are so heavily weighted in Eu-
rope right now.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. That sucks. Yes, it does. And I’ll finish.
Just to the quick question. Because as a small business person, we
were always looking over our shoulder at the really big companies
and whether they were going to come into our market and whether
that direct competition—how we would respond, were we ready?
And obviously the restaurant business, you always had some big
box competition. But you guys all have big competition as well,
large companies.
And you know, it’s similar, when Congress tried to regulate the
large banks after the fiasco, the financial crisis of 2009, 2010, who
really got hurt were small banks. Because the really large compa-
nies can tolerate these ups and downs and swings of more regula-
tion, they’re large enough so they can more easily spend or can ac-
commodate the cost of five or 10 staff members to deal with all this
red tape.
I think in the same way, I haven’t seen this written around,
thought about, but I think it is giving an undue advantage to your
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large competitors because they’ve got more space in their budget to
deal with a tariff for six months or a year and try and get through
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26
this while the process gets sorted out. Am I thinking about that
right? Why don’t we go down the line?
Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes, you are. And sorry, I was getting ready to—
I was so excited to answer. [Laughter.]
I was in DC a couple weeks ago lobbying and speaking with
members of Congress. And one of the things that I heard from a
few offices was, just wait. This needs a few more months to resolve.
And to get to your point, like most small businesses actually
don’t have a few months to wait. Because again, we don’t have the
balance sheet to absorb the losses over that span of time. Whereas
the big companies do, to your point.
If I’m a large company and it takes six months for this to resolve,
that’s fine. You know, the bank will float them through that win-
dow or they already have the assets on their balance sheet to get
through that window. But most small businesses aren’t structured
with that level of reserves to hang on, and so it does.
I talk a lot about the second order and third order effects of these
choices that we’re dealing with, right? The first order effects are
pretty obvious, costs go up. But the second and third order effects
are exactly what you say, which is like the competitive landscape
changes based on capital structure that you may have had or the
scale of your business. And so, this does in a strange way, put an
advantage on the bigger companies and the smaller companies are
disadvantaged.
Mr. MOJICA. I was slightly jealous when I read that, I think it
was Apple, shipped six tons of iPhones over, you know? because I
was like, wow, what kind of bank account do they have? And it
doesn’t look like mine. [Laughter.]
And I think the irony too, is like having a conversation about tar-
iffs and international commerce is a good thing. And I think in the
end we may end up in a better spot, but how we’re getting there
is crippling to small business. It is treating us like collateral dam-
age and I feel like a pawn in this game.
And for me I feel like we weren’t considered in the conference,
like you’re saying, like the research isn’t there. Like you were men-
tioning like my kids own a dog business, selling leashes and we
were trying to make it stateside and essentially get ghosted by
three companies. And so, we were forced to go overseas, and then
now I feel like we’re penalized for being overseas. And it’s just like
the game doesn’t make sense to me right now. And again, just to
your point, I do feel like there’s an unfair advantage to the larger
companies, right?
Mr. BUSH. Yes. We actually have a joke inside, that the big
brands have more daytime janitors than we have employees.
[Laughter.]
And it’s because it’s true. You know? And you see it in the mar-
ketplace right now, if you look at some of the big brand moves that
have to happen because of these, whether they’re using an excuse
or whether it’s actually true, it’s easy to pull levers at scale. You
can fire 400 people or lay off 400 people to make up for some of
these issues. I can’t do that. We’re bare bones as it is. So, we just
can’t do that. You know?
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The other thing that from a brand perspective, competing against
much bigger brands, we can’t just, especially with our sort of
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27
wholesale strategy, we can’t just shift more resources to sort of the
direct to consumer side, where there’s a much bigger margin,
where much bigger brands could actually use this as a pivot point
to even sort of abandon those retailers further and really take that
attention towards building their own consumer base and competing
directly against the brands that they sell to them right now.
So, there’s a lot of things that are going to happen and I’m inter-
ested actually to see where it ends up.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Well, I think in a funny way, and I
know a number, I have a good relationship with a number of Re-
publican senators. This is not their intention. They do not intend,
to not only put pressure and in many cases, going to drive out of
business, small enterprises. And if that business will get swooped
up by the big companies, they won’t have to spend any money. It’ll
be, low hanging fruit.
And the injustice of that, I don’t think was intended by any Re-
publican senator that I know. And hopefully we can begin moving
now that the tariffs have been put on hold and kind of pushed
aside. Maybe that becomes the default, that’s what’s going to be,
that 10 percent, no fun. But at least if you knew it was going to
be 10 percent going forward, it would be a better world, right? And
I think that would give every small business person at least a
fighting chance of holding their own against the larger competition
and against the international markets as well, which you guys are
all competing on.
So, anyway, I’ll give to you a last comment if you want. You don’t
have to just——
Mr. BUSH. I just really appreciate this, thank you very much.
These are the types of things that we don’t have access to, typi-
cally, as just little business owners with a dream. And it’s really
refreshing to have somebody actually sit across from me and listen
and absorb and ask great questions. And I really appreciate it. So,
thank you and thank you to the staff for having me and us.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. You bet.
Mr. MOJICA. I echo what Trent said. Thank you so much for this
opportunity to hear our voice. For a small business, I never
thought I’d be in a Senate hearing. [Laughter.]
So, for me, it’s incredible to be heard.
Mr. CAMPBELL. Yes. Just to thank you, also appreciate putting
a light on this.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. I appreciate all of your efforts. I, again,
there’s parts of me that listen to this and make me want to leap
into it, back into it. Parts of it are, you know, in the back of my
head saying, we got to do something. And thank God I don’t have
to deal with the challenges that you guys are all facing, just be-
cause I’ve been there and I know what it’s like.
And you know, sometimes you realize all the different attributes
that you as individuals have to have. You know, how did you know
when you first started your business, that good parenting was
going to help allow your business to get through the tough times?
Having kids, being able to step up you know, all of those things,
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and they always are, but these are unpredictable, I mean, com-
pletely unpredictable times and do force us into situations that are
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28
oftentimes impossible. And yet we deal with it as small business
people.
But let me make the commitment to you that I will go back, this
is all the congressional record. I’m not sure how much good that
does, but it does lay it down and the public can get access to it and
hear the stories, because I think only through those stories can we
convince Congress and the administration to wake up and recog-
nize that we’re sustaining losses here. They’re needless and they’re
going to be long lasting, and they affect every aspect of our coun-
try.
So, thank you all. I have to do my closing or who knows what
legal problems I’ll be in. [Laughter.]
Thank you to our panel of witnesses for your experience, your
suggestions and certainly the most precious thing for any small
business person, your time, to come here. Again, I want to thank
chair Ernst, Ranking Member Markey, the truly dedicated com-
mittee staff for making this hearing possible. It’s obviously they
have to schlep out and put all this together on a one-off basis.
I’ll reemphasize that this is not the end of the discussion. This
is a beginning to our effort to raise the alarm about how these tar-
iffs are hurting our country. I think our sleeves are rolled up; your
sleeves are all rolled up. We will dedicate ourselves to creating real
practical solutions to some of these issues you’re facing, and do a
better job of working with the Administration if they’ll let us, to
create a tariff system that’s maybe a little more nuanced, but actu-
ally protects one of our most valuable assets, our small businesses.
If other people have questions or if you guys have other things
you want to put in the record, we’ll keep the record open for a cou-
ple weeks. I don’t know what that exact date is but it’s in there.
I should know it off the top of my head. You go over the end of
the month or always mix the math hard. Thank you all, really ap-
preciate.
We’ll gavel off.
[Whereupon, at 2:22 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
Æ
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