I Said Yes. Then I Ran Across the Street.

Patrick Collins — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 21:52:57 GMT

In 2015 a customer walked into our gear shop to rent the usual backpacking gear. They askedf if we rented bear spray. We did not. But I said yes anyways. I told him to give me 10 minutes. I ran across the street to Ace Hardware and bought some. Ran back over and made up a price for rental.

This year we will rent bear spra to over 30,000 customers acorss 13 pickup locations across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Our network spans 3 states, 4 automated vending machines, 4 staffed locations, and 5 partner locations.

I didn’t write this out as a business plan.

We started Teton Backcountry Rentals in 2014, renting avalanche safety gear out of my living room as a delivery service in a half ditched effort to find a way to quit my job at Pinky G’s, the local dive bar/pizza spot. I had been living in Jackson for only 3 months when we incorporated the business. The (lack of) business plan was simple; fill immediate needs that are in demand.

Ever since then the customer has always dictated what we were. For a long time that was super chaotic. But refusing to say no for that period is what got us to where we are today.

Bear Spray manufacturers actually told us that renting bear spray was illegal. That didnt stop us, but it did divert us for some time. For 2 years we rented the holster and gave the bear spray away for free. That taught em!

You can’t fly with bear spray. Most visitors to the area fly here.

In 2018 the Jackson Hole Airport put out a request for proposals for a bear spray concession in the terminal. About ten businesses applied, including the original Bear Aware founder.

I believe we won because we did not pitch a kiosk. We pitched the first bear spray rental network around the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

Two years later we bought Bear Aware. We rebranded all of our Teton Backcountry Bear Spray locations into “Bear Aware’ So we could lean into one unified brand covering the whole ecosystem.

Things are a bit different now. We unfortunately can’t say yes to EVERYTHING. We need to consider carefully how to expand and what to focus on. We’ve cut things out that don’t make sense and we focus on doing what moves the needle.

In a bootstrapped local business, the value often comes from moments and decisions that don’t look like strategy. They look like chasing a thread. Once that thread looks good, double down hard and keep running.