Portland, OR, is losing another four doors of outdoor specialty retail. After REI pulled the plug on its lease renewal in the Pearl District last year, citing high security costs and problems with shoplifting, Next Adventure is calling it quits.
Portland also lost Kohl’s and Macy’s in the past year.
Deek Heykamp and Bryan Knudsen, the owners of Next Adventure, announced this week that their stores would be closing this year, and the two, who have been friends since childhood, would be retiring.
The new and used outdoor gear shop, founded in 1997, will hold a retirement sale beginning May 28 and promise it will be a “doozy,” according to Heykamp and Knudsen.
Heykamp told the Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “All Things Considered” that the store is fully stocked with inventory. “You see what’s in the stores, but you don’t see what’s in our warehouse,” he shared with host Crystal Ligori. Heykamp said the warehouse is a huge space, and they expect it will probably take until early fall to liquidate all of the merchandise.
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Talking about the origins of Next Adventure, the partners pointed to their mothers.
“Our mothers went to high school together. We met at their 10-year reunion. I was 5, he was 8,” Heykamp told KOIN 6 News. “We were best friends in high school, and he’s been yelling at me ever since.”
Heykamp told Ligori that he and Knudson were adventure buddies.
“We would go on these crazy adventures, and that’s actually where the name of the business comes from,” he said. “We would get together, and our parents would be like, ‘What’s your next adventure?'”
Heykamp said he viewed a model for what Next Adventure could be when he saw a store in Seattle called 2nd Base and another called Second Bounce that dealt in used gear. “Portland didn’t have something like that,” he noted.
“Gear can be very expensive, but you don’t need a $600 Gore-Tex jacket to go and have a good day of skiing or to go and push your grandchildren on a swing on a rainy day, but you do need a nice Gore-Tex jacket,” he suggested to Liqori.
Heykamp said the primary purpose initially was to meet and beat those price barriers, whether with new or close-out product. For three and a half years, Heykamp said he researched this “new and used” store concept by working in a handful of Seattle outdoor gear stores and hitting hundreds of yard sales in Portland and Seattle.
At the same time, Heykamp had a successful shoe repair business with 12 locations in two states, selling most of the inventory to pursue his dream for Next Adventure.
In 1997, Knudsen sold his house in Bellingham, WA, and quit his job of 11 years at Les Schwab Tires to relocate to Portland with Heycamp to open the store in July of that same year. The duo opened Next Adventure in the heart of SE Portland in July 1997. With two truckloads of used gear in 1600 square feet of retail space, they founded Next Adventure.
Working seven days a week over the next ten years, Heykamp and Knudsen spent most of their days in the store with customers; in the evenings, they focused on buying close-outs and learning the ropes of marketing and advertising; and, on weekends, they hit local yard sales at 7 a.m. to purchase used gear.
Next Adventure reportedly grew to have nearly 200 employees and $24 million in annual sales at its peak.
The guys said they thought about selling the business, and there have certainly been outdoor industry rumors for years about the business being on its last legs, but Heykamp and Knudson always managed to keep things moving.
“Not selling made better sense for their vendors, employees and for them,” Heykamp told KOIN.
After retirement, the business partners and childhood friends said they will be doing everything they couldn’t do when running the business all the time — separately, it sounds.
Images courtesy Next Adventure and Deek Heykamp
