UA sees future in GORP program
Business incubator nurturing fall cohort of outdoor startups
BENTONVILLE — Following the success of the inaugural cohort in the spring, the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville’s Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program is nearly doubling the number of nascent companies it’s supporting, with three months of intensive support to seven in the fall.
“One of the biggest things going up here [in Northwest Arkansas] is outdoor recreation, and the university wants to get involved in that,” said Phil Shellhammer, senior director of business incubation for the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “We need to build a solid base of support” for outdoor recreation, not only for tourists, but for residents, and “there’s potential for a hub of recreational business here.”
“We’re so glad we’re in this” fall’s cohort, said Elysia Contreras Springer, who has launched — along with her husband, Zach Springer — Gnargo Bike Co., which takes discarded bikes and repurposes them into modern electric assisted cargo bikes, a low-cost option for people to explore the trails of Bentonville and Northwest Arkansas. GORP “is a lot of work, but a lot of reward.”
Pedro Somarriba was part of the first cohort, and his business, Lacaida Ropes (lacaidaropes.com), is months ahead of where it would’ve been without the Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program, he said. “It made us.”
Somarriba felt he met the criteria for the Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program, and it was “exactly what we needed to be part of,” he said. “If you’re based in Northwest Arkansas and have an idea in the outdoor industry, you need to be looking at GORP.”
The Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program is one of three community-facing business incubation programs led by the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and is housed at The Collaborative, UA-Fayetteville’s education and research hub in Bentonville, according to Brandon Howard, communications and social media specialist in the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
A unit of the Sam M. Walton College of Business and Division of Economic Development, the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation “creates and curates innovation and entrepreneurship experiences for students across all disciplines,” according to the university.
The Collaborative was designed as an incubator for businesses, which means “we support from idea to launch,” Shellhammer said. “There are other programs to help you grow — accelerators — but we incubate at the early stage.”
For example, “we ask, ‘What is the problem you’re trying to solve?’ Then, we can
have the right idea to solve it,” he said. “Entrepreneurs need different things at different stages.”
CAMARADERIE, CAPITAL AND CLASSES
The Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program succors startups with “workshop training, team mentoring, and dedicated product/service development to help them scale globally,” according to Howard. “The 12-week program also provides up to $15,000 in ‘non-dilutive seed funding’ per company, funding that doesn’t require the owner to give up equity in the company.”
That $15,000 is essentially “a free grant, and they can spend that funding in a variety of ways,” Shellhammer said. “Everyone benefits from the financial part.”
The 12 weeks of classes — for the fall cohort, courses will run up to Thanksgiving after starting Sept. 1 — focus on various topics, from financial planning to customer discovery, and “we’re always willing to add or change depending on need,” he said. “We’re here to support momand-pop [operations] to fully-scalable businesses.”
This cohort will also gather for a night where they’ll pitch their companies to members of the Northwest Arkansas business community, Shellhammer said. “The community can learn about them and support their ideas.”
Shellhammer said the classes are valuable in that they allow burgeoning entrepreneurs to meet and brainstorm with one another.
Being an entrepreneur can “be super lonely — it’s just you against the world — but they get to know each other very well,” he said. “They can bounce ideas off of each other and even partner with each other.”
The mentorship element is crucial for callow entrepreneurs, Shellhammer said. “Everyone says that relationship is super, super important.”
A trio of mentors provided through the Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program have been instrumental in Lacaida’s success, Somarriba said. “The mentorship can’t be overstated, [as] they’ve already run into those challenges.”
The capital infusion was also pivotal, but the validation from fellow participants and mentors was just as critical for Somarriba, he said. “I thought it was a good idea, but to hear that from others was” affirming, he said.
The collaboration among members of the cohort was likewise beneficial, he said. For example, when Somarriba was battling website problems, fellow cohort member Mark Marsiglio — co-founder of an app that provides expert-guided audio tours of trails — quickly diagnosed what was wrong and “fixed it on the spot.”
The “camaraderie” among the entrepreneurs in this cohort has been a substantial benefit, Elysia said. “Everyone is so supportive, but it’s not hand-holding; we’re asking hard questions and getting great feedback.”
“We’re absorbing so much, and we have three expert mentors who have really catered to what we were hoping to get deeper coaching with,” she said. “We also went to a pitch camp [and learned] it’s really an art to be able to pitch your idea.”
They’ve learned the importance of identifying a target audience, and “we interview our customers every week to get a better sense of how our business is solving problems,” she said. “We know the inventory we need, and now we’re getting into marketing.”
The Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program also helped Elysia and Zach launch their website, gnargobikeco.com, faster, as “we got to the bottom line right away,” and the funding has also been paramount, she said. “Any amount to get the materials is [welcome].”
INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
The Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program prizes ideas for “innovative products and services,” Shellhammer said. In the spring, that included not only Lacaida Ropes, but linking outdoor enthusiasts with private land for hunting, fishing and camping, renting high-quality mountain bikes via a concierge service to riders, and more.
In addition to Gnargo Bike Co., this fall’s cohort includes: Just Bikes, which aims to be the “all-in-one” destination for individuals and families exploring the Northwest Arkansas trail system; Merman Bicycles, which “designs and creates progressive, party-inducing bikes that are born” locally; Rover Hunting Equipment, which seeks to provide an all-in-one mobile tree stand system for hunters; XNA Bikes, which hopes to lower the barrier to competitive cycling by offering high-quality, affordable carbon-frame bikes; The Yonder, an inexpensive, multi-purpose device for camping inside one’s SUV; and Yonder Adventure Company, which offers full-service, highly-customizable float trips on the Buffalo River via oar-powered drift boats.
Somarriba initially tried selling ropes through Amazon, but that “was not a success,” he said. He didn’t want to give up on his idea, but he needed to innovate, which led him to focus on climbing ropes that were safer and more aesthetically pleasing.
Somarriba founded Lacaida to produce “the safest, prettiest and most useful climbing rope in the world,” he said. His metered ropes offer safer rappelling by tracking how much rope remains before the end, faster coiling, and easy end-cutting.
Armed with knowledge gained through the Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program, Somarriba has expanded his product line beyond ropes.
“Ropes continue to sell well, but they are expensive — $200-$300 — and they last three-five years, so I needed to diversify,” he said. He started with rope tarps, which are “basically billboards advertising who you are wherever you put them.”
He discovered that four brands sell rope tarps, and they’re all similar in type, look and price, so his rope tarps have artistic designs on them depicting picturesque climbing locations to “give them a bit of personalization, not just a blank tarp,” he said. “We sold 50-70 in the first three weeks,” and several retailers already stock them.
The tarps are manufactured in Springdale by the nonprofit INTERFORM, he said. That fits with Somarriba’s efforts toward “inclusion” with his business, and “we feel like that’s a great story.”
He plans to expand the designs beyond images of climbing locations to even more personalized content, including inclusive messages or symbols, he said. “They will say who you are.”
He hopes to add rope bags to his product line soon — “we’re doing prototypes, now” — and, as soon as the spring of 2023, start offering guided climbing tours, he said. “We’ve been at an inflection point — climbing is growing hand over fist — but we need to bridge the gap for people who want to get into climbing but don’t know how.”
With climbing gaining “legitimacy” by being named an official Olympic sport, as well as the runaway success of the documentary “Free Solo” that took climbing “mainstream, this couldn’t be a better time” to launch what would be the first climbing guide service in Northwest Arkansas, he said. “Climbing is accessible, and a different way to get outside, so more people are getting into it, and the next step for us is climbing services.”
Somarriba “listens to his customers so well, then creates what they need,” Shellhammer said. “Pedro is really a hustler.”
Somarriba first developed his initial idea while leafing through climbing magazines dating back decades, as he noticed the “ropes looked the same year after year,” he said. “How can we make ropes, a life-saving device, safer and look cool?”
Gnargo Bike “was probably 10 years in the making,” as Elysia and Zach actually were involved with “a similar bike collaborative when we were in college” in Kansas City, Mo., she said. “We love cargo bikes, and every time we’d go out [biking], we’d get a lot of questions about our bikes.”
“We’re in the right place, now, [as] you want to get around on a bike here in Bentonville,” she said. “We take steel frames pretty exclusively — there’s not a degradation of the material” during the transformation process — from local and national partners, then turn them into modern electric-assisted cargo bikes that are sold (financing is available) direct to consumers, she said.
‘DEDICATED’ ENTREPRENEURS WANTED
Anyone interested in applying for the spring 2023 GORP cohort can do so online at https://bit.ly/3E50C0e but Shellhammer encourages anyone planning to apply “to reach out and meet with me, first,” he said. “We can talk about what we’re looking for in an applicant and help you strengthen your application.”
Perhaps above all, Shellhammer looks for “dedication” in applicants, he said. “You want those who are so dedicated — who have already put a lot of work in up front — that they’re going to make it happen.”
“The most I’ve seen for a cohort like this is 12, and I’m pretty happy with about eight,” so the spring cohort will likely be around that number, he said. “I’ve had plenty of applications — more than 100 since I took this job [about] a year ago — and several I wish we could’ve [included] this fall that I hope apply again for the spring.”
Shellhammer plans to expand this model beyond only the outdoor recreation sector, with eyes on medical startups next, and he’s grateful for all the support behind him and his programs.
“The university and the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, they’ve built up this structure so GORP can build on top of that, and the Walton family is so supportive of entrepreneurs,” he said. “I really believe we’re on the verge of a hub of awesomeness” in Northwest Arkansas, he said.