Spotlight: Next Adventure
Next Adventure is back with a renewed focus. What began as two childhood friends’ shared passion for outdoor adventures and bargain gear has grown into a cornerstone of Portland’s outdoor community. After contemplating retirement, co‑founders Deek and Bryan returned to the business with fresh energy and a refined vision. “We always said we would do this until it wasn’t fun anymore,” Deek shared. “Now that we’ve right-sized the business, we can bring the fun back.”
Reopening, however, also means facing the real challenges that small businesses encounter in today’s landscape. As Deek put it, “We are consciously sticking around to help bring Portland, and specifically the Central Eastside, back. With that in mind, we need to educate our city leaders to understand that healthy businesses are key to a thriving city.”
Deek hopes Portlanders will remember how much local businesses contribute and they need all the support there is.
You came out of retirement to run the business again. What are you looking forward to?
Deek: What really makes it fun again is our customers. These are people doing great cool things and we get to be a part of that. We’re starting our fall activity series soon, which will be published on our website and social media. We’ll have different ski or adventure movie showings, ski tuning clinics and different speakers to come in. I believe that we haven’t fully recovered from our COVID experience. There’s a hunger out there to make those social connections and have those fun experiences.
So we are doing that type of outreach and it’s fun for us and for our team.
We’re also excited about our consignment program. For years we only offered trade-in credit, but now customers can put items on consignment. It lowers risk for us and offers more value for our customers.
What’s your secret to being in business for almost 30 years?
Deek: Culture is what makes us special. From the very beginning, Bryan and I knew that if we just focus on the customer experience, if we care more about the person than the one-time sale, then we’ll always be successful and we give our staff that autonomy to make decisions.
Additionally, we're adventure people. All of our staff are and we like to talk about our adventures. Our tagline is “inform, outfit, excite.” Informing comes first. We share what we know from our own experience. Then outfitting is about getting the right product the person needs within their budget. We empower our staff to treat customers the way they’d want to be treated.
Once our customers have the right gear, it’s easy to share the excitement about their upcoming adventure.
What are some lessons learned over the years?
Deek: There are challenges small businesses face that people don’t always see. Over the years, I’ve learned how government policies can affect small businesses.
Tariffs is an example. We have a store brand now and we had just spent three months making orders when this big group of tariffs came in. We had to cancel everything. It would have cost more to bring the product in than we could sell it for. That was over one million in lost sales.
People may know about the impacts of tariffs in general, but they may not know the real numbers and what it means for a local business.
The decisions made outside of our control by the city, state and federal governments have consequences for small businesses. For example, the I5 closure is temporary but on the first Monday of the closure, our sales dropped significantly. We’re recovering slowly, but it shows how fragile things can be.
Why is it important for Portlanders to support local small businesses right now?
Deek: Small businesses support all kinds of community efforts. We live here, and what we do affects us, our staff, and our customers. If I had one wish, it’s that people understood the importance of small businesses to the health of the city and how much risk business owners take on every day.
We all have some responsibility here. People have gotten out of the habit of coming downtown or to the Central Eastside and have taken their shopping online. But if we all want a vibrant and sustainable city, we have to show up for each other.
