Being a member of the outdoor community is almost a rite of passage for Durangoans. But what about those who may be unfamiliar with where to find outdoor adventures?
Newly Durango-based TripOutside may have the answer.
Founders Julie and Reet Singh were looking for something new after working for Home Depot corporate in Atlanta. Julie was a water heater merchant and Reet was a merchant for window covering installations. They became tired of the corporate grind and were avid travelers.
In 2017, they were inspired by a TED Talk to travel full time and start their remote business. The TED Talk discussed definitions of freedom and living life in accordance with personal ideals of freedom. Julie Singh said their idea of freedom was being able to get outdoors whenever possible.
“Before we left corporate America, we came up with the idea for a trip outside because we had traveled to Moab on a vacation,” she said. “And it was really a struggle to find all the different adventures that we wanted to do and book them.”
During a trip to Moab, Utah, the couple wanted to do multiple outdoor activities such as canyoneering, kayaking and mountain biking. They realized it was a struggle to find where all of these activities would be offered, and that sparked the inspiration for TripOutside.
TripOutside is similar to hotel booking sites in which an interested party can choose an outdoor activity and the site will show listings for that activity. For example, if someone is looking to rent a snowboard, that person enters his or her location and a search result shows different businesses and prices with snowboard rentals.
“We basically took a year and traveled the U.S. and visited all the outfitters and activity providers in the places we went,” Singh said. “We just started, you know, popping into stores and learning from them.”
They discovered many activity service providers struggled with managing online bookings, managing customers who wanted to book online or didn’t provide online booking options.
Originally, they wanted to build a software program to help provide those options but found the market was heavily saturated. Instead, they decided to create a marketplace.
“These marketplaces like TripAdvisor, they just send them (activity service providers) emails, and it’s just here's a customer that wants to book and they find it really painful to have to then put that into their system,” Singh said.
TripOutside developed a way to streamline the process by sending a booking to an activity service provider’s system if they have one.
“We let people compare and discover destinations, compare the different adventures that exist in those destinations,” she said. “They can compare prices, compare reviews, ratings, location and then book it all online on one website.”
The company is committed to outdoor sustainability and only offers human-powered outdoor activities, meaning no motorized sports.
“We don’t have anything with fossil fuels or motors. And we really are hoping to get people outside to love the outdoors and work to protect it,” Singh said.
The couple first visited Durango in 2018, but they were not able to make it up to north La Plata County, an area they wanted to see. That lead them to come back in summer 2021. Looking for somewhere to settle, the couple decided Durango was the perfect place.
Because the company was remote, TripOutside is in the process of becoming a Colorado-based company, more specifically Durango. Singh plans to become more involved with Durango’s outdoor community and wants to get involved with local outdoor businesses and activity service providers.
TripOutside has already collaborated with Durango Rivertrippers, Roll eBike and Paddle Board, and Durango Mountain Bike Tours.
“We’re extremely open to featuring all of them on our platform,” Singh said. “And then we’d also love to form a little coalition of outdoor companies to help kind of drive business and help people come visit that area.”
TripOutside is also a part of the Southwest Colorado Accelerator Program for Entrepreneurs (SCAPE), which was able to offer community resources the company needed upon launch.
tbrown@durangoherald.com
