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A former ski instructor who turned his love of outdoor trekking into a business will be moving his off-road camper manufacturing business to Pueblo in the spring.
Boreas Campers Owner Matt Reichel, 36, will be setting up shop in the 17,000 square-foot former Coca-Cola distribution facility at 3004 Prairie in Bessemer. He’s come a long way from the 400 square-foot storage unit he rented in Denver in 2016 so he could start building campers.
Reichel and his staff manufacture, “a high-end, high spec, off-road, off-grid camper,” he said. “We have a teardrop-style we are producing right now which is kind of a smaller two-person option.”
The XT weighs 2,200 pounds and can be pulled by a mid-size truck, SUV, or Jeep. With independent suspension and all-terrain tires, outdoor enthusiasts can take the XT places other campers cannot go.
The camper has water, solar, a furnace, kitchen and refrigerator. It retails for $34,890.
“Then we have a larger hybrid camper that will be going into production. It’s a new model we will be releasing next year,” he explained.
“It is a little bit bigger. It is still off-road and off-grid but it has a bathroom and sleeps four,” Reichel said.
The retail cost of the larger camper is $74,990.
Pueblo is a good fit for Boreas
Among factors that sparked the Boreas Campers move to Pueblo included the company’s growth and need to expand. The high cost of doing business in the Denver area was another factor that played into the decision.
“We’ve been looking for almost a year now to try to find a new facility and a good home for us. This move to Pueblo makes budgetary sense for us as well,” Reichel said.
During the past eight months, Reichel has worked with representatives of Pueblo Economic Development Corp. including vice president Joe O’Brien and president Jeff Shaw, PEDCO came up with an incentive program that awards the company with rent reimbursement payments based on the number of jobs they offer.
The funds are paid out of the half-cent sales tax fund earmarked for economic development. The incentive package will enable Reichel to increase employee benefits with a 401(k), paid time off and health insurance to make the business more competitive with other manufacturers.
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“Quite a few of our employees are really excited to leave Denver and come to Pueblo. Everyone is kind of getting sick and tired of the traffic and the cost of living here,” he said.
“Pueblo really checked a lot of boxes on both the business side and on the personal side for access to the outdoors, cost of living and ability to purchase a home. So it was not merely a business decision, it was also a people decision,” Reichel said.
About eight to 10 employees will move to Pueblo from Denver.
New jobs opening up in 2022
“We are looking at ramping up to 15 to 20 people right away in 2022. Then probably we will reach the 30- to 35- employee mark moving forward,” Reichel said.
“These are good-paying jobs and it is going to be good for the community. We have been working on this — looking for companies making products for the outdoor recreation industry and looking to expand,” Shaw said.
“Sometimes companies are looking to move outside of Colorado and we just want to make sure they look at Pueblo first. We are looking forward to having them here.”
The company will be hiring manufacturing managers, front office workers and production and manufacturing workers such as welders, electricians and builders. Those with mechanical skills who are willing to learn will be ideal workers for the company.
Close to 300 of the campers have been manufactured and sold.
“A lot of our customers are right here in Colorado, but we have owners all over the nation and even a couple in Alaska,” Reichel said.
Reichel has an industrial construction background but moved into a camper in 2012 so he could travel to “be a ski bum and a mountain biking bum,” for a year, he said.
He landed in Breckenridge where he worked three years as a ski instructor and met his wife Maggie, who also was a ski instructor.
In a quest to find a product for those who like the van lifestyle, he decided to come up with a trailer version for people on the move. He built the first camper in a garage on Breckenridge’s Boreas Pass, thus the name for the company.
“Boreas is also the Greek god of winter so that was fitting,” he said.
As the company grew, the couple were able to leave their teaching jobs and move to Denver. Maggie is now a full-time employee for Boreas Campers, working as marketing director.
To find out more go to boreascampers.com.
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Chieftain reporter Tracy Harmon covers business news. She can be reached by email at [email protected] or via Twitter at twitter.com/tracywumps.