Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer
Mike Pfotenhauer, founder of Osprey Packs, explains how he grew a bespoke backpack business in Santa Cruz into a global brand, eventually selling to Helen of Troy for over $400 million. He details the critical decision to move manufacturing from Santa Cruz to Dolores, Colorado, to access skilled Navajo sewers, and later to Asia to meet scale. Pfotenhauer emphasizes his focus on anatomic design and the strategic choice to keep prototyping and design in-house to maintain product identity while leveraging offshore production.