Getting crafty with rafts

Samantha Hunter, Austin Shirley, Lewis Price and Sean Pope giving life to old rafts.

Dusty Demerson

Rubber garbage. While it’s typically not the stuff dreams are made of, it’s the cornerstone of an ambitious start-up for four aspiring social entrepreneurs. Born out of a school project at Western Colorado University, Oh Be Joyful Bags is the brainchild of Samantha Hunter, Sean Pope, Lew Price and Austin Shirley. Armed with a mission to give new life to old rafts that are otherwise destined for the landfill, the young company has cast a broad net in sourcing materials, adapting production methods and developing a variety of products.

“Our vision is to see a world where every piece of rafting material is given new life,” Pope said of the group’s creative upcycling endeavor. “The material itself isn’t recyclable, and with boating becoming more and more popular, more are being built and eventually heading to the landfill.”

It all started when one of Price’s favorite professors, Taryn Mead, emailed him information about a competition and class that Western was hosting. “The intent was to encourage some start-ups in the valley,” Price said. With a circular economy approach, the competition directed participants to find a waste stream in the valley and do something with it.

Concurrently, Price had three dead rafts that he’d decided to fix. Estimating that it would take 60-70 hours to get each raft to float again, his thoughts shifted to what else he might be able to make from them. First came the idea of making patch or repair kits. But once the group assembled around a table for the first time and started brainstorming, they came up with the idea of making durable, longlasting bags in the form of the Sunny Gunny Satchel. As part of the competition, they created a pitch video and garnered enough votes to win, which awarded them a Venture Well grant and access to the ICElab business accelerator on Western’s campus.

“The accelerator has been amazing. We’ve been in touch with other start-ups, and they basically let us know what we don’t know,” Hunter said, admitting that the closest she’s been to business school is the class that brought her in contact with Pope, Price and Shirley. To Hunter, the whole idea of building a business from the ground up has been somewhat daunting, but also exciting. “It’s certainly high risk, high reward,” she said.

The group has since been able to synthesize their ideas, developing a variety of prototypes – from belts and wallets to purses and bags. “One thing I liked about our group from the very beginning is that we come to decisions relatively easily,” Hunter said. “We have different strengths, and we wear many hats and have

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All three men have been rafting guides and have connections throughout Colorado and other rafting hubs like West Virginia and Idaho. While they’ve tapped into those connections to receive donated rafts, there seems to be a culture in the rafting community of holding onto rafts as sentimental testaments to good times spent on the river.

“We want people to know that we’re here to accept that material,” Hunter said, when and if they’re ready to let go of it. The group constantly has feelers out for materials and recently picked up a 200-pound donation from a Gunnison man. Lovingly called Large Marge, this was a behemoth that might have stayed in the shed another decade prior to drifting to its final destination at the landfill. But now it will be sewn into Sunny Gunny Satchels, which have become the flagship products for Oh Be Joyful Bags.

Start-up life has certainly had its challenges for the group. “Every week is something new,” Price said. “It’s absolutely exhausting.” Given the resiliency and thickness of the materials they use, finding machines capable of handling the sewing process has been tough. After running through a few sewing machines, they were able to buy a heavy-duty serger with grant money. The assembly process now relies on a combination of using the serger, handstitching and utilizing local upholsterer Claire Pitcher’s expertise.

But the biggest challenge thus far has been locating and transporting dead rafts, and the future of Oh Be Joyful Bags will depend on consistent sources of material. “We thought that sourcing would be the easiest issue, but it’s actually been the hardest,” Shirley said. They recognized early on that there is far more pre-manufactured waste available to upcycle into their bags. Finding it, however, has been difficult. The founders are looking further downstream to determine the best partnerships to obtain pre-consumer and post-consumer waste materials to keep growing their business.

“As we expand to the limits on our production, we may have to partner with a manufacturer,” Pope said. “That involves exploring our values as people. We want to be a community-driven business. That will remain a core value as we scale up.” b

Bags, wallets and belts should be available for purchase by mid summer. For information, head to ohbejoyfulbags.com.