Grand Trunk

Grand Trunk began with a hammock that two backpackers found indispensable in the jungle. Kevin Kaiser and Jon Neff met on a backpacking trip in Thailand, and in 2001 they started selling a lightweight, packable version from Skokie, Illinois, under the plain name The Travel Hammock. The company is now run from an office in Bountiful, a fair distance from any jungle.

The new name came in 2010, once the catalog had grown past hammocks into travel goods. Grand Trunk is named for the Grand Trunk Road, an ancient trade route across the Indian subcontinent, and its brand mission became Goods For The Road. That is a lot of history to string between two backyard trees.

It grew up in the Chicago suburbs. In 2015 Grand Trunk ranked 2,597th on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America, after 142 percent growth over three years. Orders went out of a Chicago warehouse, which the company used for more than eight years.

Then came 2020. In May a group of Utah entrepreneurs bought the company, among them the founder of CampSaver.com and the brothers who built Bikewagon.com, and SGB reported that the headquarters would move to the Salt Lake City area that July. Kaiser stayed on, planning to work from Chicago and fly in about once a month. He told SGB he was 100 percent excited, and that hammocks were hard to keep in stock.

He also shared the most revealing number in the business. Printed hammocks outsold solid colors about four to one, he said. Each year brought an artist-made collection with a regional theme. The Double Deluxe is still the center of the line. It is 210T parachute nylon rated for 400 pounds, and the FAQ points out that a double is not necessarily meant for two people, since some customers use the extra width to sleep diagonally.

The new team pushed into camp furniture. In 2021 Grand Trunk acquired Alite Designs, the chair company founded by Tae Kim, a former equipment design director at The North Face, and brought back its Monarch chair. The Monarch stands on two legs, and the product page counts your feet as the rest. It weighs 1.3 pounds and rocks forward and back on purpose.

The one-pound Compass 360 stool swivels all the way around, and the company lists patents on portable furniture and a folding chair. Grand Trunk says its gear is designed in Salt Lake City and a few remote spots around the country. Most of it is made in factories in China and Vietnam.

Everything carries a lifetime guarantee against manufacturing defects, and Kaiser has since handed the company to new leadership, according to its About page. The idea that started on a backpacking trip in Thailand is now worked out in Salt Lake City, and the Double Deluxe still packs into its own stuff sack.