Adventure Tool Company supplies the highest quality products for the expedition, overland, and adventuring communities.  These products are made in Colorado, U.S.A., from U.S.-made materials.  Each item is designed and manufactured with great care, ensuring countless years of rugged service.  A lifetime warranty accompanies every purchase.

 

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We are sometimes asked, how exactly is it that a police commander and an M.I.T. engineer came to create an expedition/adventure gear company? The answer is circuitous, but only slightly.

 

Both of us have always loved being outdoors. Hiking, wheeling, climbing, cycling, canoeing, swimming, spelunking, kayaking, and dual-sport riding. As often as possible, whatever the location, time, or weather. Fifteen minutes from home, or a thousand miles distant. There is nothing much better than traversing dirt, sand, rock, or water, whatever the conveyance. Earth within our treads, grit beneath our fingernails, as the great wide world opens all around us.

 

And just as much fun as all of that activity? Setting up camp at the end of a great day. Finding a site in some beautifully remote corner of the backcountry, pitching the tent, constructing a fire ring and setting wood blazing (when allowed), all the while drinking cold beer or a nip of bourbon. And then sitting there relaxing as the sky gradually darkens, stars one by one emerging, while a vast, calm silence settles across the land to the horizon. As for camp dinners? Don’t get us started. After a long day, we always devour very tasty vittles.

 

Before each excursion, we assemble our gear. Exactly what is required, and nothing more. We’ve always found that efficiency in planning creates a far better adventuring experience. It lowers potential stress immeasurably. We have what is needed, and we know precisely where each item is stowed. Even if something adverse happens (and doesn’t it almost always), we solve the problem using the packed equipment, and continue on our way. No worries.

 

Throughout the years, given our penchant for streamlined travel, we’ve often wished that higher-quality and more efficient gear existed. Gear that would allow us to pack the necessities in the most compact yet accessible way possible. We were never particularly pleased with most of the gear that we found out there for sale. Too much of it was constructed of cheap materials that rapidly disintegrated with real use. Or was designed without much analytical thought, by people who likely had never spent a few days traversing a desert or forest. As it turned out, what we wanted didn’t yet exist.

 

 

Somewhere along the way, Paul began to envision what eventually became the ShopRoll. He wanted a tool roll capable of carrying all tools needed to do trailside repairs for one given vehicle. And not just the tools, but the small parts, electronic equipment, gloves, rags, manuals, tarps, etc. A robust tool roll that would roll up into one compact and portable bundle, which could easily be stowed away in any nook or cranny. Throw it in the vehicle and go out exploring.

 

And he wanted a tool roll that would last a lifetime. One made of the best materials available, that would age and patina beautifully, becoming better and more interesting the longer we used it, like fine leather.

 

He thought and thought about the ShopRoll’s potential features, evaluating each, and then he began to sketch. And sketch, and alter, and sketch again, refining. And then what did he do? Paul, being Paul, found an old $25 sewing machine at a yard sale, and he taught himself to sew. He taught himself to sew, and sewed us a ShopRoll. And then another, and another, one for each of our old 4WDs. We took them with us on our trips, and along the way people would see them and ask where they could acquire one. When they learned that Paul had made them himself, they asked if he would sew ShopRolls for them. He received more and more requests, and soon Adventure Tool Company was born.

 

We found fantastic Colorado stitchologists to sew our gear for us in quantity. With their excellent assistance, we began selling online in October 2013. And thanks to all of the amazing support we’ve received from so many customers, ATC has grown more rapidly than we ever anticipated. We’ve added new types of gear with every passing season, and will continue doing so for as long as the creative impulse devises useful widgets.

 

In the ten (10) years since creating ATC, we've had the good fortune to work with an excellent and ever-expanding group of Colorado stitchologists. Providing jobs to people here in the U.S. is, by far, our proudest achievement. Without their skills and dedication, ATC wouldn't be what it is. Their contributions are immeasureable, and we thank them profusely.

 

And thanks to the kind support of people across the country and around the world, we created a facility here at 8,300 feet in the Colorado Rockies. It includes a design studio, a prototyping area, and a sewing bay. Everything you see on our website first began its creation here, amidst pine trees, elk, bobcats, mooses, and mountain lions.

 

As always, our mission is simple. We create in Colorado, U.S.A., the highest-quality gear using the most rugged U.S.-made materials. We love old-school gear made using old-world craftsmanship, and refuse to cut corners in any way. Our mission leads to this goal. We want you to use your ATC gear for a lifetime, and then pass it down to your kids. Every mark, scar, and oil spatter represents a story you can tell them. To ensure that this happens, we offer a lifetime warranty on all ATC gear.

 

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By happy coincidence, each aspect of running a business naturally falls within one of our abilities. Paul is the creative talent. He designs all ATC gear, first thinking, then sketching and revising, before patterning, cutting, and hand-sewing the prototypes. He also designs and hand-sews all custom orders. On the public front Paul is the gregarious face of the company, always happy to interact with supporters, help someone wrench on an engine, or yank out any stuck vehicle we come across while out adventuring. As for Amy, she runs the business side of the company, handling pesky details such as invoicing, ordering raw materials, maintaining spreadsheets, doing taxes, etc. All the numbers and bottom lines, all the figuring and cyphering. She also does some of the photography, and ensures that the Engel or cooler is stocked with drinks and vittles before every trip. And we both beta test our prototypes, using and abusing them extensively to ensure both superlative functionality and maximum ruggedness. As you can imagine, we use beta testing as a plausible excuse to travel into the wilderness whenever possible. (Want to test this new widget? Sure, let’s spend the next two weeks in the Moab outback, strictly for business.)

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Paul honorably retired as a police division commander after 25 years of service. As division commander, he supervised all criminal investigations, while also commanding both the SWAT team and the firearms unit. Along the way he created and commanded various task forces, including multi-jurisdictional cyber crimes and narcotics groups. He also crafted state legislation regarding child protection, cyber crimes, criminal interdiction, and narcotics enforcement. After retirement, he served for years as Chief of Police in our lovely little Colorado mountain town. On any given day he can be found tending to our wooded property, welding interesting gadgets, and smoking a cigar while adjusting a timing belt or fiddling with sprockets.

 

Amy is an M.I.T. engineer, holding a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Literature and a B.S. in History, with minors in Political Science and Applied Technology. She also holds an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering (specializing in reconstruction algorithms used in SPECT brain imaging). Along the way, she conducted scientific research for the National Institutes of Health in the areas of epithelial cell cancer, Alzheimer's disease, fetal immune system development, and reproductive biology. After then spending many years sending some very bad people to federal prison, she now writes happily strange novels and short stories, and also volunteers as a Victim Advocate for regional law enforcement. When not writing or businessing, she can be found changing the oil in her Kawi 250, cooking with oddly named spices, or sitting on a rock outcropping in the forest while reading.

 

 

 

 

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