Keep the Great Lakes wild.

What does it mean? To us, at its core, this message is about stopping lakefront from being turned into subdivisions and developed for rows of mansions. We want to return to a previous era, when the largest houses you'd see by the lake were small fishing cottages, and huge stretches of the northwoods were pure wilderness. These were places it could be genuinely scary to drive through in the winter, or where you could get seriously lost and have a good chance of encountering a moose.

There are still places like this, but they're fewer and further between. As much as we love them, towns like Traverse City, Sturgeon Bay, and Marquette have started to sprawl, and new stores and housing developments have encroached on what made the areas so great to begin with. Keeping the Third Coast wild breaks into two goals for us:

Supporting the Great Lakes Outdoor Community

The Great Lakes, particularly the northwestern parts around Superior, Michigan, and Huron, are one of few places in North America with abundant access to woods, water, elevation, and lots of snow. There is already a significant community of skiers, bikers, sailors, and surfers here, and it's inevitable that the outdoor adventure scene here will continue to grow. We're in on the ground floor of this, helping to contribute to outdoor sports events and communities however and wherever we can.

It's our goal to bring attention to events and organizations, be it ski races such as the Noque or the Birkie, the Lake Superior Gravity Series for enduro and downhill riding, or watersports events such as the Great Lakes Surf Festival. As we grow, we aim to partner with these and other events and help them grow.

Protecting the Great Lakes Ecosystem

That last goal is fantastic, but it's going to draw in lots of people. It's imperative that the land that makes this place special is protected from development. This can be a tough topic, but as a brand rooted in the Great Lakes outdoors, we're firmly against expanding the urban footprints of small lakeside communities, and that principle is deeply infused in this brand.

Two Objectives, One Mission

It was immediately clear to us that these two goals are interconnected and can conflict at times. After all, a robust outdoor adventure community inevitably draws populations toward the Great Lakes and its outdoor areas.

More often than not, balancing these two priorities requires compromise, but one overwhelming thing is true: the Great Lakes will not remain a premier outdoor destination without its ecosystem being protected, and that is what drives us more than anything.

Through our 1% for the Great Lakes program, we support 8+ non-profits throughout the region, all of whom have a track record of stewardship and supporting outdoor adventure.