Washington Business Fall 2019 | Washington Business | Page 54

doing business as
employer: TravelChair
founded: 1984
location: Gig Harbor
employees: 14
TravelChair
Strong, reliable products and a commitment to family and community have
helped this second-generation business thrive.
Andrew Lenderman
have a seat: Imagine a strong, affordable and lightweight chair that won’t
break. This simple recipe for success has made TravelChair a leader in the outdoor
recreation industry.
From chairs to tables and cots, TravelChair products allow customers to be comfortable
while enjoying different activities across varying settings. From attending concerts,
soccer games, picnics and camping throughout the great American outdoors, people
can rest assured that their chair won’t break and cause them to tumble to the ground,
like so many cheaper variations of camping chairs often do.
Plus, TravelChair products are easy to bring along just about anywhere. The Joey
chair, for example, weighs just 2 pounds, which means it can be tossed in the car or
tied to a backpack and transported with ease. Other popular products are the Lounge
Lizard reclining chair and the Side Canyon Table.
gig harbor garage
This second-generation family business was founded by Larry and Candace Peterson
in 1984. They found a prototype of a strong, compact chair, and bought the rights to
it. Soon after, a small enterprise was created in their garage in Gig Harbor.
Their daughter Holly Roso remembers the first big order, as she and her sister
Varonica were drafted to help pack those early shipments.
The company survived, and Holly eventually moved on to work in the nonprofit sector
and earn a doctorate in clinical psychology. Then her parents decided to retire.
It was 2008, right before the Great Recession. Holly and her husband Daniel had just
bought a house and were starting a family.
But they decided to take the risk.
The recession was scary, but the firm rebounded through constant innovation
and creative approaches to marketing, distribution, branding and more. A big
part of the company’s business includes customizing the chairs with corporate
or nonprofit logos.
driven by family, and purpose
There’s more to life than selling chairs. TravelChair donates a significant portion of
its profits to organizations that support ocean cleanup, leadership development and
youth, for example.
“We’re not just here to make a chair, but we want to be impactful in the community,”
Holly Roso says.
Managing a family business can be time consuming, but it also affords them the
flexibility to lead a balanced life and spend time with their family in the outdoors.
They try to extend some of this flexibility to their employees, too, who work in
marketing, operations, accounting and sales.
“That’s part of our culture,” Daniel Roso says.
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