About
About Cordell
What got me here wasn't a business plan. It was the quiet.
There's a specific kind of relief that shows up a couple miles into the woods — the phone stops buzzing, the notifications stop mattering, and for a while it's just the trail or the water in front of you. That's what pulled me into the outdoors long before it was ever a career. It's still what pulls me in now.
I landed in the outdoor industry almost by accident. A job at Kenetrek put me behind a counter having daily conversations with hunters and hikers walking in the door, and with the distributors and retailers on the other end of the phone. I wasn't looking for a calling — I just kept noticing that those were the conversations I actually looked forward to. Kenetrek gave me my footing in this industry: real credibility, and a genuine appetite to stay in it.
At some point, income and growth won out over passion, and I took a role running U.S. territory for a photonics company — 11 years building that business from the ground up. It taught me things I still use every day: how to grow unfamiliar territory instead of just occupying it, how to build something out of nothing. What it never gave me back was the part I'd had at Kenetrek — work I actually cared about. It paid the bills. It never once felt like passion.
That's really what Copper State Brands is — not a pivot away from something bad, but a return to something I'd been missing. The sales instinct came with me either way. The passion only shows up outdoors.
On a personal note
Before any of this was a job, I spent years in the Air Force — and if there's one thing that still shapes how I work today, it's learning how to find drive and success alongside people from every walk of life. The Air Force also gave me a real sense of core values and follow-through, and taught me to work just as well solo as I do as part of a team — which turns out to be exactly what building an independent rep territory from scratch requires.
I'm not in this to move product. I'm in it because I know what it feels like to need the woods, and I want to help put the right gear in the hands of the people — and the shops — who feel that too.
I got into the outdoors for the quiet. I got into this business to help other people who feel the same way find the gear that gets them there.