ALPS Mountaineering About Us

About US – Message from Dennis Brune, Owner

I started ALPS Mountaineering, a small company located in rural east central Missouri, with the mission of "providing more gear for more people". We offer "performance oriented packs, tents, sleeping bags, furniture & air pads with consumer designs for comfortable enjoyable trips that have tough, durable construction for a lifetime guarantee, and while the products are great, the prices are even better." I have been working in the outdoor industry since 1978 in a variety of design, sales, and marketing positions. A lot of my prior outdoor experience came from running the Kelty brand, which also marketed packs, tents, and sleeping bags. In 1994, Brian, the oldest of our 3 children, was about to enter middle school, so I left Kelty because I wanted to have a more flexible schedule to allow me to be more involved in my family’s activities.

As our business has grown, so has our need for good, qualified staff members. We started filling those needs in 2003 when Brian graduated from college with his degree in marketing. While my intention never was to “only hire friends and family”, I continued the trend by next hiring my wife, LaRayne. When Adam, our second son, graduated in May of 2006, also with a degree in marketing, we also hired him. In the summer of 2006 we needed even more sales and marketing help, so we next hired our daughter-in-law, Sarah Beth. Our youngest child, Sarah, is still in college and currently attending Mizzou, where she is pursuing a marketing degree. Sarah continues to work for us when she comes home for breaks. As I’ve happily and very proudly told several people, we’ve “redefined the family business”. While we believe in making exceptional products, we also think it’s equally important to have outstanding employees … and I can say that we’re doing a great job of both.

Regarding our products, the challenge is to convince you that we can deliver products that offer great designs, are loaded with plenty of features, are made with excellent quality … AND are also affordable.

Performance Oriented Products with Consumer Designs - Sure we have some of our own ideas, and yes we get some suggestions from our factories, but our best design suggestions come from our customers. A key factor in our success is that we really listen to you! We take your ideas and constantly make our products even better. Actually, this is the easy part of our business. The hard part is convincing our new customers that our products are designed with the performance and quality that we’ve mentioned and still are able to be so affordable.

Tough Durable Construction - We use only quality raw materials assembled at the best factories in the world to produce products that are worthy to say, "lifetime guaranteed". ALPS Mountaineering products are designed with our outdoor consumers in mind. We send our stuff with people rafting the Grand Canyon, with people hiking the AT, and with folks doing day hikes on their favorite local trail to make sure our products perform in all of these very different environments.

Fantastic Prices - Until our customers can actually hold one of our products in their hands and carefully look it over, it's difficult to convey our quality and construction. We believe a comfortable pack or chair, a weatherproof tent, and a warm sleeping bag or air pad do not need to be expensive. Value can be defined as getting what you pay for. We define value as getting more than you pay for!

To hear what some of our customers have to say, check out our TESTIMONIALS