Taos-based outdoors company wins Adventure Pitch

Even in today’s world, ski rental and repair shops and many other outdoor recreation businesses still use paper records, said Marc Harrell, the owner and founder of Rezo Systems.

The Taos company is getting recognized for working to change that.

Rezo Systems, a software development company, last week won the Adventure Pitch at the New Mexico Outdoor Economics Conference in Santa Fe. The award came with a $10,000 cash prize.

The company is currently heading into its eighth ski season since its original launch.

“We launched and we were kind of a new platform,” said Harrell. “And that was totally digital where everybody in the industry was kind of (using) a paper based reservation system.”

The company traveled in 2017 to Outdoor Retailer, a massive conference in the outdoor recreation industry, where Harrell said he was expecting to sign agreements with a wide collection of customers for his new product. He said the product wasn’t as well received as he originally envisioned.

“The thing that we learned, that was probably the most important, is the average age of a ski shop owner in the United States is 68 years old,” Harrell said. “And honestly, they would rather die than have to use a computer in their job. So it was very slow going at first.”

The trajectory of the company changed the following year, when Rezo launched a similar software for mountain biking rentals. The Taos-based company quickly formed working partnerships with some of the biggest mountain-biking rental outfitters in the country.

Flash forward several years, and the company is widely used in the mountain-biking meccas of Sedona, Arizona, Moab, Utah, and Bend, Oregon.

Harrell said the company saw slow and steady growth from 2017 through 2022, though there was a bump during the COVID-19 pandemic when some mountain biking rental businesses started seeing new customers who were interested in getting outside while also social distancing.

The company now has four active software applications after branching out to create products specific to fly-fishing outfitters and ski repair shops.

Interestingly enough, Harrell said that although New Mexico is known for outdoor recreation, very few of his clients are located in the state. He said he has about 250 clients and less than 2% of them are in New Mexico.

Harrell said the company employs between five and seven remote developers as well as Harrell and a customer service employee.

The Adventure Pitch was the final event at the outdoor-related conference, which was held in Santa Fe this year. Six finalists took to the stage for five-minute presentations before a panel and then a question-and-answer session.

The second-place price of $3,000 went to Gilz LLC, a New Mexico-based social venture that is working to revolutionize personnel air pollution protection products. The third-place award went to Buttnski, a woman-owned and operated company in Summit County, Colorado, that specializes in clothing that is both stylish and high-performing.

“The entrepreneurs at Adventure Pitch bring innovation to a new level and represent how New Mexico continues to be a leader in the outdoor recreation economy,” Outdoor Recreation Division Director Karina Armijo said in a statement. “ORD is proud to continue this annual event to support the prowess and potential of these startups. Each applicant can substantially impact our state outdoor recreation economy through job creation and increasing income through their ventures.”