1986 -- Friends Jeff Knight and Dan Cruikshank start the company, making high-tech canoe packs in the basement of their Minneapolis home. 1988 -- Knight and Cruikshank move Granite Gear to Two Harbors ...

Fifteen years ago they were single and driven by the idea they could build a better mousetrap. Well, actually it wasn't a mouse trap at all. It was a pack, the kind of pack that's used on a canoe trip ...