Consolidation is a familiar storyline across the paddlesports industry, especially now as many of the industry’s most iconic brands contemplate their legacies and succession plans. Below, NRS Chief Marketing Officer Mark Deming and Down River Equipment co-owner and CEO Phil Walczynski speak publicly for the first time about NRS’s acquisition the storied river-running retailer and custom gear manufacturer.
The deal is an acquisition that feels like a partnership, Walczynski and Deming told Paddling Business editor Jeff Moag in the wide-ranging interview. It also smells a bit like a succession plan. The agreement keeps Down River operating under its own name and continuing to build custom oar frames and river-running gear in Colorado. Phil Walczynski and his wife Carol, Down River’s Chief Financial Officer and Operations Manager, will continue to manage Down River under the new partnership with NRS. Down River co-owner Zach Svoboda will pursue a new chapter.
Svoboda’s transition was the nudge that started the merger moving, Walczynski said. “Zach came to Carol and me a couple of years ago and said he was he was about ready to start transitioning out. He wanted to focus more on his family, wanted less stress in his life—you know, all the things that small business owners deal with.”
The Walczynskis initially considered buying out Svoboda and continuing on their own, but as they weighed their options a partnership with NRS began to look more attractive.
“We realized that to really ensure Down River’s future and make sure our staff is taken care of, and the community around us is taken care of, we really needed much bigger backing,” Walczynski said. “That was really what pushed us to reach out to Mark and the team at NRS.”
Walczynski’s email landed in Deming’s inbox on a Monday morning last fall. NRS has long been aware of the tough business climate for retailers, many of whom are closing in on retirement. Internally, the company had discussed the danger of losing a big rafting account. They just didn’t think it would be Down River because the company was on such firm footing.
“We had kind of already gamed a lot of this out,” Deming said. “And when Phil reached out to me and I shared that with a small group of colleagues, we said ‘All right, we’ve got to do this. Let’s go.’ And we were able to put the wheels in motion right away.”
The companies have a lot in common, starting with their local roots and deep ties to river communities. Case in point: Walczynski was impressed with NRS headquarters in Moscow, Idaho, but his most productive meetings with new colleagues took place two hours farther east, on the Lochsa River.
Watch or read the full interview to learn more about NRS’s plans for Down River’s custom frame shop and the Raftopia festival, and the mutual respect—and secret gear envy —these two iconic river-running companies share.
Inside NRS’ acquisition of Down River Equipment
Jeff Moag, Paddling Business: I feel like I’m asking a couple newlyweds how they met. But I am curious, who made the first move?
Phil Walczynski, Down River: That was me. I reached out actually to Mark so it’s kind of kind of cool and interesting that we’re both on this same interview with you. And then he took things from there with his team.
Mark Deming, NRS: I came to work on a Monday and opened up my email and there’s this email from Phil and I was like, ‘Holy cow. This is big.’ I couldn’t wait to share it with some of my colleagues. You know, Jeff, you and I talked, I think last year, and you quoted me in a piece saying something that we identify in our SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis every year is what we refer to as dealer atrophy, or losing dealers. And it has been a problem in the paddlesports industry. We’ve lost quite a few great specialty retailers over the years as they’ve retired or closed up shop.
For us, one of the biggest concerns is losing a major rafting account. Because rafts are one of those things that you can sell them online, but it’s a much better customer experience to purchase a raft in a store from a highly qualified person. People want to see those boats on the floor. They want to build the frame that they want and outfit it with all the right things. In my opinion it’s a product that really benefits from being in a brick-and-mortar retail environment. Losing a major raft dealer was a big concern for us. And honestly, we had never really thought about losing Down River because they were so strong.
It’s something that we’ve been thinking about for a long time. What do we do if this happens? So fortunately, we had kind of already gamed a lot of this out. And when Phil reached out to me and I shared that with a small group of colleagues, we said ‘All right, we’ve got to do this. Let’s go.’ And we were able to put the wheels in motion right away.
Paddling Business: Phil, as I understand it, you and your wife, Carol, who was Down River’s CFO and operations manager, will stay on as NRS employees. And your co-founder, Zach Svoboda is moving on to new challenges. Was his departure part of the reason for partnering with NRS?
Phil Walczynski: Yeah, absolutely. The way the timeline worked is, Zach and Carol and I, we really had an amazing partnership. We really went through a lot. Got through Covid, did all that and managed to stay friends and stay business partners. But Zach came to Carol and I a couple of years ago and said he was he was about ready to start transitioning out. He wanted to focus more on his family, wanted less stress in his life — you know, all the things that small business owners kind of deal with. So at that point we started reaching out just lightly to folks in the industry and friends and a few die-hard customers.
Carol and I originally were considering just buying Zach out and continuing on as sole owners. But the further we got into it, the more we realized that to really ensure Down River’s future and make sure our staff is taken care of and the community around us is taken care of we really needed much bigger backing and a much better partner. That was really what pushed us to reach out to Mark and the team at NRS. Because we really felt like as far as the industry goes, NRS was really the right answer. And as we went through the process, that just became more and more obvious to us.
Paddling Business: Phil, what will your role and Carol’s role be in this new structure?
Phil Walczynski: We’re figuring things out as we go, but the game plan is we’re going to continue pretty much in the roles we’re in. But the real bonus for us is a lot of the stressors of running a small business will eventually – probably not go away, but will transition a little bit more with the bigger resources that that NRS has – and we’ll be able to focus a little bit more on the things that we truly love to do, and why we became owners of Down River to begin with. Serving this community and talking to folks about getting on the river and really taking care of people in that way rather than dealing with the HR part of it, the insurance part of it and all the other things that go along with it. We’re still in transition to make that happen.
Jeff Moag: Mark can tell you that he and I have been on the river before and I think that’s definitely part of the NRS culture. You can phone in and say, ‘Hey, guys, I’m not going to be here next week. I got Main Salmon permit,’ and nobody gives you a lot of flack for that.
Mark Deming: I just requested my vacation time for my Main Salmon trip today.
Phil Walczynski: Excellent. Good for you.
Paddling Business: Approved!
Mark Deming: I’ve never been denied vacation for a river trip.
Paddling Business: What about the current Down River staff Phil? Will they stay on or do they have the option to stay on?
Phil Walczynski: Internally not a ton has changed. The benefits package for our staff is changing and has already been an improvement for our folks. Everybody is planning on continuing forward and NRS is planning on continuing keeping everybody.
For customers walking in the door on a daily basis it’s really business as usual. There’s a little more interesting product on the floor for sure. But there’s also everything else that we’ve carried for decades too.
Mark Deming: It’s a little bit different scenario than [consolidating with] a major retailer. Down River certainly is that, but this is even a sweeter deal for us because of the brand legacy that Down River also has both with their sewn goods, their accessories, dry boxes, frames, all of those things. So it’s a really exciting opportunity for NRS.
Paddling Business: Will there be any consolidation in the production work that Down River does on your frames in Colorado over to Idaho or anywhere else that NRS has production facilities?
Mark Deming: Right now, our number one rule is don’t fix it if it’s not broken. Continuity is super critical to us. We want Down River customers to have the same experience in 2026 that they would have had in 2025. So we have no immediate plans to do anything like that. But at the same time, of course, there’s some overlap in the things that we do. You mentioned the frame business. We have a full-service frame manufacturing facility here in Idaho. And now we have another one in Colorado. There are things that they’re able to do in Colorado that we’re not able to do in Idaho and vice versa. We’re already seeing where we’re able to learn from one another in the way that we do things. And I think that’s going to benefit the products on both sides.
Phil Walczynski: I’m sure over time, of course, we’re going to try to be as efficient as we can. There will be some consolidation and some elimination, maybe of some overlapping items or categories. But the short answer is no concrete plans right now.
Phil Walczynski: Just to expand on it a little bit, I was up in Moscow just a couple of weeks ago. And part of that visit was sitting down with some of the product development team folks at NRS and there’s a lot of things we’re considering, both on the frame production side as well as dry boxes and sewn goods where we can kind of utilize some strengths from both companies to really come out with some pretty interesting products going forward. Most everything is brainstorming right now, so it’s just a little carrot that I’m throwing out there. We’re all really excited about being able to combine some of our efforts in some of those areas for sure.
Paddling Business: That’s fantastic. And Mark, I think most of us in the industry know the story of NRS starting in Bill Parks’s garage. And I’m actually old enough that I bought things out of the paper catalog. But this kind of flows into what Phil was talking about trying to improve and retain quality employees. Tell me about the recent history where NRS went employee-owned, and how that has shaped and transformed the company.
Mark Deming: Well, first of all, I’m old enough and I’ve been at this long enough that one of my first jobs at NRS was processing those catalog orders and getting an envelope in the mail with the order form in it and a check or sometimes a wad of cash and some change.
Mark Deming: The way I like to say it for NRS is the ‘How’ is the ‘Why.’ How we do business is why we’re in business 54 years after Bill hung out a shingle. Bill was like a lot of outdoor brand founders, he was a legendary outdoors person. A boater, a river guide, a ski instructor, all those things. But he was something that not everybody was. He was a business professor, so he had a real nerdy passion for how businesses are run, and he wanted to prove that his very idealistic views about how you could run a business could work in the real world.
His colleagues thought he was crazy. So really the impetus for starting NRS was to show how he thought a business should be run and that it could be successful. We lost Bill, unfortunately, in March of 2023. But he had the foresight, thankfully, to think about the legacy that he wanted to leave behind. He could have sold the company to private equity or outside investors and ridden off into the sunset with a lot of money. But I can honestly say that Bill didn’t care about money.
He did pretty well in his time with NRS. And you would never know it by looking at him or seeing the car that he drove. He personally helped finance a deal that turned the company over to its employees. And we now have over 100 employee owners in the company. That’s really at the heart of our culture and ours has always had a really nurturing and positive culture based in the outdoors and the river community.
Paddling Business: When the companies come together, Phil, will your employees at Down River have an opportunity to join this employee ownership structure that NRS has?
Phil Walczynski: That’s the goal. Right now – and I’ll let Mark talk about this a little deeper – right now we’re being operated as a separate entity. It’s an LLC that NRS set up specifically for this just because of the timing. We needed to get things rolling. But the goal is to eventually get the team here into the ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) as well.
Mark Deming: We basically had the off-season to try to hammer out this agreement, this partnership. And then holy cow – the busy season is coming in hot. Our ESOP structure is very highly regulated. It’s not as simple as just turning a switch and bringing Down River into it right now. But absolutely that’s our goal.
Paddling Business: I’m sure that’ll come as good news to Phil’s folks in Colorado. And it’s a good transition to the next question. The press release announcing the merger framed it as an acquisition and as a partnership. What more you can share at this point about the nature of this arrangement.
Mark Deming: I think you said it perfectly. It was an acquisition and a partnership. Framing it as a partnership is really important for us and for Down River, because that’s how we want this to function. It’s not just, ‘We bought you and we’re taking you over and things are going to run like this now.’
Down River has built an incredible brand and a loyal customer base over all these years. We’d be crazy if we squandered that. So we’re really looking at it as a partnership with all of us working hand-in-hand to grow the Down River business alongside the NRS business.
Some of our folks went down to attend and help out at the Raftopia event, which is a big annual sale event that Down River holds. It’s a really important event for the river community in the Denver area. Our team was just amazed because Phil said, ‘I actually don’t really need a lot of your help with this because we have a team already assembled.’ Come to find out, Down River employees from years past who don’t work there anymore still show up to work the sale. That shows you the kind of culture that they’ve built there.
Phil Walczynski: It has always amazed me that we get past employees to come and work that event, but it’s a great event. Everybody has a really good time. But for Carol and I the way we’re operating really isn’t a whole lot different. We’ve been part of this business for 27 years. We’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it. So we’re really still running it like we’re owners of the business. And I get the feel from everybody at NRS, especially because of the ESOP, they operate that way as well. Everybody’s tied to it emotionally as well as financially. It’s just a big part of our lives and livelihood.
Paddling Business: You’re about three months in now, still in the honeymoon. Is there anything that you can share about how this relationship has strengthened the two companies? Anything you expected or maybe that you didn’t expect?
Mark Deming: As far as pleasant surprises, I think the biggest one for me is getting to know the Down River team better, especially Phil and Carol. They’ve been just awesome additions to our team. They bring a lot of knowledge and experience to the table. The way they approach business, we can learn a lot from them. They were able to come up to our annual sales meeting in Idaho, and Phil got out on Lochsa with a bunch of NRS folks which I think was great team-building exercise.
Phil Walczynski: I really thought I had a good understanding, and from the outside looking in none of that was really wrong. Anybody who listens to this interview in the industry probably would have a similar reaction because we all know that NRS operates in a really meaningful way in the industry.
This was the first time I visited the headquarters a couple of weeks ago and like Mark said, I had a great time getting on the Lochsa. It was my first time on the Lochsa and I’m in love with that stretch of river. But the visit to the headquarters was really pretty mind-blowing. I mean, clearly everybody has a lot of pride in their job, pride in the company. The place is immaculate, well organized, everybody’s clicking away at their jobs. There’s no panic back at HQ at Down River, but we’re not quite as organized. Day to day, there’s definitely a fair amount of fires to put out. It’s definitely a little more grassroots.
Paddling Business: A saw a post on the NRS Instagram announcing the merger, and the first comment was, ‘Hey, nice frame. Is that NRS or Down River?’ And the answer is ‘Yes!’
It was cute way of saying these companies are together now, but it also points out that both companies are in competition in a core product space – a place where both brands have a real presence and a real reputation. And it makes me wonder how those lines will be merged. Would there be a Down River frame line within NRS for example?
Phil Walczynski: The plan is really not to do anything drastic to begin with. Certainly for this year and for next year, you’re probably not going to see any changes or merging of the two frame lines.
There might be some combined efforts that we start to do between the two frame lines, but the thing to keep in mind is we have plenty of retailers across the country that are both NRS frame dealers and Down River frame dealers. It’s no surprise that these two frame lines actually do work pretty well together because Down River is really kind of known as more of a custom frame line. If somebody really wants something super custom, they can come to us for that. If they’re looking for something that they can get out the door and get on the river that day, then NRS is a great frame for that.
Those two frame lines already exist really, really well inside of some of the same stores. The questions from customers are certainly legitimate, but you’re still going to have Down River frames and you’re still going to have NRS frames. And maybe a couple years from now you might see some combined efforts.
Mark Deming: I received the Cascade River Gear catalog recently, which is a great dealer of ours down in Boise, and on the cover was an NRS raft with a Down River frame on it. And I was like, ‘Yes!’ It goes very naturally together. And as Phil said, I think people come to our frames for different reasons.
Paddling Business: I can feel a lot of familiarity and love, if you will, right between these two brands. Respect might be a better word, although we have used the marriage analogy here, so maybe we should stick with love. So that said, let’s wrap up with a lightning round. Mark, let me start with you. What’s your favorite piece of Down River gear and why?
Mark Deming: My wife, Sarah and I are huge fans of the dish drying bag that mounts on a campsite counter. I don’t know what we did with dishes before we had that, but it’s awesome. And right to one side or the other of that campsite counter is always our Down River hand washing station. Very useful item on the river, as well as we have a little concert series here in Moscow called Pubbin’ on the Patio with one of our non-profit partners the Palouse Clearwater Environmental Institute. So every Friday night in the summer, they have a band come in and a food truck. And during Covid they asked us if we could donate hand-washing stations for that. Now we’ve always got our Down River hand washing stations at our little local concert series.
And then, it’s not the only reason that I was all for making this partnership come together, but definitely one of the reasons is so I can get an employee deal on a Down River kitchen box. My wife’s birthday is coming up July 8th and we’ll be on the Main Salmon. So she’s going to get a surprise kitchen box that she’s been wanting for a long time. Don’t tell her.
Paddling Business: That is awesome. If she listens this far you’ll have to distract her.
Mark Deming: She’s never going to hear this. I can guarantee it.
Paddling Business: So, Mark, you just gave three favorite Down River items when I asked for one. Phil, what about you? What’s your one indispensable piece of NRS kit, or three pieces?
Phil Walczynski: I recently just got an education on NRS PFDs, kudos to the NRS team because they’ve done a lot with their PFD line in the last several years. I got my hands on a Ninja Pro and wore it on the river for the first time on that Lochsa trip we were talking about. And, oh man, it’s just a really good fitting jacket and what they’ve done with every design really kind of blows me away because you’ve got to certify every single size of jacket and that’s not something most PFD manufacturers are willing to commit to. So that’s my current favorite gear, but something I’ve been looking at for a long time is upgrading our big 16-foot boat for a nice E-162D, which is one of those old diminished tube Riken designs, which I’ve just always loved that design. Really love the boat, and the fit and finish is amazing on those boats. So I might be stepping that up and making that move this year.
Paddling Business: Since we’re doing this, I’ll volunteer my favorite piece of NRS river gear is the fire pan. We live here in Southern California, and down on the beaches they’ve got these little concrete fire pits. But if you want to have a bonfire and s’mores with your kids you have to get there at five in the morning and just squat on that thing all day. But I can roll in with my fire pan any time and set it up right there in the sand and get the kids running around in circles and getting s’mores all over their faces. And it’s been so good for family time, whether it’s on the river or on the beach.
It’s a really cool thing because one of the things that we don’t talk about as much about river running is the fellowship and camaraderie. When you start planning a trip you think about the lines you’ll take and the big rapids. But what you remember is the time spent with people you love down in the bottom of a canyon somewhere. And the fire pan kind of symbolizes that.
NRS announced its acquistion of Down River Equipment in March 2026. | Feature photo: Courtesy NRS
