After considering the idea for over a decade, Matt Jewett brought his unique pole straps to the market after re-settling in Bozeman.
By Mario Carr EBS CONTRIBUTOR
While Matt Jewett’s daughter was teaching ski school as a teenager, she mentioned that her students were constantly losing track of their poles because they all looked the same. Fifteen years later, Jewett finally brought his unique pole straps to market as a solution.
“I had a job, and I was working and I was really busy… Finally I had an opportunity. I left the job that I was at and had some free time,” Jewett said. It was 2017. He went to Second Wind Sports and bought a bunch of secondhand poles of various styles. “And then took literally an old belt, and started cutting up old belts to figure out if I could do it, and was like ‘Okay, I think I’m onto something.’”
Jewett and his wife attended Montana State University in the ‘80s, but ended up leaving for his job in Connecticut. He moved back to Bozeman in 2015, and after selling a Subaru his family no longer needed, Jewett had the seed money to start his business. He began selling MTN Straps ski pole straps in 2017, a product he believed could easily be installed to almost any ski pole and would allow skiers to stand out and express themselves.
Originally consisting of bright colors and generic patterns like rainbows, the flashy pole straps caught the attention of more than just skiers. Bozeman Deputy Mayor Terry Cunningham estimated that there were at least 15,000 dogs in Bozeman in a Jan. 2024 Bozeman Daily Chronicle article, and it’s these dogs’ owners who started asking Jewett if he could expand his products to collars and leashes. By 2018, the collars and leashes were very popular, and helped carry MTN Straps through the COVID pandemic.
“The business has just taken off from there. Ski pole straps are still a very big part of our business, but the dog part of it is definitely bigger,” Jewett said. MTN Straps now consist of pole straps, dog collars and leashes, and most recently, belts.
A canvas for local artists
After a great day of skiing in Big Sky in 2018, Jewett stopped by Beehive Basin Brewery and couldn’t help but notice the “awesome” hat worn by bartender Heather Rapp. After learning that Rapp had designed the pattern on the hat herself—she’s a local painter known for colorful landscapes and wildlife portraits—Jewett told her that he needed her help. Her designs brought a local touch and to the colorful straps.
“Heather was our very first artist, and she will always have a very special place in my heart because she was the first to take a chance on me and believe in the business… She’s just a wonderful human,” Jewett said.
MTN Staps has since partnered with 10 other artists from Big Sky, Bozeman, Jackson Hole and beyond, transferring their art to the straps and offering royalties. Working with a graphic designer in Bozeman, Jewett tackles the challenge of taking existing art and fitting it onto a 12-by-1-inch strap.
“He’s an awesome human and what he’s doing is rad—making something that is typically mundane and boring into something that’s really cool, colorful and awesome,” Rapp said.
Jewett explained that he doesn’t ask his artists to design anything specifically to fit onto a strap of his—he prefers capturing the artist’s natural work and worries about making it fit later.
“It’s really really cool for me as an artist to see my work, which was originally a large or small painting, translated into this cool, usable product that’s out in the world,” Rapp said.
While skiing with EBS at Big Sky Resort to talk about his business, Jewett was able to spot MTN Straps out in the wild. He said that’s the highlight of starting his own business. “The genesis and the thing that turbocharged our business was a day of skiing at Big Sky.”
MTN Straps products can be found online, and in store at JP Woolies in Big Sky, and in Bozeman at REI, Crazy MTN Sports, and at Dee-O-Gee as well as the retail store at Bridger Bowl Ski Area.
Jewett can be found on the Challenger Lift.
“One of my favorite things about creating this little business is the people I meet along the journey.”
