With a population of 7,000, the town of Lander sits between the Wind River Mountains and the high plains of Wyoming. Within minutes, residents can be fly fishing on the river, climbing granite walls, or watching for elk and bighorn sheep across wide-open valleys.
It is also home to Maven, an award-winning line of direct-to-consumer optics—including binoculars, rangefinders and riflescopes—and one of the town’s largest employers.
“We created Maven to solve a pretty unique problem,” said co-founder and COO Cade Maestas. “The problem was… we didn’t want to move.”
Before launching Maven, Maestas and co-founders Mike Lilygren and Brendan Weaver worked together at a Wyoming-based optics company that was acquired by a larger corporation. They were offered leadership roles, providing they were willing to relocate.
“None of us really had that interest,” Maestas said. “All of us had school-aged kids who had friends here. And we all loved Lander.”
So in 2008, sitting around a backyard fire pit with a couple of beers, the three friends asked a simple question: What if we built something here?
They knew optics. They had long-standing supplier relationships in Japan, home to some of the world’s top lens manufacturers. And they saw an opportunity to rethink the traditional retail model.
“One of the things we did not enjoy in our previous lives was working with wholesalers and distributors,” Maestas said. “Being able to design and build directly for the consumer meant we could put out a premium product at a more competitive price.”
By cutting out retail markups, Maven could invest more into the product itself while keeping prices lower than established European brands. They launched with three binocular models from what they jokingly called the “Garage Mahal,” Lilygren’s two-car garage.
Today, Maven operates out of a 27,000-square-foot headquarters overlooking the Wind River Mountains and employs 23 people locally, with plans to grow. In recent years, the company began assembling select products in-house, including its M1 and M2 monoculars, and invested in waterproof testing and quality control equipment.
“That’s the first step in building technical expertise here in town,” Maestas said. “It allows us to hire locally and create skills that didn’t exist in this community before.”
The building itself reflects that commitment. Employees can borrow outdoor gear from backpacks and coolers to a fishing drift boat, and even practice at a 40-foot archery range inside the warehouse.
“We try to open up our facility to the community,” Lilygren said. “We’re a family, and we want the outdoors to be part of what our Maven family is doing.”
As the company grew, so did its reach. In 2017, Maven launched an Amazon storefront. The team initially fulfilled orders themselves using Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM), but customers quickly began asking for Prime shipping. That feedback led them to adopt Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which stores, picks, packs and ships products on behalf of sellers.
“One of the advantages of Fulfillment by Amazon is speed,” Lilygren said. “We’re in little Lander, Wyoming. We can ship quickly, but Amazon has distribution hubs all over the country. Customers can get product overnight or the next day.”
Today, about 12% of Maven’s business comes from Amazon. The team plans months in advance for major events like Prime Day, which recently delivered a 30% year-over-year increase in revenue. Maestas, who leans heavily on data, also sees value in Amazon Ads.
“One of my favorite things about Amazon is you can test ads and know within hours what’s working,” he said. “You’re not just throwing money at something and hoping.”
Their goal isn’t to build something they can sell. It’s to build something that lasts.
“When we started Maven, we weren’t looking for a paycheck or to build something short-term,” Maestas said. “What we really wanted was to build a legacy for Lander. Every step of the way, we’ve tried to create something that would outlive us, where our grandkids could drive by and say, ‘My grandpa started that.’”