When Adam Miller did the Grand Traverse in 2017, the most memorable part of the race wasn’t the 40-mile, middle-of-the-night ski traverse from Crested Butte to Aspen. It was the small town he passed through on the drive back to Crested Butte.
Miller had already been thinking about where he wanted to live and grow his fledgling bike business. In the months after the race, he returned many times, and by the fall, he had rented a small industrial space in Satank, living out of his van on Prince Creek Road. Soon after, he bought a house, hired his first employees and, in 2019, launched Revel Bikes in Carbondale.
Now, nearly eight years later, Revel has announced it is moving core operations to Golden, Colorado.
“It’s very bittersweet,” Miller said of the move. “But if Revel is going to be a long-term, sustainable business, this was the last piece of the puzzle.”
When Miller arrived in 2017, the cost of living in the Roaring Fork Valley was already high, but “not that much higher than somewhere like Denver or Salt Lake City,” Miller said. He also believed the tradeoff was worth it.
“I really believe in sustainable businesses,” he said, “but more than that, I wanted a good, fun, healthy place to live and work. If we made a few percent less because it was more expensive, that felt fine.”
Then, Revel grew quickly — quicker than Miller anticipated. When it launched in 2019, the company had six employees. By 2020, it had doubled. When the pandemic-fueled bike boom hit, Revel — like much of the bike industry — found itself overwhelmed with demand.
“We were saying no to orders every day,” Miller said. “It was a perfect storm and a wonderful time to be in the bike industry.”
At the same time, Carbondale was undergoing its own COVID-era transformation. Remote work drove an influx of new residents to the Roaring Fork Valley, home prices surged and never came back down.
Revel’s growth brought pressure almost immediately. Bike brands are capital-intensive businesses that require large investments long before revenue arrives.
“You can be very profitable on paper and still always be out of cash,” Miller said.
By 2021, Revel had grown to nearly 30 employees. Miller said he had exhausted his own resources, including personal loans and early investors, and decided to sell a majority stake in the company to a private equity firm.
“All of my own money was in it,” he said. “I had taken out two lines of credit on my house. None of that was going to be enough to keep funding the business.”
The sale brought immediate benefits for employees, including raises, bonuses and expanded benefits.
But Miller said it did not take long for his relationship with new ownership to sour. “It became very classic ‘run the business by numbers only,’” he said. “A lot of the passion and soul was taken out of it.”
He ultimately stepped down as CEO in late 2023 and fully exited the company. What followed, he said, was painful to watch from the sidelines.
“On one hand, I had a level of financial freedom I never expected to have,” he said. “On the other hand, I was distraught to see what was happening.”
In early 2025, Revel was foreclosed on by its lender. Roughly 20 employees were laid off. Miller found out through the grapevine and immediately began to take steps to make an offer on the company he’d founded six years earlier. He did not want the company sold to another private equity firm.
In May, Miller purchased Revel Bikes and immediately began restructuring the business.
“They were over $8 million in debt, burning hundreds of thousands of dollars a month,” he said. “For me to buy it back and rebuild it required pretty drastic efforts.”
One thing Miller could not do was hire back all the employees who’d been laid off by the old ownership. The decision drew criticism, particularly from those who believed the 2021 sale had set the company’s collapse in motion.
Miller says he’s learned a lot in the five years since he sold and stepped away from Revel, and he stands by the choices he’s made since buying the company back eight months ago.
“Given how terrible a lot of the situation was, and how terribly the previous company leadership ran the company and treated people, I couldn’t solve for all of it,” he said. “But I believe I did the best job I could to hire some people back.”
Today, Revel employs 19 people worldwide, including staff in Taiwan and remote workers across the U.S. Miller is still based in the Roaring Fork Valley, and says that Revel’s marketing, IT and finance staff will stay, as well. But warehousing, assembly and sales will move to Golden to be fully operational by March 1. There are currently five Golden-based jobs posted on Revel’s website.
For Miller, the decision to move operations out of Carbondale was shaped by years of trying — and failing — to make the economics work in the Roaring Fork Valley.
“From the beginning, it was awesome to be here, but it was certainly always the biggest challenge,” he said. “We pay 20 to 50 percent more for the same jobs here than we would in Denver or Salt Lake and even then, it doesn’t make housing affordable for most people.”
Miller subsidized housing for employees and explored other creative solutions, but ultimately found none sustainable. Logistics were another challenge. Shipping to and from Carbondale adds two days to receiving and delivery times — along with additional risk.
“When Glenwood Canyon is closed and a shipment doesn’t arrive, we have angry customers who don’t have their bikes,” Miller said. “That’s not a long-term business plan.”
Golden, he said, offered a balance Carbondale couldn’t: proximity to industry partners and Denver International Airport, a larger workforce, faster shipping and more attainable housing — while still providing access to mountains and trails.
While operations are shifting, Miller emphasizes that Revel is not disappearing from Carbondale. The company plans to open a pop-up demo center in the Roaring Fork Valley in summer 2027, with the possibility of a longer-term satellite presence.
“There’s not a better place in the world to step out the door and demo a bike than here,” Miller said. “That’s something we’ll always miss.”
Revel hosted First Friday block parties, community events, and demo days that helped define the brand. The move to Golden represents both loss and opportunity.
Since purchasing Revel in May 2025, Miller says the company is on firmer footing. Year-to-date revenue is up more than 300% compared to the previous year, and the company is cash-flow positive. Several original team members have returned, but the move means leaving the place where the brand was built.
“In a perfect world, housing would be affordable here and we could make it work,” Miller said. “But that’s not the reality. This is about building something that lasts.”