More than 60 business owners and community leaders gathered last week at the Holiday Inn for “Beyond the Busy Season: A Business Resilience Summit,” sponsored by the Estes Valley Voice. The event was a follow-up to the first of the business summit series, “Tariff Talks,” held in May.
Business owners and Town stakeholders gathered for networking and to hear presentation by Laura Rodriguez, chief strategy officer for Colorado’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade, and marketing expert Bryan Welker of WRD Aspen who focuses on how mountain towns actually market and make it through shoulder season.
Emceed by Adam Crowe, Larimer County’s economic development manager, the evening was rounded off with a panel discussion with Maureen McCann, owner of The Mad Moose, Jeff Abel, a realtor with Signature Home Team, and Scott Applegate, president and CEO of Bank of Estes Park.
Rodriguez shared insights on navigating economic uncertainty while celebrating the valley’s strengths and successes and highlighted Estes Park initiatives that exemplify business resilience, including the impact of the arts and culture industries, which have helped Estes to become one of the state’s seven new certified creative districts.
Estes’ $7.5 million creative industry has generated 152 creative jobs and $1.2 million in cultural nonprofit revenues, encompassing 17 venues, 16 galleries, 14 arts organizations, and seven makerspaces. As a certified creative district, Estes will receive a $10,000 new district award, highway signage, and tourism marketing support.
The Stanley Hotel transformation figured prominently in Rodriguez’s presentation, including the historic property’s new 65,000-square-foot event center, funded in part by a $46 million Regional Tourism Act package.
The event center will include an 864-seat auditorium and a horror film museum curated by Blumhouse Productions, which Rodriguez noted could potentially host portions of the Sundance Film Festival during its relocation to Boulder beginning in January 2027.
The summit addressed economic challenges facing Colorado businesses, including tariffs, which Rodriguez’s data showed had impacted 86% of businesses. Of those, about one-half have cited financial and cost pressures as their primary concern.
In response, OEDIT is delivering support services for tariff mitigation, supply chain management, international trade, and financial planning. Rodriguez emphasized that Larimer County and Estes Park’s diversified economy—including tourism, recreation, creative industries, and advanced manufacturing—bodes well for regional year-round economic stability beyond the traditional busy season.
The four Rs: Retool, redo, replan and rethink
Bryan Welker took the podium, maintaining that off-season isn’t off anymore—it’s “on-season lite.” He recommended using fall as the “loyalty season” for locals-first campaigns, thank-you offers, and co-promotion between local brands. Spring is the “creativity season” for testing messaging, hosting community events, and updating websites and SEO—building what summer will sell.
Welker addressed the “loyalty loop” that turns first-time customers into repeat visitors through consistent experiences and authentic word of mouth. He recommends that businesses use quiet time to update their Google business profiles, refresh their SEO, and gather reviews. He also cautioned against “vanity metrics”—touting the number of social media followers versus actual viewer engagement.
A key takeaway from Welker: tell one clear story and repeat it. “The businesses that stay visible, engaged, and authentic in shoulder season are the ones that thrive year-round.”
Welker also stressed the need to use the shoulder season period wisely and productively to “retool, redo, replan, and rethink” what went well during the busy season and what needs to be changed before the next busy season.
The fifth R: Relationships
Following the two presentations, Crowe emceed a discussion about tariffs, resilience, and workforce, with local panelists McCann, Abel, and Applegate who shared words of advice for Estes business owners centered around relationships.
As a realtor, Abel and his wife Julie have built on the connection with story by hosting a series of videos posted on their Facebook page, Everything Estes Park, that connect people who dream of buying a home in Estes to local stories. The Facebook page has more than 34,000 members and the videos feature interviews with local businesses and local people and have helped the Abels to build relationships with people, and some of those relationships have turned into home buyers.
McCann and her husband, Chris, have just celebrated their fifth anniversary as owners of the Mad Moose, a gift shop with souvenirs, home goods, and casual women’s wear. The shop works to build relationships with its customers and offers a selfie station, said McCann, “You can sit on a stuffed moose or on a bear and take your picture, and we offer to take the pictures.”
The selfie station is novel and allows McCann to not only talk with customers but allows customers some additional time in the store which can, in turn, provide shopping time.
Applegate offered sage financial advice. Businesses should use the shoulder season to their advantage to take inventory of their financials. “Now’s the time to tune those up. If you don’t like your CPA, now’s the time to switch your CPA. If you don’t like your inventory system, now’s the time to switch that, or your point-of-sale system, all the projects that you wish that would have made last season better, now’s the time to do that so next season will be better.”
Stressing the importance of relationships with one’s banker and CPA, Applegate said, “Look at your line of credit and make sure you have a line of credit that’s the right size for what you’re doing. But I would suggest looking even deeper and looking at your whole capital stack. Look at how your equity is composed, your debt structure, which includes that line of credit. And if that doesn’t make sense to you, get in and talk to either your CPA or your banker. It might be time to restructure, to make sure that you’re well situated,” said Abel.
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