By Margaret Hedderman
Ram Mikulas wasn’t trying to start a business. He just wanted a functional, outdoor jacket that ticked all the boxes—a garment for the mountain tops and the mountain towns. But nothing on the market had the right blend of features. So, he started daydreaming about what that perfect jacket would look like. One thing led to another and Ram is now the founder of SkyGOAT, a niche outdoor apparel company in Dillon, Colorado.
The journey from idea to launch has had plenty of ups and downs—a rollercoaster that has nearly derailed the business on at least one occasion. In this installment of our Startup Up series, we’ll see how Ram’s story offers a real look at what it takes to build an apparel company in one of the country’s top outdoor recreation economies.
The Spark of an Idea
The idea for SkyGOAT first took shape in the fall of 2018. While driving from Colorado to Wyoming for a mountain biking trip, Ram began visualizing a garment that combined the best features of the various outdoor pullovers he had tried over the years. He wondered if he could make it himself.
“I was like, ‘Oh, well, that might be kind of fun,’” Ram recalled.
He started throwing around business names and imagining what it’d be like to see his product in the local gear stores or out on the trails. Though he’s worked in the
ski industry for years—serving as President of the US Ski Mountaineering Association—he didn’t have direct experience in apparel manufacturing. But Ram’s the kind of guy who likes to learn and try new things… just see if he can. When he brought the idea to his wife, he said she wasn’t surprised by this latest turn of events. Her response was essentially, “Sure, have some fun.”
So, he spent several months refining the idea. He experimented with design elements and functionalities, leveraging his experience in the outdoors to ensure the garment would perform well in both technical and casual settings. Though he had taken sewing lessons in high school, it had been years since he’d stitched anything together. Undeterred, he borrowed his wife’s sewing machine and developed the first SkyGOAT sample.
“I was just curious to see if it’s something I could do—actually create a piece of clothing that I liked and that I could share with my friends and family,” he said.
From Launch to Setback: How a Supply Chain Crisis Led to SkyGOAT’s Breakthrough
With a real-life product sample in hand, Ram decided to trademark the concept in the spring of 2019, marking the official launch of SkyGOAT. Over the course of the following year, he continued to formalize the project—developing a business plan, identifying a manufacturer in Denver, and sourcing textiles.
Then, just a year later, his fabric supplier shut down production. The Polartec facility in Tennessee—which supplied the core material for SkyGOAT’s pullovers—discontinued the fabric entirely.
“That was the biggest challenge,” Ram said. “Here I was, a year into the business… things were going well, and then I find out they stopped making the fabric.”
Ram turned to the research he had done in the early days—networking at outdoor industry trade shows and studying textile options. He reached out to contacts across the globe, but struggled to find a suitable replacement.
“Nobody was making anything that I wanted,” he said.
Eventually, a small manufacturer in Taiwan agreed to help him develop a custom fabric. Together, they created what is now the company’s proprietary GOATGrid fabric, a recycled polyester blend designed for both technical performance and everyday comfort.
That partnership led to another shift—moving manufacturing overseas—into a shared facility with his textile partner. While Ram had originally intended to produce everything in the U.S., the rea