Outdoor Living

Kevin Long, MBA ’23, spent the first Thanksgiving of the COVID-19 pandemic around a backyard fire with family and friends. It was a safe way to celebrate the holiday together, but the cold weather cut short the fun.  

That’s when Long had an idea. As his guests were leaving, he recalls, “It hit me in that moment, and I blurted out, ‘I wish our seats were heated.’ They all stopped and said, ‘Yeah, that’s a really good idea. Why doesn’t that exist?’” 

As every entrepreneur knows, a good idea is only the beginning; the rest is elbow grease. It would take a few more years before Long’s idea would come to fruition at McCombs, with the help of classmate Alex Duncan, MBA ’22. After discovering a shared passion for spending time outside, Long and Duncan founded an outdoor heated furniture company, Outmore Living, during summer 2022.  

“Kevin and I both agree that something’s different about being outside with friends and family,” Duncan says. “That’s the core essence of Outmore — that time with friends and family outdoors is better.” 

Tackling Challenges 

At McCombs, Long and Duncan met in a “New Venture Creation” course, where they worked on the same team. Taught by assistant professor of instruction Michael Peterson, the course helps students assess whether a business idea is worth pursuing through a series of experiments. Students conduct interviews to figure out who their customers are, what problems they are trying to solve, and what challenges lie ahead. Finally, they put everything that they had learned into a pitch deck and try to sell their idea to a panel of investors.  

Peterson says he thought Outmore Living was a unique concept, but he cautioned Long and Duncan that creating a physical product was going to be challenging. “You’ve got to have inventory. You’ve got to go figure out a manufacturer,” Peterson remembers saying. “You’ve got to go figure out how to ship stuff.” 

Undeterred, the partners threw their energy into building a viable business. Early on, Long spoke with dozens of restaurant owners to find out whether cold weather had a significant impact on sales, and how heated outdoor furniture might provide a solution. The next step was building a prototype — in Duncan’s living room.  

“I ordered lithium-ion batteries off the internet, I ordered wiring and connectors, and I ordered a series of heating pads that would normally be used for a car,” Duncan says. Once he had built a working battery-powered heating pad, he knew the idea had crossed from theory to reality. 

Product development and manufacturing got off the ground with the help of investors. Then, in December 2022, Outmore Living won first place in the Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition at McCombs. 

Mapping Success  

Long and Duncan say their complementary skill sets make them ideal business partners. With his gregarious personality, Long, who had been a manager at Target, handles marketing, external affairs, and investor relations. Duncan, a former U.S. Army aviation officer and Black Hawk pilot who later worked as a product manager at HP, handles the more technical aspects of the business, including internal operations and product management.  

Both say the resources they found at McCombs — faculty members, networking opportunities, and a variety of classes — have been key to their success. “We would absolutely not be where we are today if it wasn’t for McCombs,” Long says. “It’s a truly a company that was incubated through The University of Texas.” 

A warehouse in Vietnam is stacked with the raw materials for what will become outdoor heated furniture. During a trip to Vietnam last summer, McCombs alumni Kevin Long and Alex Duncan saw their inaugural furniture collection begin to take shape. Vietnam is an up-and-coming hub for furniture manufacturing. Long says he and Duncan are pleased to work with a sought-after furniture manufacturer there. “They believe in what we’re doing.” The planks used to make the furniture are sustainably produced teak certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. The furniture will include electrical equipment made in China and cushions made in the United States. 

Tina Mabley, assistant dean and director of the Full-Time MBA program, calls the graduate degree program “a test kitchen” where students are encouraged to experiment. “When you have all these resources at your disposal, the most satisfying thing is seeing students take advantage of them,” Mabley says. “That’s what is really exciting about this idea, that Long and Duncan put together resources in a way that nobody had done before or imagined.” 

Last summer, the two entrepreneurs traveled to Vietnam, an up-and-coming hub for furniture manufacturing. In a warehouse that smells of fresh wood and hums with the buzzing of table saws, they watched their inaugural furniture collection take shape from planks of sustainably sourced, Forest Stewardship Council-certified teak. Later, they will add the cushions, made in the United States, and the power bar, manufactured in China.  

Looking ahead, Long and Duncan plan to focus more on business-to-business clients, such as hotels, resorts, and rooftop bars. An idea that began at the height of the pandemic for backyard entertaining must now reach customers in a different kind of world.  

“There’s never a perfect time to start a company,” Long says, adding that pivoting to a different market has a silver lining: an opportunity they may not have had, to work with a sought-after furniture manufacturer in Vietnam. “They believe in what we’re doing.”

— Alice Popovici