After closure plans were thwarted by an 11th-hour sale contract, Portland’s longstanding outdoor retailer will instead return to its original owners.
It’s been a bumpy year for Next Adventure, the Southeast Portland-based outdoor company founded by childhood friends Deek Heykamp and Bryan Knudsen in 1997. In May 2025 — as its owners prepared to retire — the retailer announced it would shutter all four of its Oregon locations by the following September.
In October, Heykamp and Knudsen revealed that Next Adventure would remain open after all, transitioning ownership of its Central Eastside flagship and Sandy outpost to a new group made up of a “group of local investors and some former and current staff members.”…