After 20 years, Trails North is still riding strong and continues to provide Smithers with quality products and the values and experience this community supports.

After moving from Dease Lake in 1989, Geri and John Brown opened Trails North to supply a growing town with everything they needed to travel the great landscape of the Bulkley Valley, and over the last two decades they have watched Smithers grow into the community it is today, with no signs of slowing down.

“Our first year in business we sold about 15 to 20 snowmobiles,” said Brown. “It was quite a few for our first year in business and from there we just built up over the years and in the middle 90s one year we sold over a hundred, the whole snowmobile industry was really huge back then.”

Geri and John bring many years of experience to the table. Originally from the Yukon Territory, they have been around the sport of snowmobiling for close to 30 years, selling and racing snowmobiles before even moving to Smithers.

“John has been racing snowmobiles since he was 12,” said Brown, making him an expert on snowmobiling and the perfect man for any kind of maintenance job.

“I think the fact that we’ve been in business for 20 years has helped us too because we’re reliable, were here and you know you can always call on John, everybody goes to John when they need something fixed,” said Brown.

However their expertise has not only been valuable for business purposes but also for community relationships. Every year in February Trails North organizes a couple of events including the Snowmobile Drag Races and the Kids Races at Heritage Park, making way for the young generation to embrace the sport of snowmobiling, cementing Trails North in Smithers more as a community staple than just another business.

Despite the fact that 2009 was a tough year for any business, Trails North seems to have overcome the economic downturn and continued with business as usual.

“Because we have been in business so long, we know that there are always downturns that come,” Brown said. “So when things were booming, like our last two years, we made sure we were putting stuff away because we know that downturns will come and we made sure we were prepared.”

Although it was a much different place 20 years ago Trails North has grown and evolved, just as Smithers has, starting off selling only snowmobiles and small engines to selling top of the line ATVs as well as other outdoor equipment. Now there’s not much you can’t get at Trails North to keep you moving through the back country.

“When we first started here there was just a core group of snowmobilers,” said Brown. “At first it really grew in the first couple of years in business, and it became more of a family thing. But the ATV industry has really grown since we’ve been in business, and now it is still growing.”

Looking ahead to the next 20 years, Geri and John are hoping to pass the business on to the next generation to keep alive and well, just as it was in the beginning.

“We would like to see the business pass to the younger generation, and have the same excitement we had when we first started,” Brown explained. “There is a lot of excitement in this business, it’s a real young persons business.”

Trails North has been keeping Trails North connected to the community that has given them so much, and will continue to do so well into the future.