Kayakers Brains Behind Grateful Heads

Jay Norfleet and Julie Webb’s first business venture was to pool the $25 they had to buy bagels and cream cheese to sell at a Grateful Dead concert.

Next they sold jewelry. Then tie-dyed T-shirts.

“We were inspired to not work for someone else,” Webb said.

Now, the two 26-year-olds are someone else’s boss--employing a fellow river guide to help keep up with demand for Grateful Heads, the durable, colorful helmets they make for kayakers and other white-water adventurers.

Rain and Snow Inc., the company they formed this year in a rented house in the mountains of western Maryland, is shipping 50 of the helmets each week to stores nationwide.

The company has tapped into a booming $100-million market for paddle sport gear. About 15 million people rode a kayak or raft through white water last year, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Rain and Snow’s success leaves Norfleet less time for his first love, being on the water himself.

“The company just kind of engrossed us,” he said.

Norfleet got his first taste of running white water as a child in southeastern Tennessee. A math teacher gave him lessons and by the time he was 18, he had pestered the local tour guides enough to become one himself.

After studying industrial engineering for a few months at Georgia Tech he dropped out of college.

“I purposely left college to aggressively educate myself in something that would give me a living better than a degree,” he said. “I knew I wanted to live in boating.”

He and Webb lived out of a Volkswagen van more than four years while they worked as river guides in eight states and two foreign countries.

Norfleet made his first helmet after becoming frustrated waiting for a friend to customize one.

Norfleet was familiar with the materials he needed: resin, Kevlar and fiberglass because he had used the same materials to build a kayak years before.

He and Webb set up a helmet-making business out of the back of the van.

“We wanted to stay mobile,” Norfleet said.

But the scale of the business quickly outgrew the van and they are settled for now in a rented house across from an old corn field, just a few miles from some of the best white water in the world.

Their helmet styles are distinctive. One is tear-dropped shaped. Another is patterned after a World War II helmet. Many are custom-colored.

Although Grateful Heads retail for about $100, twice as much as more popular models, there are plenty of buyers willing to pay the price.

“I could probably back a truck over it and not hurt it,” said Gary Davis, owner of Upper Yough Expeditions in Friendsville and a Grateful Heads devotee.

Grateful Heads has been named the official helmet of the U.S. Canoe and Kayak Rodeo team for this year’s world championship in Ottawa, Ontario.

World champion free-style kayaker Jamie Simon, who will be competing in Ottawa, switched to Grateful Heads when another brand of helmet she won’t name broke. Her red, black and purple helmet Grateful Heads is light and durable.

“They serve their purpose perfectly,” she said.

Norfleet takes pride in that kind of assessment.

“I’m really concerned about what gets put out,” he said. “If someone said ‘Jay made this,’ I want it to be better than anything else that’s ever been.”