Our Story
How a few shirts became M22.
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On the water from day one.
We grew up in Neahtawanta, at the tip of a peninsula surrounded by water and woods. We cut wood to heat the house, explored every single day and learned to read the weather like sailors.
The lake was our playground. We just didn't know yet how much of our lives it would shape.
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Two broke kids and a kite.
In college we didn't have much money, but we had the wind. The first time we tried kiteboarding, everything changed.
Every spare hour and every spare dollar went into kites, boards and gas money to get to wherever the wind was blowing. We weren't building anything. We just wanted to be out there.
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Brothers of Neahtawanta.
We loved it so much we wanted everyone to feel it, so we turned our obsession into a business teaching others to kiteboard.
We called it Broneah, for the brothers of Neahtawanta. The beach was our classroom, the van was our office and a lot of our students became lifelong friends.
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A life spent chasing wind.
Kiting took us everywhere. We became figures in the sport, worked as editors at large for Kiteboarding Magazine, competed, shot photos and traveled the world for years.
Always doing what we loved, in places we loved, living for that feeling you get when the wind fills in and the day is wide open.
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A few shirts for our friends.
Back home, our crew of kiters and surfers was always out along the M22 coast, searching for the best wind and waves. So we made a small run of shirts to hand out to them.
When Traverse Magazine ran a story on kiteboarding, Keegan happened to be wearing one on the cover. People started asking where they could get one, and we kept making more.
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It just grew.
There was never a business plan. Friends told friends, the shirts showed up at beaches and trailheads, and in 2004 M22 became a real company.
Two decades later, it's still the same idea: get out there, love the place you're in and share that feeling with the people around you.
