About Us
Outdoor Donkey is a minority-owned, family business located in Minneapolis. Outdoor Donkey products are primarily offered through our online retail store and through our Amazon store. The business was started in 2016 by Merici and Sean out of frustration with a picnic blanket.
Merici and Sean love the outdoors and they enjoy camping, hiking and day trips. Sean is some what of an airplane geek and he wanted to be a pilot since he was a kid. He and his wife Merici got the opportunity to attend AirVenture for the first time in 2010 and have been going back ever since. After leaving AirVenture in 2010, Sean was inspired and more motivated than ever to get his pilot's license. After a long winter of flight training, Sean got his Private Pilot License (PPL) in 2011.
In 2016 Sean and his wife had their first son. Not wanting to miss AirVenture that year, they took their 6 month old baby with them to AirVenture. They had to figure out a way to make sure the baby got his naps while at the air show so they laid out a picnic blanket on the grass. They quickly realized that they needed a "stay put" blanket. The picnic blanket that they were using at the time just kept bunching up with the slightest movement and to make matters worse, the wind kept blowing the corners of the blanket over the baby's face. They thought it would be great to have a blanket that would just “stay put”. After Sean and Merici got back home from AirVenture, they decided to try a couple of ideas to make the blanket stay in one place.
The design they came up with required the use of 4 specially designed stakes which are used to anchor the blanket to the ground so it would not be blown around by the wind or get bunched up easily. This is similar to the concept of using stakes to anchor a tent to the ground. While they were at it, they designed a set of lightweight stakes that would work for the blanket because they could not find stakes that were lightweight yet strong enough to hold the blanket down at the time. After several prototypes, they had a product that was amazing. They called it the "StayPut Connect Picnic Blanket". StayPut because the blanket will stay wherever you put it. Connect because you can easily connect multiple blankets to form one giant blanket.
A byproduct of the StayPut Connect Blanket were some pretty awesome stakes (StayPut Aero™ 7075) that campers love because they are amazingly lightweight, and strong which made them ideal for backpacking. The StayPut Deep-V™ Titanium tent stakes were soon added followed by VersaCord, Big Berth Heavy Duty Tent Stakes, and the Outdoor Donkey Stake Hammer among other products.
Merici and Sean love the outdoors and they enjoy camping, hiking and day trips. Sean is some what of an airplane geek and he wanted to be a pilot since he was a kid. He and his wife Merici got the opportunity to attend AirVenture for the first time in 2010 and have been going back ever since. After leaving AirVenture in 2010, Sean was inspired and more motivated than ever to get his pilot's license. After a long winter of flight training, Sean got his Private Pilot License (PPL) in 2011.
In 2016 Sean and his wife had their first son. Not wanting to miss AirVenture that year, they took their 6 month old baby with them to AirVenture. They had to figure out a way to make sure the baby got his naps while at the air show so they laid out a picnic blanket on the grass. They quickly realized that they needed a "stay put" blanket. The picnic blanket that they were using at the time just kept bunching up with the slightest movement and to make matters worse, the wind kept blowing the corners of the blanket over the baby's face. They thought it would be great to have a blanket that would just “stay put”. After Sean and Merici got back home from AirVenture, they decided to try a couple of ideas to make the blanket stay in one place.
The design they came up with required the use of 4 specially designed stakes which are used to anchor the blanket to the ground so it would not be blown around by the wind or get bunched up easily. This is similar to the concept of using stakes to anchor a tent to the ground. While they were at it, they designed a set of lightweight stakes that would work for the blanket because they could not find stakes that were lightweight yet strong enough to hold the blanket down at the time. After several prototypes, they had a product that was amazing. They called it the "StayPut Connect Picnic Blanket". StayPut because the blanket will stay wherever you put it. Connect because you can easily connect multiple blankets to form one giant blanket.
A byproduct of the StayPut Connect Blanket were some pretty awesome stakes (StayPut Aero™ 7075) that campers love because they are amazingly lightweight, and strong which made them ideal for backpacking. The StayPut Deep-V™ Titanium tent stakes were soon added followed by VersaCord, Big Berth Heavy Duty Tent Stakes, and the Outdoor Donkey Stake Hammer among other products.