A Business Called Home

Before Portland Gear became a travel-bag business, Marcus Harvey had a simple proposition: give people something they could wear to show where they belonged. The company began in 2014 with hats and T-shirts. Its name made the allegiance clear. Portland was both the subject and the audience.

For Harvey, that attachment reaches back into family life. His parents met at the University of Oregon, and he and his sister followed them into the Ducks’ orbit. Football games became family rituals. When Portland Gear released an officially licensed Oregon collection in 2023, it drew on memories that existed long before there was a business to attach them to. A familiar logo could carry an entire upbringing.

His practical education started early, too. Running his high-school student store meant ordering stock, paying invoices and handling cash. Later, selling shirts and learning screen printing gave his interest in design a commercial outlet. In a 2020 conversation with Greg Bell, Harvey recalled the early challenge as getting enough shirts sold each day to keep going.

The relationships around that beginning mattered. He said he met his wife the week he started Portland Gear, while a close college friend helped build the business alongside him. In his telling, the company grew through people committing to it together.

That closeness could also become consuming. In a candid 2018 essay, Harvey described living above his store so he could eliminate the commute and remain constantly available. Work followed him through his phone, into his relationship and through supposed days off. He wrote openly about anxiety and the difficulty of separating his own identity from the company’s.

The small changes he described were telling: switching his phone off at night, resisting it first thing in the morning, and giving his relationship more attention. For someone whose business depended on community and connection, being reachable all the time had stopped feeling like an advantage.

His account of everyday life in the 2020 interview was equally grounded. Mornings could include a workout or bike ride, but the dependable habit was checking QuickBooks before email. Evenings included reading, time with his wife and dog, and often another stretch at the computer. Books about business were part of how he taught himself to lead.

The business has since become considerably larger. In February 2026, Harvey told CFO Brew that Portland Gear employed nearly 50 people and was targeting revenue in the “mid-eight figures” for the year. Travel bags were driving its next phase.

He also said he still owned 100 percent of the company. Keeping that ownership meant pursuing loans and larger credit lines to finance growth. Inventory could take four to six months to arrive, leaving decisions about orders and cash tied to sales that had not happened yet.

Harvey had a finance team and controller, but remained closely involved in planning and reviewing transactions. He was considering a senior finance hire as the business became more complex. The founder who once handled the student-store invoices was still watching the money himself.

Portland Gear’s physical presence now includes its downtown flagship, Washington Square, Portland International Airport and Bend’s Old Mill District. The reach has expanded while the name keeps pointing home.

That makes Harvey’s story about more than selling a city’s identity. His public accounts show the work behind growing a business without giving up control, and the personal adjustments required when that business becomes difficult to put down. Portland Gear gives customers a way to carry a place with them. Its founder has had to learn how much of the company to carry himself.