there's a point in the business, where the business outgrows the family and the rivermen were at that point. >> so they came to an agreement. got a team of investors and each founding owner maintained partial ownership in the new company with paul serving as the ceo. while the founding companies all fall under the adventures on the gorge umbrella, the brands themselves live on independently. >> when i walk around this campus here, i still see logos for all three companies. why do that? it seems more expensive and maybe a bit confusing for your company. >> the loyalty is to brand. and in lots of cases, the companies have been around for 30-plus years. when you say the rivermen or class six, they automatically become emotional and tied to that brand. >> but adventures on the gorge means nothing to them. >> adventures on the gorge means nothing to them and that's the tricky part. >> many employee who is live through the merger are still quite loyal to the individual brands. >> i found a lot of the back room operations, housekeeping, accounting, maintenance, even reservations staff, the o

classic river runner, mountain river tours and rivermen.hey had all started in the 1970s, and each had their very own personalities. they were friendly competitors. and they all loved running the business they were running. so you can only imagine what it was like when the owners of these companies were approached about merging their operations into one. >> when paul first called me, i really wasn't interested. i actually said no. we had a good gig going, we were growing, we were making money, not a lot, but we were paying our bills. >> that's brian campbell, the founder of rivermen. a former financial guy who spent his weekends as a river guide for class six. he was called to change his job, his lifestyle and become the ceo of a new or sort of new company. >> first thing i realized in this thing, they were very profitable at one time and because of overcapacity, price cutting and a little bit of a decline in revenue due to users, that they weren't nearly as profitable. to make this work, i was going to have to merge at least two if not thr