Dr. Larry Andrew | Founder of SKÖ Gear
DR. LARRY ANDREW Medicine, family & the outdoors.
Long before SKÖ Gear became a company, the ideas behind it were taking shape in two very different places: a fertility clinic and the mountains of Utah.
For Dr. Larry Andrew, family, medicine and time outdoors were never separate chapters. Together, they became the experiences that eventually shaped the kind of company he wanted to build.
Dr. Andrew has spent more than two decades practicing reproductive medicine in Utah. It is work centered around people making one of the most consequential journeys of their lives: trying to build a family.
Away from medicine, his reset has long been the outdoors. Camping, hunting, mountains and trips with his children created both the memories he valued most and, eventually, the practical frustrations that helped inspire SKÖ Gear.
Helping people build families.
As the founder of East Bay Fertility in Provo, Utah, Dr. Andrew has spent more than 25 years helping patients navigate fertility treatment.
His work has included IVF, IUI and the many decisions, appointments and difficult conversations that can accompany fertility care.
The principle behind the practice has remained straightforward: advanced fertility care should feel personal, thoughtful and accessible to the families seeking it.
Couples helped welcome a child into their family through Dr. Andrew's work at East Bay Fertility .
A career built around families made family impossible to treat as an afterthought.
Medicine demanded a great deal of Dr. Andrew's time. The time outside of it became intentional: family, mountains, campsites and shared experiences that could not be recreated later.
The mountains became home base.
Weekends and time away from the clinic often meant going outside: camping trips, hunting seasons, mountain roads and days spent teaching his children the same appreciation for the outdoors that had shaped him.
Those trips became more than recreation. They were a way to make time together deliberate.
And eventually, they exposed a problem that would become the beginning of SKÖ: gear that looked ready for adventure did not always feel built for what actual family trips asked of it.
Not a boardroom idea. A practical frustration.
SKÖ grew from time spent actually using outdoor gear. Dr. Andrew wanted equipment that could handle the environments his family was already spending time in rather than equipment that merely looked the part.
Spend enough time outside.
Repeated trips reveal which design details matter and which ones only sound good in a product description.
Notice what the gear gets wrong.
Outdoor equipment should make the experience easier to enjoy, not become another thing the family has to worry about.
Start solving the problem differently.
That frustration eventually became SKÖ Gear and a focus on carrying important equipment through demanding environments.
Gear should earn the trust people place in it.
Medicine and outdoor products are obviously different worlds, but Dr. Andrew approaches both with a similar mindset: preparation matters, details matter and people notice when something they depend on is treated seriously.
SKÖ became a way to apply that thinking to the outdoors. The goal was not simply to make another bag. It was to build equipment around the moments and environments people actually wanted it for.
What carried from one career into the other.
SKÖ is not a medical company, and outdoor gear is not medicine. But the way Dr. Andrew thinks about responsibility, preparation and people carries across both.
Family matters.
The company grew from experiences Dr. Andrew wanted to share with his own family, not from chasing an abstract outdoor lifestyle.
Preparation matters.
Good outcomes are easier when the important details are handled before they become problems.
Reliability matters.
Equipment earns its place when people can trust it to perform the job they bought it to perform.
People come first.
Products are ultimately tools. Their purpose is to support the people and experiences surrounding them.
The founder at a glance.
Build gear worthy of the places people take it.
For Dr. Larry Andrew, SKÖ is connected to the same things that shaped the rest of his life: family, responsibility and a belief that experiences are better when the tools supporting them simply do their job.
The environments have changed over the years. The principle has not.
See what those early ideas became.
Explore the SKÖ story, see today's waterproof gear, or learn more about Dr. Andrew's work in reproductive medicine.