🚀 Expanding Access: How GRIT Helps More People Explore the Outdoors with Storemapper

Empowering Outdoor Access with the GRIT Freedom Chair

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GRIT is a small business on a big mission—helping more people explore the outdoors with the GRIT Freedom Chair, an all-terrain wheelchair built to handle grass, gravel, dirt, packed beach sand, and more.

Developed by mechanical engineers at MIT, the GRIT Freedom Chair combines a patented lever-drive system with rugged mountain bike parts to create a powerful, trail-ready wheelchair for its riders.

Now available in multiple seat widths—including a pediatric model, a bariatric model, plus over 30 available accessories—the GRIT Freedom Chair is used by thousands, every year, all around the world. Its community of users includes individuals, families, adaptive sports groups, school systems, libraries, municipalities, national and state parks, and even the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (the VAMC), which provides Freedom Chairs to veterans at no cost. Riders with spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, amputation, hemiplegia, and more, enjoy the GRIT Freedom Chair product line.

GRIT’s mission is simple: Get more people outside—and its reach keeps growing every year.

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From Local to Global: A Chair That’s Changing Lives

The GRIT Freedom Chair is put to great work by organizations like Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which partners with Friends of the Smokies, Catalyst Sports, and Knox County, Tennessee, to organize adaptive hiking days. These events have introduced countless people to outdoor trails, guided by real park rangers. And the movement keeps spreading!

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From Texas Parks and Wildlife to Beaufort County, SC, to the City of Reno, to groups like Accessible Camino, GRIT Freedom Chairs are now part of public programs that offer reservations, group outings, and demo opportunities.

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Individual ambassadors and GRIT enthusiasts volunteer their own GRIT Freedom Chairs for others to try out—expanding access in places a traditional rental system could never reach.

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“Of course, when mobility devices are made readily available to the public, more people can use ’em!” the GRIT team shares. “Mobility equipment—especially trail-capable gear—is expensive. Reserving one might be someone’s best opportunity to enjoy it. And if someone is considering buying one, a test ride can be the best way to know what it’s really like to use the product.”

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The Challenge: Managing a Rapidly Growing Demo Network

Years ago, GRIT’s team could remember every customer and order by heart and could manually direct people to a handful of demo spots. But as new locations—from international hiking groups to local parks—continue to pick up the chairs, they quickly outgrew their internal tracking systems.

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“We used spreadsheets, CRM-generated reports, and even had a giant vinyl map on our office wall with pins for every demo location. Customers who picked up their chairs locally could add their own pins, which was always exciting, especially when we were much smaller than we are today.”

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But the map-on-the-wall method didn’t scale—and it didn’t help their growing remote team or their customers around the world.

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“These other map solutions weren’t sustainable, scalable, or, frankly, particularly useful. We needed a better way to manage demo chairs and make them visible to both our team and the public—wherever they were.”

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Why GRIT Chose Storemapper

That’s when Storemapper came into the picture.

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“Storemapper was an easy choice for a few different reasons,” says the GRIT team. “First and most obvious: It’s an online app, which meant we could update, edit, and rework our map from anywhere, in real-time.”

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Since new demo locations open every month—and the availability of their products—changes frequently, GRIT needed a tool that could grow and adapt quickly. When the GRIT team shifted to remote work, Storemapper’s flexibility became even more critical.

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Favorite Features: Customization Meets Simplicity

GRIT’s small team found a lot to love in Storemapper, especially:

• Custom Pins by Category – Allows users to easily filter between ambassadors, organizations, and locations offering specific types of equipment.
• Custom Fields – Allows GRIT to organize demo data in the most helpful ways for their unique audience.
• Simple Setup – “It took literal minutes to integrate Storemapper into our website. Once our data was clean, it only took about an hour to customize the map the way we wanted.”
• Adaptability – “We’ve reworked our Storemapper map about 200 times so far, and it’s been a breeze every time.”

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The Results: Less Time on Admin, More Time Outside

Today, when someone asks, “Is there a GRIT Freedom Chair demo near me?” the team can pull up the map, filter for relevant locations, and coordinate a test ride in just a few clicks.

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“Storemapper saves us both time and effort,” the team says. “It lets us focus on the meaningful part of our work—getting more people outside with the GRIT Freedom Chair.”

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Thanks to Storemapper, GRIT has turned a once-manual, limited process into a scalable system that supports a global community. And it’s made it possible for more people—regardless of ability, income, or geography—to get outside and explore.

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Want to Bring More People to Your Locations?

Whether you’re managing demo chairs, rental sites, or physical stores, Storemapper makes it easy to connect people with your locations—and scale as you grow.

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