Door County Adventure Center is such a diverse operation that it is hard to sum up everything we offer in one name. We have five sites in Door County that offer a wide variety of activities including team building, leadership development, zip lining, a high & low ropes course, paddle boarding and kayaking. Our company growth over the past 25 years has resulted in several name changes.
Door County Adventure Center, formerly known as the Team Leadership Center, was founded by Timothy L. Pflieger in the fall of 1994. His family invested in his vision by approving the use of the Pflieger property in the town of Sevastopol. Together they turned a turn-of-the-century dairy barn into a team building facility and the outside grounds into a high & low ropes course.
In October of that year, renovations began on the building to convert the structure into a useable space for adventure-based learning. Jon Pflieger, Tim’s younger brother, was hired as a general contractor for the renovation project. A.B.E.E., Inc. was contracted for the construction of the high-low ropes challenge course. In January of 1995, Team Leadership Center was incorporated.
The Team Leadership Center’s acronym, TLC, was the inspiration behind its name. Its marketing tag line stating, “Is it time to give your team a little TLC?” Originally, the Team Leadership Center exclusively worked with corporate programs and incorporated kayaking and its ropes course into those programs. A year later, after a demand for kayak tours arose, we expanded and opened a branch of the business called Kayaking Adventures.
The company later added its gravity zip line, which gained attention quickly. An interest in zip lining arose from the general public, and we opened our course to visitors. The name Kayaking Adventures became irrelevant, so the company rebranded itself in 2011 as Door County Adventure Center. Our company now offered more than just kayaking, and our name had to accurately reflect this.
The main reason Team Leadership Center changed to Door County Adventure Center was the company’s move to service the tourism market. For years one of The Team Leadership Center’s taglines read “Door County’s Adventure Center”, so when the task of changing the company’s name arose the tagline was adopted. We continued using “The Team Leadership Center” to reflect the corporate programming portion of our business and “Door County’s Adventure Center” was used to market the pay-for-play aspect of the company. Needless to say using two names got a little confusing and after doing so for several years we’ve decided that it’s time to make a change one last time.
This 2016 season, we are re-branding to “Door County Adventure Center” to encompass all aspects of our business. We have partnered with Arketype, a Green Bay based marketing company, to develop our new brand standards. We are striving for consistency in an attempt to solidify who we are and who we want to be. Door County Adventure Center offers a variety of activities as a company that no other name could quite describe. With that being said, we didn’t abandon “The Team Leadership Center” completely. We now use that as a description of one of our locations ~ Door County Adventure Center at the Team Leadership Center site.
Join us for one of our many adventures at one of locations in Door County!
- Door County Adventure Center at the Team Leadership Center site in Sturgeon Bay
- Door County Adventure Center at the Egg Harbor Village Beach
- Door County Adventure Center at the Stone Harbor Marina
- Door County Adventure Center at the Whitefish Dunes State Park
- Door County Adventure Center at Rowleys Bay Resort
-Amanda Bagnall-Newman, Marketing Intern
