The two childhood friends launched their now ubiquitous online gear store from
a garage in Heber City, Utah. Bresee is the visionary; Holland watches the bottom line. Now, after more than 20 million site visitors per month, it's safe to call their 14-year run an overnight success. Here's how they did it.
1991
On the advice of his mother and a fellow burger-flipper named Natty Dread, John Bresee pays $191 at wholesale for an avalanche transceiver in Alta, Utah, and calls it "the coolest thing I ever owned." Bresee imagines a store that sells high-end avalanche-safety gear.
1995
Then 27-year-old Jim Holland, former U.S. Olympic ski jumper and recent U. of Vermont grad, packs up his car and drives out to Park City. He tells his parents he plans to
become an entrepreneur.
1995
In Salt Lake City, Bresee starts the Wasatch Canyon Reporter, a free, outdoor-oriented, community newspaper. He barely scrapes by, eating ramen noodles and racking up credit-card debt.
1996
Bresee and Holland, friends since third grade, move in together in Park City. Bresee convinces Holland not to go to business school and instead to start an avalanche-safety and backcountry-ski
business. Backcountry.com is born.
February 1997
After five weeks online, Backcountry makes its first sale: a yellow Pieps 457 avalanche transceiver. Holland's DOS-based credit-card-processing software fails, so the customer has to send in a check, which allows Holland the time to go out and buy the item, since Backcountry has no inventory.
1999
Refusing to take dot-com venture capital, Bresee and Holland scavenge carpet from the side of the road to decorate their Heber City garage. They trade a pair of telemark ski boots to a ontractor for a framing job to separate the "office" from the "store."
June 2001
Pilfering boxes from the recycling center and shaping them with steak knives is finally
too slow a shipping method to keep up with orders. Backcountry moves out of the garage and into a nearby warehouse.
May 2004
Bresee and Holland, who'd been using the domains bcstore.com and backcountrystore.com, finally acquire the domain backcountry.com. Unfortunately, they have to pay a squatter $75,000 for it.
May 2005
Fueled by phenomenal growth, and one-deal-at-a-time sub-projects like steepandcheap.com, Backcountry moves its inventory of more than 6,000 products into a 207,000-square-foot warehouse. It's the fourth move to a larger facility since leaving the garage.
Today
Having sold more than 10,000 avalanche beacons, Backcountry now employs 940 people, stocks more than 35,000 products, and is on track to rake in $300 million in sales this year, recession be damned.
