When Chuck Mumford first launched Pit Viper, the Salt Lake Metropolis-based sunglass firm he based with faculty buddy Chris Garcin in 2012, he picked up an outdated Samsonite briefcase at Goodwill, spray painted it neon colours, and stuffed it with a bunch of the outrageously shiny military-grade sun shades he’d designed.
“I might take it in every single place I went,” Mumford says. “I used to be completely ruthless.”
The Pit Viper founders name this “briefcasing,” and Garcin says it is develop into an indicator of their advertising and marketing technique. “You get one celebration particular person to say, ‘Hey man, what’s within the case?’ and out of the blue you’ve acquired 5 individuals reaching in and attempting on glasses.”
The corporate, which sells wildly colorful wraparound sunglasses, says on its web site that it’s “critical about taking issues much less significantly.” The glasses are available grownup and child sizes and run anyplace from $40 to $140, with a spread of kinds suited to seashore sports activities, biking, snow sports activities, and ball sports activities. The corporate’s mission, per its web site, is evident: “Pit Viper is right here to celebration. Dawn to sundown, reef breaks to ridge strains, gap pictures to holy shit.”
From the design of the web site itself (suppose Home windows 2000 on shrooms) to the model’s social media feed and the ridiculous emails it sends to prospects, the Pit Viper expertise is an train in revisiting the neon-colored, potty-humor-filled, throw-down vibe of the ’90s. (One Pit Viper affirmation e-mail says, “Thanks for procuring at Pit Viper. We’re a enterprise,” and features a hyperlink to an absurd video that includes a person on hearth working by an workplace constructing with each employee at each desk sporting Pit Vipers.)
Having now logged 10 years in enterprise, Pit Viper has about 100 staff and has earned many tens of millions of {dollars} in income. (Pit Viper, as a non-public firm, doesn’t disclose its funds, although in a single 2022 Wall Avenue Journal story the corporate reported income upwards of $40 million that 12 months.) Mumford and Garcin are driving excessive on a low-tech design aesthetic, dirtbag ski tradition, and hard-to-match buyer loyalty. Their following consists of outside adventurers, professional athletes, and weekend warriors. (Excessive snowboarding pioneer Glen Plake and NFL gamers Patrick Mahomes and Rob Gronkowski and are among the many model’s high-profile followers.)
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