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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 previous Samsonite briefcase at Goodwill, spray painted it neon colours, and crammed it with a bunch of the outrageously shiny military-grade sun shades he’d designed.
“I’d take it all over the place I went,” Mumford says. “I used to be completely ruthless.”
The Pit Viper founders name this “briefcasing,” and Garcin says it is change into an indicator of their advertising and marketing technique. “You get one occasion particular person to say, ‘Hey man, what’s within the case?’ and all of a sudden you’ve obtained 5 folks reaching in and making an attempt on glasses.”
The corporate, which sells wildly colorful wraparound sunglasses, says on its web site that it’s “critical about taking issues much less severely.” The glasses are available in grownup and child sizes and run wherever from $40 to $140, with a spread of types fitted to seashore sports activities, biking, snow sports activities, and ball sports activities. The corporate’s mission, per its web site, is obvious: “Pit Viper is right here to occasion. Dawn to sundown, reef breaks to ridge traces, gap photographs to holy shit.”
From the design of the web site itself (assume Home windows 2000 on shrooms) to the model’s social media feed and the ridiculous emails it sends to clients, 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 buying at Pit Viper. We’re a enterprise,” and features a hyperlink to an absurd video that includes a person on hearth operating 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 yr.) Mumford and Garcin are using 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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