founded 1996 headquarters west valley city and park city utah products outdoor gear owner tsg consumer partners 81 % number of employees 1200 slogan center of gear knowledge website backcountry.com backcountry.com is an online specialty retailer that sells clothing and outdoor recreation gear for hiking camping road biking mountain biking rock climbing ice climbing mountaineering skiing avalanche safety snowboarding fly fishing kayaking rafting road and trail running and more . contents 1 history 2 backcountry athlete sponsorship 3 sickbird award 4 references 5 external links history edit backcountry.com was founded in 1996 with a 2 000 out of pocket investment by lifetime friends jim holland and john bresee . the two started the online business with a sparse collection of avalanche gear and began selling gear from their loft in park city utah under the domain names bcstore.com and backcountrystore.com . 1 the store s first sale a pieps 457 opti finder avalanche beacon happened in february 1997 . 2 the company purchased the domain name backcountry.com for 75 000 in 2004 . 3 backcountry.com grew at an astonishing rate for its first 15 years . it quickly became one of a very few profitable retailers and competed with rei for the lead in this category . rei never lost the lead . after rapid product growth backcountry began to court other categories including discount and one deal at a time odat 4 in an attempt to regain focus and target bargain seekers the company added niche websites such as steepandcheap.com and outlets such as the now defunct backcountryoutlet.com see other backcountry stores below . deeply discounted product was eventually moved to an outlet section accessible from the backcountry.com homepage . on may 7 2007 it was announced that a controlling stake in backcountry.com was sold to liberty media corporation which also controls qvc and other e commerce companies . 5 this transferred effective ownership of the company to billionaire john c. malone . on dec 5 2013 backcountry announced its acquisition of german online outdoor retailer bergfreunde.de . 6 an established and quickly growing presence in the european outdoor market bergfreunde was founded in 2006 in kirchentellinsfurt germany where the business first sold clothing and gear for climbing and mountaineering . bergfreunde has since expanded its product selection to include gear for hiking camping snowsports and avalanche safety . on july 1 2015 tsg consumer partners purchased liberty s stake in backcountry . 7 on december 11 2015 backcountry ceo jill layfield resigned from her position as backcountry.com ceo after working for the company in various capacities for 11 years . 8 backcountry athlete sponsorship edit backcountry.com launched a non traditional athlete sponsorship program in 2008 which requires that the athletes promote themselves and the brand they represent through social media . 9 10 backcountry.com sponsored athletes are responsible for actively driving traffic to backcountry.com through youtube facebook twitter myspace and blogs . in an interview on climbing.com backcountry.com s pro team manager jon atencio said athletes will have new motivation to participate in community write product reviews and make their presence known however they can and we plan to do everything we can to leverage their community action . 9 the program also acts as an affiliate marketing program in which backcountry.com provides athletes with tools to track and measure their online impact and athletes get a percentage return on each sale that is referred through their community presence . 9 sickbird award edit backcountry.com uses the sickbird belt buckle to recognize standout athletes at the mountain sports international subaru big mountain freeskiing world tour . the sickbird is awarded to one athlete at each freeskiing world tour destination . references edit peters kurt . the age of innovation december 2005 internet retailer the retailers outside magazine march 2009 page 61 press release 2004 internet retailer 2005 press release may 2007 press release dec 2013 1 2 a b c backcountry.com team athletes get after it ... on the interweb april 28 2008 climbing magazine backcountry.com adds more rippers to line up march 31 2008 transworld business external links edit backcountry.com retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title backcountry.com & oldid 734747051 categories companies based in utahonline retailers of the united statessporting goods retailers of the united statescompanies established in 19961996 establishments in utah navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent 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