Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2020 - 22

SKI BUM THINK TANK
The author (left) meeting
with Dustin Robertson
(middle) and Bresee
(right) in the early days.

MARKETING

Retail Rebel
Backcountry.com co-founder John Bresee taught us that the
best way to live is to embrace the extremes. by Mike Geraci
WRITING ABOUT DEATH IS AN ART. I WAS
recently reminded of this by a handwritten
card my vet mailed to our family at the passing of Madison, our 14-year-old yellow lab.
Compassionate, celebratory, and empathetic without smoothing the rough edges that
made Madison, shall we say, lovable, it hit all
the right notes. I won't pretend to have that
deft a touch.
John Bresee would appreciate that I introduced this mini-memorial to him with an
anecdote about my dog. "Shock me" was one of
his tenets. But we'll get to that.
John Bresee passed away on June 29,
2019. He was less the proverbial bull in a
china shop and more the Ducati in the Priuspacked Whole Foods parking lot. He and Jim
Holland co-founded Backcountry.com (nee
BackcountryStore.com) in 1996. They were
yin and yang: John, the disruptive visionary
technologist; Jim the level-headed counterweight keeping the enterprise grounded in
reality-their version of it anyway.

22 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ Winter 2020

Through the years we worked together
(I was the PR "agency" for Backcountry),
John and I shared many meetings, meals,
and walks around the Backcountry.com
warehouse-walks in which he attempted to
debase me of what were obviously my misplaced beliefs about any number of issues,
both personal and professional. In other
words, John cared deeply about the things
that John cared deeply about.
Hard on the outside, soft on the inside,
John was opinionated, stubborn, gruff, candid, passionate, funny, charming, brilliant,
joyous, and generous-with his time and advice. Reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson,
I was struck by the similarities.
Like Jobs, John believed in the future
that technology promised and was eager to
get there. "Drive fast, take chances"' was not
just a sound bite to John. Indeed, as anyone
who has been in a car or on a motorcycle
with him knows, John took the concept of
"escape velocity" literally.

That was what was awesome about going
along for the ride with John. The status quo
was unacceptable. He knew that it takes extremes to break out of the pack. Which gets to
John's gift to me, one that I will always carry.
John's many tenets surfaced during conversations in which we conspired on how to disrupt the PR game in the digital age. Many have
stayed with me, but one in particular I think
about every day: The risky way is the safe way;
the safe way is the risky way.
This was the cornerstone of everything
John did, whether independently or in collaboration. And it's a useful reminder for anyone
trying to manage Backcountry.com today. In
John's world, a strategy was not a strategy if it
just mimicked what everyone else was doing,
only better. For Backcountry.com to realize
its promise, we needed to focus more on the
community than the corporation. We had to
be willing to do and be and go where others
were not. In true service, that meant using our
talents, instincts, and experience to contain or
leverage whatever disruption occurred.
The risky/safe paradox sounds callous and
reckless. Sometimes it was. Usually it was calculated, but it always proved true. With everyone so focused on data these days, going with
your gut is a bold step.
Just before his unexpected death this June,
in response to one of our ongoing debates
about the future, this one dedicated to the
relevance and reality of the Segway (Yes, that
Segway. Did I mention John was stubborn?),
I sent John a link to a Wired article called,
"Fifteen Years Ago, the Segway promised
to make cars obsolete. Here's why it didn't."
Clearly, I was chumming for a bite.
John wrote back, "Mike, I know I wasn't
easy but I had such a blast working with you.
Why don't more people know that ecommerce
and PR can be fun and funny. It really has to be
that way to really kill it. Thanks for your brilliance, it was a joy."
Perfect John. Just when I was ready to
wrestle, he gave me a hug. O.R.
-Mike Geraci is principal of Geraci &
Co., a brand strategy and communications
group in Jackson, Wyoming.

Photo courtesy Dustin Robertson

THE PULSE

http://www.Backcountry.com http://www.Backcountry.com http://www.Backcountry.com http://www.Backcountry.com http://www.Backcountry.com http://www.BackcountryStore.com

Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2020