Branded e-commerce and WhiskeyMillitia.com

In the past two days, two people close to me have sent me links to WhiskeyMilitia.com. It’s a slick e-commerce site site targeting the Shaun White generation that follows the woot.com promotional format of putting one heavily discounted item on sale at once until it “sells out.”

About a week and a half ago I wrote about the Liberty Media purchase of Backcountry.com. Backcountry.com runs the extremely successful SteepandCheap.com, which also employs the woot.com promotional format. Backcountry.com also operates several “branded” outdoor equipment ecommerce sites (see Tramdock.com and Dogfunk.com).

Well, it turns out WhiskeyMilitia is a Backcountry.com site too. These sites are great examples of effectively e-commerce branding. Kids who like to think they’re skier punks (of which their are a surprising number) want to buy stuff from a site that looks like WhiskeyMilitia…overgrown kids like myself like to think we’re big mountain skiers want to buy stuff from a site that looks like Tramdock. Burton Snowboards has always done extremely effective branding within this same consumer group. Burton, just like REI, EMS, LL Bean, Columbia, Patagonia, Arcteryx and many other outdoor brands before it, was super popular its early years. However as many brands tend to evolve, the first wave of popularity was quite strong but it quickly waned when the mavens started moving to less mainstream brands. Burton broke the mold in this group and was able to quickly create several affiliate brands (R.E.D., Anon, B by Burton, Gravis, and newly acquired Channel Islands) which have helped Burton retain market dominance…through brands intentionally segregated from the mother Burton brand.

Backcountry has taken the effective woot.com promotional strategy and combined it with effective branding that is 100% within website design. Equipment ordered from Tramdock, Dogfunk, and WhiskeyMilitia all come from the same warehouse outside of Salt Lake City and in many cases the equipment is the exact same stuff, but the design of the site on which it was purchased makes a huge impact on the buyer. This type of branded e-commerce is certainly not limited to outdoor equipment retail and will soon become the norm on the web.

Liberty Media buys Backcountry.com

Alarmclock is reporting today that Liberty Media is buying out Backcountry.com. I am a huge fan of Backcountry.com. They have amazing selection and customer service and have tons and tons of affiliate relationships with other outdoor gear retailers. If you search for any sort of outdoor gear online, virtually all of the retailers you see are actually Backcountry affiliates. As the alarmclock article mentions, they are based in Park City, UT, started from scratch in ’96 and have done a great job with their entire business, including rolling out specialized sites like tramdock.com (freeride/big mountain skiing) and steepandcheap.com (highly addictive woot.com format for outdoor gear). Just last week I got an amazing deal on a high powered headlamp on steepandcheap. Stay away from that site if you like gear – it is seriously addictive! I know a bunch of folks that work at Backcountry.com and they all love it.

Apparently Jim Holland wrote this to his employees about the deal:

This past Saturday, John and I completed a transaction for the sale of the majority of Backcountry.com. Simultaneously, The Gods delivered an epic powder day at The Bird, so we consider that to be a good omen. Our new partner is Liberty Media , a large holding company that owns interests in a wide array of cutting-edge ecommerce and media companies.

John and I remain significant investors in Backcountry.com and we will remain in our positions. Liberty is an appealing partner for many reason, but first and foremost we liked the approach they use where they leave companies like ours to run ourselves. They don’t intend to make any personnel changes and they won’t be sending any employees or managers to us; no suits roaming the halls. The company will run just as it has, with the same people and the same goals and vision. Liberty’s management team loves where we’re going and they’re psyched to help us get there.

Congrats to Backcountry! Hopefully they can stay the course and continue to provide great service and great deals on great gear. I will definitely continue to be a loyal customer so long as this is the case.