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 vivid 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 change into a trademark of their advertising technique. “You get one occasion particular person to say, ‘Hey man, what’s within the case?’ and abruptly you’ve bought 5 folks reaching in and attempting on glasses.”
The corporate, which sells wildly colourful wraparound sun shades, says on its web site that it’s “critical about taking issues much less critically.” The glasses are available in grownup and child sizes and run anyplace from $40 to $140, with a spread of kinds fitted 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 occasion. Dawn to sundown, reef breaks to ridge strains, 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 purchasing at Pit Viper. We’re a enterprise,” and features a hyperlink to an absurd video that includes a person on fireplace working by way of an workplace constructing with each employee at each desk carrying Pit Vipers.)
Having now logged 10 years in enterprise, Pit Viper has about 100 workers and has earned many thousands and thousands 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 using excessive on a low-tech design aesthetic, dirtbag ski tradition, and hard-to-match buyer loyalty. Their following contains out of doors 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.)
