When sports gear retailer Backcountry.com launched an expanded online community in 2008, the founders considered it a marketing experiment. But a year later, interacting with 85,000 outdoor “fanatics” has transformed the mission of his 650-employee company, says President John Bresee. The open community takes Backcountry.com’s substance beyond just “what we say” and makes it all about “what they say,” says Bresee, who founded the Park City [Utah] company with CEO Jim Holland in 1996. He spoke recently to Smart Answers

columnist Karen E. Klein; edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

You and your partner founded Backcountry.com 13 years ago. Did it start out online?

Yes. We have a store in Salt Lake City, near our warehouse, considering we have to have a physical location to satisfy our vendor agreements. But that’s not what we’re skilled at.

I’m a road and mountain biker and a skier, and Jim is a fanatical mountaineer […]

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