When Chuck Mumford first launched Pit Viper, the Salt Lake City-based sunglass firm he based with school 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 shiny military-grade sun shades he’d designed.
“I would take it everywhere I went,” Mumford says. “I was totally ruthless.”
The Pit Viper founders name this “briefcasing,” and Garcin says it is grow to be an indicator of their advertising and marketing technique. “You get one party person to say, ‘Hey man, what’s in the case?’ and suddenly you’ve got five people reaching in and trying on glasses.”
The firm, which sells wildly colourful wraparound sun shades, says on its web site that it’s “serious about taking things less seriously.” The glasses are available grownup and child sizes and run wherever from $40 to $140, with a variety of kinds suited to seashore sports activities, biking, snow sports activities, and ball sports activities. The firm’s mission, per its web site, is evident: “Pit Viper is here to party. Sunrise to sunset, reef breaks to ridge lines, hole shots to holy shit.”
From the design of the web site itself (suppose Windows 2000 on shrooms) to the model’s social media feed and the ridiculous emails it sends to prospects, 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, “Thank you for shopping at Pit Viper. We are a business,” and features a hyperlink to an absurd video that includes a person on fireplace working by means of an workplace constructing with each employee at each desk sporting 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 personal firm, doesn’t disclose its funds, although in a single 2022 Wall Street Journal story the corporate reported income upwards of $40 million that yr.) Mumford and Garcin are driving excessive on a low-tech design aesthetic, dirtbag ski tradition, and hard-to-match buyer loyalty. Their following consists of outside adventurers, professional athletes, and weekend warriors. (Extreme snowboarding pioneer Glen Plake and NFL gamers Patrick Mahomes and Rob Gronkowski and are among the many model’s high-profile followers.)