Pit Viper Finds a Following in the Brand’s Sarcastic Humor

Jun 09, 2023

Jun 5, 2023

Pit Viper doesn't take itself too seriously: Their online site is rife with snark and lots of "your mom" jokes. But, 11 years in, the Salt Lake City, Utah company has grown up to be more than the spray painted military sunglasses used to trade for beer and rides up the mountain.

"Oftentimes, I call Pit Viper the joke that's gone too far," said Chris Garcin, who linked with Chuck Mumford to start the eyewear brand in 2012.

Mumford had been spray painting surplus military sunglasses and trading or selling them through a Facebook page in the early aughts. When the two decided to take the concept further, they immediately began selling direct-to-consumer and pushed their way into an industry dominated by its fair share of start-ups in addition to conglomerates such as EssilorLuxottica, which ended 2022 with group sales of 24.5 billion euros ($26.2 billion).

Today, Pit Viper is in more than 1,000 retail doors, ranging from core shops like Ron Jon Surf Shop, Spyder Surfboards, and Jack's Surfboards, all the way to retail chains such as Zumiez. There's also a budding business they affectionately categorized as "Other Crap" on their e-commerce site, with items such as tops, bottoms, hats, and bags.

In the fall, the market will see the refresh of their snow goggle offering, which will introduce new designs with added technologies.

Ultimately, the business, which is privately held and doesn't disclose revenue, is expected to end the year up as Pit Viper continues to notch growth.

"It's been, honestly, pretty great," Garcin said of the business so far this year. "I think that we’re seeing similar headwinds that other people in the consumer goods space are seeing, but it's been amazing to see some of the traction that our retail partners have had with the brand."

While direct-to-consumer may be seeing a bit of a slowdown, the wholesale channel's now making up for that and helping to keep the momentum going, according to Garcin.

Pit Viper co-founders Chris Garcin and Chuck Mumford. Photo courtesy of Pit Viper.

In the beginning, things looked a lot different at Pit Viper.

Mumford had stumbled upon military surplus sunglasses, buying a couple pairs at a time and then spray painting them with cans of paint bought from Home Depot. He applied a splatter design that became a calling card for the brand before it was even a brand.

About three months in, Mumford began calling the sunglasses Pit Vipers.

Garcin was running a small sticker company at the time, selling die-cut decals to ski brands.

When Garcin saw what Mumford was up to, he suggested they try their hand at building a business.

"We were surrounded by constraints," Garcin recalled of the early days. "Chuck was living out of his van, skiing as a pro skier. I was coaching skiing. We really didn't have a dollar to our names, so we didn't have any start-up capital to work with."

The two put about $500 each into the business, building a Shopify site to take their sunglasses to the masses. Garcin and Mumford remain the sole owners of Pit Viper today.

"It wasn't really looking at the competitive landscape or saying ‘OK, this is what product we need to have.’ It was, ‘Here's the product; we love it. We know that's a good start because we’re the customers for it. How do we communicate this to the rest of the world?’" Garcin said. "And that's where we started, just layering our own personalities onto the brand of Pit Viper. We’re both guys that just take ourselves less seriously."

In the early days, Mumford created a near assembly-line process for how he would prep and paint the sunglasses. Then, using Garcin's sticker machine, they would affix the Pit Viper logos to the front of the lenses.

"We would have sticker parties every night where we’d sit down and just very painstakingly and meticulously put decals on the lenses," Garcin said.

The first 10,000 pairs of Pit Vipers were processed that way, over a roughly two-and-a-half to three-year process of labor-intensive work.

"The mail carrier would be like, ‘Wow, you guys have 10 packages; that's pretty good.’ And it just organically grew from there," Garcin recalled. "We gained a really tight-knit group of core followers that really latched on to what we were doing. I think it felt very authentic because it was just us sweating it out."

Photo courtesy of Pit Viper.

Taking the business to new heights, particularly when it came to wholesale, is a rather new endeavor for Pit Viper.

Dave Bottomley joined the company in August 2020 as president, bringing with him deep experience in the ski and outdoor space.

He came to Pit Viper from Swiss mountain company Mammut Sports Group AG, where he served as North American sales manager. Before that, he was at Faction Skis in multiple positions, including North American director, and was also North American director at outerwear brand FW Apparel.

"I appreciate the early retailers. They came to us and dealt with us (when) we had no idea what we were doing in the wholesale business," Garcin said. "Chuck and I didn't have any background there. We didn't know how that sales channel operates and so we were just flying by the seat of our pants. That really started to shift when we brought on our president … and he started working on developing our process and hiring an appropriate team."

About two years ago is when Pit Viper "properly" opened to the wholesale channel, Garcin said.

The brand had already made inroads within the core specialty market – ski, snowboard, surf, and mountain bike shops.

Big box retailers have placed the growth on steroids and given the business even greater visibility to consumers. The larger retailers have also allowed for greater insights into what's selling and helped the brand with its signage and other merchandising in-store.

The mix of retailers speaks to the mix of interests of those running Pit Viper.

"For Chuck and I, and a lot of the leadership here, we participate in these action sports," Garcin said. "It's what defines us, so we’re using our product to mountain bike, ski, wakeboard, you name it. So I think, while our consumer base is a very wide demographic, we end up having a pretty narrow focus on who we’re actually trying to make this product for."

Photo by Dan Krauss of DanK Haus Productions for Pit Viper.

Ultimately, DTC remains the largest source of revenue for the business. While wholesale will continue to grow, Garcin believes DTC will always account for the majority of sales.

He believes there's still more to do in terms of brand experience on the Pit Viper site, which is why that will continue to be a focus even as the wholesale business expands.

"Certainly, being able to interact with our sunglasses in-store and see them in our case, put them on, and take that selfie that you need to send to all of your friends is a great brand experience," he said. "I love being able to directly tell our customers jokes, whether it's right on our website or in our order confirmation email, or our follow-up emails. I think it's just such a fun experience and so I prefer to prioritize that, while we continue to grow into the wholesale side of our business."

That love for directly interacting with the consumer begs the question of whether Pit Viper would eventually get into brick-and-mortar on its own.

"We’ve of course talked about it," Garcin said. "It's funny because we get hung up on only wanting to execute on an idea if we can do it unlike anybody else and it's going to capture someone's attention. So I don't think we’ve landed on the exact idea that we really want to execute in our own store."

For now, a Pit Viper door is not in the cards, Garcin went on to say, as the team focuses both on the online and partner in-store experiences.

Ultimately, the point with anything moving forward is to push the Pit Viper party as far as Garcin, Mumford, and team can – regardless of whether it's DTC, other retailers, core consumers, or more mainstream shoppers.

"Our goal is to tell people about Pit Viper and get them on board with the ‘have fun and take yourself less seriously’ kind of vibe," Garcin said. "The more people we can get to come along with us, the better."

Kari Hamanaka can be reached at [email protected].

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