escape-goat.com

Backcountry.com is an interesting place to work and sometimes it’s just down right entertaining. Here’s a pretty funny email that was sent to the company by an employee some time ago. This is copied straight from the email, I haven’t edited it at all, except to change the names:

This is for all the dog lovers at work. About 2 years ago now my sister adopted a beagle/chocolate lab mix (we think). His name’s Chester and he drives us all nuts.

Not to say he’s a bad dog, but he requires a lot of attention and love and since my sister is often very busy with work and school, she doesn’t have time to really care for the dog as she would like, and the rest of the family doesn’t really want him. This forces him to spend a lot of time in a kennel since we don’t have a secure backyard (he likes to run off and wander) and are getting sick of him mostly because he has seizures.

Generally I would say he has a seizure once every 2nd or 3rd day, but since no one is home to watch him all day every day it’s hard to say for sure. During one he becomes completely incapacitated for about 10-15 mins, and he looses control of his bladder to a degree. A few times he has had a seizure that lasts almost 30 mins, and it can take an additional 30 before he can walk and interact normally with his environment.

My sister has tried medication, but it didn’t seem to have any impact. He’s often very energetic and will usually chew on a bone, but if he thinks you’re not around he’ll get into the trash. The family wants the dog gone and my sis is reluctant, but if I can find a good home for him then maybe she’ll be more willing. For those interested I can provide a picture, so just email me.

Thanks!

Now don’t get me wrong. The poor dog is obviously suffering from many ailments and needs someone special to take care of him. That’s not funny.

However, what I do find funny is the tone of this email. He starts off by telling us the dog drives everyone nuts and everyone wants the dog gone, and proceeds to tell us all the bad reasons they want the dog gone. He says that the dog runs off, has seizures (at which point he loses control of his bladder) and knocks the trash over when no one is around. He’s not doing a very good job of “making the sale”.

As if steepandcheap.com and whiskeymilitia.com weren’t enough, we decided to pour gas on the fire and launch a new single deal site called chainlove.com using the same model but selling cycling/mountain biking gear at ridiculous prices. Here’s a good example:

Pinarello F3:13 Ultegra Road Bike, normally $2,999.95 selling for $1130. Yeah you read correctly, $1130!

Most people think that these sites are what we use for dumping our leftover inventory. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is we go out and aggressively buy out inventory from our suppliers, only if we can offer it at least 40% off the retail price. Yes, you’ll see these products on backcountryoutlet.com or backcountry.com, but only because we have to have a place to list them in case they don’t sell out. But these products were bought specifically for our deal sites.

Far too many of my friends have already told me how much trouble chainlove.com is going to cause with their spouses and/or their budgets. It’s like drinking in front of an alcoholic. With all the frenzy that chainlove.com is already getting, it begs the question: What else do we at Backcountry.com have up our sleeves? Something else to contribute to the delinquency of an adult, most likely. I hope we have good lawyers.