After six profitable years of triple digit growth one might ask, “Why mess with what’s working?” To co-founder John Bresee, the answer is simple. “We’ve coveted the Backcountry.com domain name since we began in 1996 and we finally had enough money squirreled under the mattress to seal the deal. We continually make justifications about the domain being five letters shorter and how with our traffic that will equate to 45 million fewer keystrokes a year for our customers. But the truth is, we always considered ourselves to be Backcountry.com…we just didn’t own it.”

In 1996, when Bresee and Jim Holland founded the company, Backcountry.com was already taken and the founders could barely come up with the $75 to register bcstore.com, their first domain. In 1998 they made their first attempt to purchase Backcountry.com, but the price at that time was $5,000, and they had $500. As their company grew and became more solvent, the seller continuously raised his price, keeping the powerful domain name frustratingly out of reach. In 2003 the founders realized that the millions spent on marketing BackcountryStore.com was also building the type-in traffic to Backcountry.com, essentially paying to drive traffic to competitors while buoying the seller’s confidence in his ability to fetch a high price for the URL.

Last week Holland and Bresee wrote the big check to end the chase and rename the company once and for all.

“While $75k is a lot of scratch, its well worth it for the long term brand that we are building,” said a bemused Jim Holland, Backcountry.com’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “This name change and domain purchase is not an example of a Web survivor returning to the churn and burn years of the dot com implosion, it merely represents a re-branding effort and an expansion of our options.”

While the name will change, the goal of the company remains the same. “We’re focused on building the best high-end, specialty outdoor resource on the Web, and we now have a prime piece of Internet real estate upon which to build it,” said Holland. “The Backcountry.com domain allows us to diversify our offerings and to enter new markets that are natural extensions within the backcountry category more seamlessly, and with more consumer permission, than before,” Holland said.

When pressed for details on the company’s future plans, Holland hinted that, “They have to do with the backcountry”.

The online outdoor industry is rapidly growing and Backcountry.com endeavors to be the site that consumers think of when they think about the outdoors.

“Currently, on-line purchases of sporting goods equipment account for less than 3% of total purchases. If sporting goods follows all other on-line category trends then sales in this category should grow exponentially for some time.” said Holland. About Backcountry.com – “We are backcountry.”

Located in Heber City, Utah, Backcountry.com (www.backcountry.com) is an e-commerce company that specializes in outdoor gear for backcountry adventures including backpacking, climbing, hiking, trail running, skiing, snowboarding, and adventure travel. Founded in 1996, Backcountry.com services outdoor gear aficionados in search of the best selection of premium outdoor gear and ships orders out of a state-of-the-art warehouse in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company has been recognized as a Top 50 Web site by Internet Retailer Magazine and has received BizRate.com’s Circle of Excellence Gold Honoree award for customer service the last three years. For more information, contact Mike Geraci, Base Camp Communications, (307) 734-7575, mgeraci@base-camp1.com