HEBER CITY — If customers had an offline question about their online purchase at Jim Holland and John Bresee's Internet outdoor retail store in 1997, a call to the service line would have been answered by a distinctively foreign accent.

On the Web site, www.backcountrystore.com, shoppers had their pick of about 50 pieces of specialty equipment for skiing the backcountry — regions beyond the bounds of ski resorts typically untouched by novice skiers.

What the site's patrons probably didn't know is that the company consisted of two men working out of a Heber City living room. Holland's wife, a native New Zealander, recorded the company's voice mail greeting because it made the company seem "international."

The site was anything but a global conglomerate. "We had literally four pieces of gear in the living room and 50 pieces advertised on the site," Bresee said. "If someone actually ordered something, we had to go out and find it real quick." The accent on the voice mail, Holland said, "would just sort of contribute to the idea that it was a real business."

Seven years later, the site is one of the few scrappy survivors of the dot-com bust. Started with just $2,000 the two scraped together from building Web sites for real estate agents, the site has been profitable every year since it began.

It's growing faster than Holland and Bresee envisioned — pulling in $15 million in revenue in 2003, up from $6.5 million a year earlier. The company says it's the country's second biggest outdoor online retailer, behind giant REI, and claims its success has persuaded big-name manufacturers, including Burton and Oakley, to begin selling lines previously unavailable to online buyers.

"Now, every year and a half, we have to keep looking for a new warehouse," Holland said of the company's exponential growth in sales and inventory. They're about to upgrade from an 18,000-square-foot warehouse to one boasting 47,000 square feet.

The company says it's successful because of the homegrown, up-by-the bootstraps approach. The two say they're "fanatical" about the equipment they sell, and that makes people want to buy from them. "In one way or another, all the people who work here are psycho outdoor people," Holland said. "That passion for the gear and what we do carries through to customers. It's a lot easier to be successful that way."

Internally, the company keeps meticulous watch over its finances and marketing, including real-time tracking of how much business results from specific advertising. And unlike many of the early dotcom failures, Holland and Bresee are using their own money, instead of venture capital, to fuel the business — making them inherently more careful with investments. "We're at the beginning of an age where marketing is going to change completely," Holland said. "It used to be so fuzzy."

The two — ski bums by nature and college-educated in political science (Holland) and psychology (Bresee) — wanted to make a job out of their hobbies. They founded the business with little understanding of how to run it and nothing but a vague idea that neither wanted "straight" jobs. Holland and Bresee grew up together in Vermont.

Both of them made their way out West for the same reasons as many of their clients. "I read in Powder Magazine that Alta had some of the best powder in the world," Bresee said. "So I thought I'd come out here and check it out. Holland came to Utah for competition — and finished his professional career as a six-time U.S. National Nordic ski jumping champion and two-time Olympian. He was looking for something to do after he hung up the competition skis and considered graduate business school. But Bresee convinced him he could learn more by starting a business.

So began BackcountryStore. com, initially dedicated to providing tools like beacons, shovels and other equipment to be used in the event of an avalanche, but since expanded to include gear for camping, kayaking, snowboarding and beyond.

Holland and Bresee have always been frugal, and neither took a salary from the business for several years. They didn't hire their first employee until 1999, The company now employs 65 in the company's Heber City office and Salt Lake City warehouse.

Holland and Bresee affectionately call them "gearheads," and the company's motto is "We use the gear we sell." Which sometimes creates its own problem, Bresee said. "It's always a challenge on powder days to make sure the whole crew shows up."