Part of its strategy to create a portfolio of outdoors and sporting goods sites, the outdoor gear e-tailer Backcountry.com has launched a new sister site, explore64.com, for its less-avid recreation lovers.

"Backcountry.com is focused on the hardcore recreational [person]," said John Bresee, president of Backcountry. "We like that brand and we want to keep that brand focused on the high-end. Explore64.com is not as focused on super high-end."

Bresee said that explore64.com, which went live Wednesday night, will help the company sell items from merchants like Columbia Sportswear Co. and The Timberland Co. by grouping together its less expensive offerings.

Over the past nine months, Backcountry has launched a number of Web sites to cater to particular customer segments. Besides explore64.com, Backcountry rolled out one-item-per-day site steepandcheap.com six weeks ago; skier-focused tramdock.com and snowboarding-centered dogfunk.com in November; and outlet site backcountryoutlet.com in July, which Bresee said is "doing very well."

The company's strategy, according to Bresee, is not to throw all of its inventory onto one large platform. "Ultimately, the more focused you are, the more you marry a specific type of customer to you," Bresee said. He said that for that reason, he does not see Recreational Equipment Inc., which does its e-commerce sales through rei.com and rei-outlet.com, as a direct competitor.

Regarding the contribution of explore64.com to revenues in 2005, Bresee opted for conservatism. The subcategory that explore64.com is competing in is more competitive, and getting the brand name out there is a constant challenge, he said.

The company is very conservative with its e-mail marketing, focusing on content more than promotions. Bresee's history as an editor of skiing magazine Powder has helped him gain some valuable contributors to a monthly Backcountry newsletter that goes to 500,000 e-mail subscribers.

Besides e-mail, Backcountry joined the affiliate marketing fray before it was fashionable, signing on with Commission Junction Inc. back in 1999. To learn about the nuances of affiliate marketing, Bresee actually designed his own site and became an affiliate of Backcountry in 1999. What he learned was that affiliates typically do not trust merchants.

To combat that, he extended his company's cookie length to 180 days. In other words, as long as a customer transacted with Backcountry within 180 days after first clicking on the link from the affiliate marketer's site, the affiliate would get its money for the sales lead. Other recreational equipment Web sites have followed suit, according to Bresee. "It's a great, strong contributor of our revenues and its one of our top marketing programs," said Bresee of affiliate marketing.

Backcountry is testing the limits of viral marketing to drive traffic to steepandcheap.com, which sells one closeout item per day at a deeply discounted price. The company hasn't done any marketing on steepandcheap.com, relying solely on word-of-mouth and a connection with Yahoo Inc.'s RSS aggregation tool.

"It's an experiment to see how far viral marketing can go if there's a really good deal on the table," said Bresee, who along with Jim Holland founded Backcountry in 1996 with just $2,000. Their best showing so far on steapandcheap.com was the day that 350 people purchased a $33 helmet for $11,550 in sales.

While calling the one-product-per-day idea "one of the most interesting trends in e-commerce," Bresee said the company has not built it into its core financial model yet. That core business has seen triple-digit growth in each year up until 2004, when year-over-year sales jumped only 86% to $27 million from the prior year.