In Pursuit of the Almighty Pro Deal
By Elisabeth Kwak-HefferanPro deals are like masturbation: Everybody knows about it. Everybody does it (or wants to). And you’re not supposed to talk about it.
But people do. You can’t buy a ‘biner in a mountain town without hearing about how someone’s buddy got his ultralight expedition tent for 300 bucks. Scoring a sweet piece of backcountry gear at below-wholesale price just feels too good not to brag about.
Pro dealing — to the uninitiated, that’s getting your gear directly from the manufacturer at a super-discount — is one of the holy grails of the mountain lifestyle. Hell, to live the life you wanna live up here, you need gear. The longer you reside at high elevation, the more you realize you can’t function without tele skis, double plastic mountaineering boots, an eight-hundred-fill down sleeping bag, carbon-fiber ice axe and a dual-suspension mountain bike.
All that stuff ain’t cheap. So when you hear there’s a semi-secret backdoor channel for all the best gear, of course you want in.
But no matter how much you covet that climbing shoe or know you deserve that goddamn tig-welded titanium bike at 60 percent off — the company doesn’t want to hook you up. That’s because they want to give it someone who’s going to make it look good, like professional mountaineers, climbing guides and Class-5 paddling bad-asses.
Meeker souls admit defeat; nothing wrong with playing by the rules. But others can’t let it go that easily.
“It’s a game to some,” says Andy Marker, pro program director at Patagonia. As gatekeeper for the highly lustworthy brand, Marker is deluged with requests from the unwashed masses — from the merely lame to the brilliant. Reps like Marker are squirrelly about sharing the most creative scams they’ve witnessed (they don’t want to give you any ideas), but are happy to reveal tactics employed by the deluded and the desperate.
Good Old-Fashioned Bribery: In the admirable spirit of you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours, some hopefuls try to swap gear for goods. Among the offers Marker has fielded: Beer. Tax services. Legal services. Window washing. Fishing trips. Heli-skiing. Marker holds that none of these bribes succeeded.
A Bizarre Sense of Entitlement: The ex-girlfriend of a Moots Cycles employee — scratch that, of two Moots Cycles employees — once called the company asking for a pro deal on a bike by virtue of having dated the guys, says purchasing manager Butch Boucher. No word on whether the pro deal was the driving force behind each relationship in the first place.
Impersonating Journalists I: One of the perks of a career in truth-seeking and thoughtful writing for outdoor magazines is companies often spot you a pack or some boots, often with the hopes of securing a complementary write-up. Occasionally, says Carson Stanwood, a Jackson Hole-based rep for the likes of Arc’Teryx and Smartwool, he’ll run across media imposters armed with fake business cards or magazine mastheads. One guy even set up an email account in a well-known editor’s name and, posing as the editor, emailed a bunch of insiders asking them to please outfit his totally legit “new hire” with whatever gear he requested.
Impersonating Journalists II: More than once, Stanwood says, he’s gotten frantic emails from “editors” on “last-minute photo shoots” in need of mountain bikes or skis. Oh, and clothes for the models, too. And since we’re already on the road, please send it all to this random address.
Impersonating Journalists III: The scams don’t stop at gear. Laura Schaffer, PR director for Snowbird Ski Resort, deals with a steady stream of people trying to score free lift tickets. One such character came to Schaffer’s office asserting that he was a photographer on a big assignment shooting athletes on the slopes — except, as she pointed out, he didn’t have a single piece of camera gear.
Impersonating Hip-Hop’s Inner Circle: A few years ago, Jordan Campbell (now the PR manager for Marmot, Campbell prefers not to name who he was working for at the time) got a call from someone who claimed to work for LL Cool J. The guy had his act down — it was the day after the MTV Music Awards, and, he told Campbell, “I’m so hung over. We partied all night … And can I get four puffy jackets for LL’s next video?” Campbell sent them along — and never heard from the guy again. Never did see his jackets in any videos, either. He can’t be totally sure the guy wasn’t legit, Campbell says, but “It’s a looming question.”
