“It was the last week of December 2005,the height of ski season
in Park City, Utah. Visitors from around the country had converged
on the tiny resort town, high in the Wasatch Mountains, to ring in
the New Year and enjoy the top-notch slopes. But not everyone felt
like celebrating.“In fact, Dave Jenkins, the normally laid-back CTO of
Backcountry.com Inc., the $52 million Park City-based
outdoor-sporting-goods e-tailer, was in a downright bind—and
not of the skiing kind. Jenkins needed to prepare for the company’s
annual sale in February, but things didn’t look pretty. ‘The season
change happens on February 15, when suppliers drop their prices on
old merchandise,’ Jenkins says. For Backcountry, that means that
more than 250 brands, and 25,000 products, have to be discounted on
its Web site. But back then, the only way to do that was by hand,
page by tedious Web page…”
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