5 46 | July 2024


MINUTES WITH...


BikeBiz speaks to Chris Garcin, co-founder and CEO of Pit Viper


Where did the inspiration come from to create a fun brand but balance that with performance products? My co-founder, Chuck Mumford, and I actually went to college together at the University of Colorado. We were both huge fans of skiing and wound up moving to Salt Lake City after we graduated. When we reconnected there, we met up to ski all of the time. Throughout all of this, we always noticed how uniform most ski gear was – the same, muted colours


that looked so serious. For us, skiing was fun and we wanted to be able to express that in our gear. During a ski trip, Chuck’s sunglasses broke and he went to a military surplus store to get a new pair that he knew would be super durable. He loved the look of it, and in 2012 Chuck showed me a pair of these that he spray painted to a more expressive colour. I thought to myself, “that’s a product right there.” We got straight to work, hand-spray painting 1,000 pairs ourselves that represented the fun-loving culture of


www.bikebiz.com


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