The Chronicles: Reddit Until I’m Blue In The Face

Last weekend was the 2nd Annual Bump & Jump at Blue Mountain. It was an amazing event. I entered, skied it, and bombed my run. Bottom line, I didn’t make it to the elimination round. I will give it to Blue though; the competition was the best I have seen at any of the events we have sponsored all season.

After I was booted from the competition for lack of skill, the mountain still had one more surprise in store for us. Here’s how the story starts…

Back in December I was eager to get my blog out there. I was searching high and low for readers, most of whom at that point were my friends. We had put together a contest called Spread The Mayo in order to generate some viral buzz and get people to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to the blog. It worked out alright but the best thing that happened as a result of that was the Christmas gift my brother got me.

He was a Redditor, something I had never heard of but would soon learn about.

One day back in December I started getting all these hits on the blog out of no where. They were coming from a site called Reddit, an online community with a skiing subculture everyone should check out, but I digress. Being the computer illiterate individual I am I immediately deferred to Tyler and sure enough there was his post.

“Dear Reddit- My brother left his job, is homeless, and is desperate for some people to take notice of his new company Ski Till I Die. I can think of nothing else he would like better in this world than to see some serious traffic on his blog so please check him out. Merry Christmas Ryan -Tyler”

Not only was that the best gift I could have gotten, but it worked! A bunch of people immediately started responding to it. There were a lot of ‘good lucks’ a few more ‘this is cools’ and one Redditor even recognized me. All they said was ‘Boner?’ (my college nickname) and sure enough it turned out to be my friend Michelle who I skied with at Marist.

A month or so after that I had revisited the post to see if any new responses had been threaded to the message and there was one from Dylan – asking about the Mayo Design we had used for the contest.

Thanks to Dylan’s request and our eagerness to expand we put the tees into production. As soon as we had the first samples I got in touch with him via Reddit and started emailing back and forth about the mock up. The only difference between the initial design and the new one was the ‘Spread It’ quote we added to the back. He loved it that much more.

In the meantime we were busy preparing for the mogul competition at Blue. After Joe and I got back to the tent, post defeat, this younger guy comes up to us and asks for me. He immediately identifies himself as the mayo guy from Reddit. I couldn’t believe it! How cool is that?!

Dylan had read about our event on Facebook and being an hour away decided to come up for the day by surprising us with a t-shirt purchase. It was the last thing in the world I expected and it was the best surprise I could have imagined.

It’s a funny thing when the internet and the real world collide. In this case the result is one more person out there supporting the Ski Till I Die cause and had that been the only thing we sold last weekend I still would have walked off the mountain with a smile of success. BIG UPS to Tyler, Dylan, Blue, and Reddit… we have come a long way and I certainly could not have gotten here without you guys!!

Until next time – cheers & keep shredding!

Ryan