Team Chat 8

It wasn’t by accident that we stumbled upon the idea for RY Outfitters

It took a more than a couple tries for us to get it right!

Matt sit down and discuss Reddy Team’s humble beginnings, it’s predecessors, and reflect on a “then & now” perspective from when the started their entrepreneurial career to where it is today.

More about the episode…

Matt sits down with his partners and RY Outfitters co-founders Josh Salvo and Drew Pfundstein. What you have come to know and love as RY Outfitters is truthfully a second version. Before nailing our vision for RY Outfitters, various ventures (and in some cases failures) were taken to get to where we are now. In this episode the RY Outfitters team explores the history of RY Outfitters starting from Josh and Drew diving down the proverbial rabbit hole of previous ventures as well as some background on what sparked Reddy Team 2.0 (That’s right… there was, indeed, a first edition of Reddy Team)

Have an opinion? We want to hear it! Join the conversation and leave a comment, check out show notes, and get all the links mentioned in this episode below

Links/resources:

• One of the best resources to learn how to build your own skis
• The Critically acclaimed Niveus Studio Production: Josh & Drew Skiing w/ Glen Plake
• Previous Team Chats:
  • Team Chat 0 – RY Outfitters: Who We Are | What To Expect
  • Team Chat 1 – RY Outfitters Membership Program: Part I
  • Team Chat 2 – RY Outfitters Membership Program: Part II
  • Team Chat 3 – RY Outfitters Membership Post Launch Update
  • Team Chat 4 – RY Outfitters: Building the Membership and What’s to Come
  • Team Chat 5 – RY Outfitters: A Very RY Outfitters Anniversary
  • Team Chat 6 –  RY Outfitters: A Look Towards The Future of RY Outfitters
  • Team Chat 7 – RY Outfitters: Chatting Away About Our Biggest Giveaway To Date
• Leave us a review on iTunes and get the chance to win a FREE membership
• Check out more info about our membership

Show Notes

• How did you two meet and become friends?
  • Josh regales how Drew and his parents were longtime friends and discusses the potential perils of long distance friendships
• What was the moment you had your first entrepreneurial spark?
  • Drew: “Thats a hard one, both of our parents started business so, I think that at a pretty young age we had entrepreneurial tendencies. Probably, the first time was in highschool when Josh and I built skis and snowboards…”
  • Josh: “No it was before that. Remember Niveus Productions?”
  • Drew: “Oh yeah! I forgot about that. We did a video production company…”
  • Josh: “We did the Niveus stuff in high school from Sophomore year to Junior year and then you had the idea of ‘hey, maybe we should build our own skis’…”
    • Drew and Josh dive deepening into how a couple highschool kicks built a ski press and their first pair of skis with a super tight budget…”
• Was there any other companies that came after that before RY Outfitters?
  • Josh: “Drew and I came up with the idea of MySkiProfile.com, where we wanted to create a website that had a ski and snowboard finder where you would fill out a questionnaire and based on your answers we had an algorithm that would match you to the perfect pair of skis or snowboard… it was an ecommerce platform…”
• Where did the name RY Outfitters come from? (still contested…)
  • Josh: “We were in my parents basement and we were trying to brainstorm the idea of what we wanted to build with RY Outfitters; and so, what was very important to Drew and myself was to build a community and a business that really helped people get outside…Reddy is the name of the Team. Basically, Reddy is your buddy who is always willing to help you get out and participate in your favorite activity…”
• Josh dives into how moving out to Utah and immersing in the community inspired the idea for a media platform.
  • Josh: “After we decided to shut down RY Outfitters we thought hey ‘why not try to start a media company?’ We had a ton of pretty awesome people doing pretty crazy things in the outdoors, why not have them write about their experiences and that’s where American Team came from…
  • Drew: “That’s actually where we met Matt because, Matt had just moved out to Colorado…”
• Josh, Drew, and Matt discuss how taking a hiatus from American Team would help push them closer to putting together an idea of “ RY Outfitters 2.0”
  • Josh: “With having the past failures with MySkiProfile.com, RY Outfitters 1.0, and American Team, we realized it was really difficult to start a business… what if we created some sort of community that helped showcase and uplift businesses and startups in the outside space…”
• What has been the hardest part about building not just RY Outfitters but, all these businesses?

Drew: “Before RY Outfitters I think that the hardest thing was actually what the current version of RY Outfitters is solving for small business and, that was getting your business out there and marketing…”