What Did Happen on the Salmon River?

"Deliverance" analogies rise to the surface quickly, poetically, and perhaps undeservedly when describing and documenting Altrec.com's "extreme" off-site -- a corporate bonding experience chronicled in Fast Company issue 29 that favored life vests over name tags and portages over org charts. Like the venerable Ed Gentry and Lewis Medlock, Altrec.com's off-site team did indeed stare down danger, strife, and indecision amid hazardous rapids and searing heat on a brutal river rafting expedition. But unlike the fictional heroes of John Boorman's 1972 thriller, the Altrec.com group could not roll the final credits after its harrowing survival. In fact, Altrec.com's passage down the Salmon River was just the beginning of a fierce and fulfilling journey.

It's been six months since the management team at Altrec.com -- a 360-degree Web site for outdoor enthusiasts -- elected to spend four working days descending 75 miles of Idaho's most unforgiving body of water. In some ways, the off-site came at the best time -- six of the 10 participants were new recruits working to form a cohesive team ... fast. In other ways, it came at the worst -- just three weeks after the expedition, Altrec.com's management core was expected to re-design and re-launch its then four-month-old Web site in an effort to gain customers, attract a major investment partner, kick start a national branding campaign, and outsmart its competitors. The sense of urgency and panic was high, but so was the understanding that, without this experience, Altrec.com would surely sink.

"In order to build a company that would last, we needed to fuse the senior management group and bring together all of their divergent personalities and differing skill sets," says Chris Doyle, Altrec.com's vice president of public relations and an off-site participant. "We needed to advance the learning process a lot quicker than an ordinary organization might because we were in the heat of battle, trying to compete in a fiercely competitive marketplace."

In the months preceding Altrec.com's off-site, the upstart company erred on the side of being too meticulous, too prepared. Presented with the option of opening its Web site before the 1998 holiday season, Altrec.com decided to defer its launch until March 15, 1999, when it would have a more polished product and a better hold on the market. "Outdoor enthusiasts, particularly, are very savvy," Doyle says. "You get one chance to make a good first impression. We couldn't blow it just to make X number of dollars before the end of the year."

And so Altrec.com spent a great deal of time forging relationships that would protect its brand, protect its prices, and protect its integrity. By the time its management team converged on the Salmon River last July, Altrec's foundation was cemented. But a foundation alone wasn't going to cut it. So Altrec.com got to work.

"We had three weeks to pull off a site redesign following the river trip," Doyle says. "Everyone jumped on board. There was a universal give-and-take. 'What can you give up? I'll give up this and we'll push on that.' And we delivered. On August 1 we launched the enhanced Web site."

Following that momentous achievement, Altrec.com unveiled three new online retail channels: paddling, cycling, and climbing. It then made headlines by partnering with Escape magazine to power the Escape online store and to create an award-winning multimedia story titled "Crown of Africa," which chronicles in word and image the experience of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro -- including recommended gear, tour guide information, and a geological explanation of the mountain. "Crown of Africa" debuted on October 12, just 22 days before Altrec.com announced its groundbreaking implementation of the United Postal Service's Returns@ease program, which significantly smoothes the process of returning products purchased online. In addition, the management team has secured additional venture capital and has been working tirelessly on a variety of strategic partnerships aimed to make Altrec.com a serious contender. Meanwhile, the site's traffic, sales, and conversion numbers have been rising steadily.

According to Doyle, none of these endeavors would have succeeded without the decision-making lessons learned on the Salmon. "One of the things we struggle with, focus on, and continue to hammer away on is decision making," he says. "Who needs to be involved? Where's the authority coming from? Who makes the ultimate decision? During the off-site we drafted a general agreement designed to expedite decision making, and it has helped tremendously to have those parameters laid out."