Client Spotlight: How FunTreks Transformed from a Company to a Community

By in Client Spotlights,

There weren’t many 4×4 guidebooks available back in 1994 when Chuck Wells first started four-wheeling. He had purchased every guide book available on the market and none of them were cutting the mustard. He had just bought his first Jeep Grand Cherokee and was having a ball exploring the Colorado backcountry. As he traveled around using the books, he kept thinking of ways the books could be better. One day, armed with detailed notes and photos from his trips, he sat down and sketched out a few pages of what he thought a guide should be. He had no idea, however, how to turn that idea into a commercial product.

When he was younger he made a living as a graphic designer but had moved away from designing into management. During that time graphic design had completely changed. He had friends who were still working in the design field and they helped guide Chuck to buy and learn new tools.

Working nights and weekends, it took two years to complete the first book. It was during that time that FunTreks was conceived. Chuck took his completed 268-page digital file to a local printer and essentially placed a $6,000 bet that the books would sell. After the books were printed, he loaded up his car and headed for mountain towns like Ouray and Silverton, around which many of the trails were located. He simply walked into stores, introduced himself and showed the book. To his surprise, many store owners placed multiple-case orders on the spot. In most situations, he walked out with a check in his pocket. He quickly found himself returning to Colorado Springs for more books. FunTreks was officially born!

Within a short time, he had a distributor who sold his books to Barnes & Noble and other big stores. His first printing of 4,000 sold out in a couple of months. He was running home on his lunch hour and packing 20 to 30 cases for the UPS driver. His garage was his warehouse. Entrepreneurial spirit at its finest!

It wasn’t long before Chuck’s day job started getting in the way of his FunTreks job. With great trepidation, he cut ties and went on his own. More than 20 years later, FunTreks is still going strong and they are very excited for the future. FunTreks is now a team and they love what they do!

FunTreks, Meet Webolutions

FunTreks came to Webolutions looking to integrate their current product offerings to create a more robust offering and better engagement overall with their community. They also wanted help figuring out a way to gather trail updates from the FunTreks community. Of course, they wanted to sell more products, but their main focus was getting their community more engaged.

We came up with some fun solutions that would help drive engagement of their rugged 4×4 community.

The website design includes elements their particular community would respond well to.

One of the most important aspects of this site and the FunTreks community are the trails. We wanted to do something unique to showcase the beautiful trails.

For the trails we did a couple cool things:

To increase community engagement we came up with some simple solutions:

Thank you FunTreks for allowing us to help you create more engagement with your enthusiastic community! Consider us FunTreks community members for life!

 

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