Ranger Up: Paying it forward

Actually meant to do a post about this a few weeks ago when it was on Fox, but couldn’t find the link until I looked around this morning.

I’ve been lucky that I ran into this guy Nick Palmisciano a few years ago, and we really hit it off.  Like myself he was in the Army (albeit he was unfortunately an officer) and we are both from Massachusetts.  So, mostly we just bonded over sports teams, and his made up drink which invoves Irish Car Bombs, shots of Jaegermeister and red bull, followed by making the bear fight movement from the movie Anchorman.

Suffice to say, that I think highly of him.  Once a year I go through my clothes and toss some, and it occurred to me that in the T-Shirt division roughly 3/4 of what I own are Ranger Up shirts.  Like this one, which is my favorite:

Anyway, a few weeks ago Fox News did a piece on how Nick runs his company, and how he is paying it forward.  It really speaks to me about how vets look out for other vets:

There was also an awesome story this week in a somewhat unlikely place, the website of Dr. Steven Pressfield.  Pressfield is an author, and specifically the author of my favorite book of all time Gates of Fire about the battle of Thermopylae.  If you liked the movie 300, this is like 10 times better.  Not only do I own the book, but I have the audio book which I listen to nightly.  (I have weird sleep issues, so listening to the same thing over and over calms me.)  It kind of broke my heart when I had a bad email experience with Dr. Pressfield who was openly critical of both Iraq and Afghanistan.  But he’s such an incredible author I try to forget our politics are so different.

Anyway, the beginning of his piece about Nick and Ranger Up which should be read in full:

Nick Palmisciano was earning a quarter million a year when he learned he was being promoted — a promotion that would add another hundred thousand or so to his income.

The promotion announcement landed on a Friday. The following Monday he gave his notice.

“I knew that if I took that promotion, the golden handcuffs were being slapped on and Ranger Up was going to die—and I was going to spend my life working for other people doing something I really didn’t care about that much,” said Nick.

What is Ranger Up?

In Nick’s words, “Ranger Up is a content machine.”

Don’t let the t-shirts and jeans on the home page of its site fool you into thinking it’s an apparel company. Yes, there’s the clothing, but if you dig, you’ll find a full-fledged media company, leveraging its free content to move pay-walled content.

Unlike many other content providers, who are struggling to monetize their content, offering a free article here and there and then banking on the hope that readers will buy a subscription instead of site jumping to another URL where more free content is available, Ranger Up offers a seemingly endless supply of videos and images—including the original series “The Damn Few” and the “Rhino Den” blog. The content being created by Ranger Up is distinct. It isn’t available in bulk online, which means its audience is digging in its heels and sticking around for more. In turn, this content has helped them engage, retain and grow a community that pays for content, too, in the form of t-shirts and jeans and signs and other gear, rather than site jumping for its next dose of free content.

How’s that working for Ranger Up?

According to Internet Retailer, Ranger Up’s “high level of engagement is what drove $750,000 in social commerce sales for the e-retailer in 2013—as 28% of its total online sales came from shoppers who clicked to the site from social networks. The role of social networks in driving traffic is even greater: Nearly 39% of Ranger Up’s 2013 traffic stemmed from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube . . . . That earn[ed] the merchant the No. 2 spot in this year’s Social Media 500, which ranks online retailers by the percentage of traffic they receive from social networks, a measure of how effectively they are reaching their audience via social media.” So, if anyone cares what I am Thankful for at this time of year, high on that list is guys like Nick that look out for their brothers in arms.

If you want to buy their T-Shirts for Christmas presents, you can go to their website.   This is the one I am asking for.