DENVER (BRAIN) — GearJunkie LLC, the owner of GearJunkie.com, has made some staff additions and is opening an office in Denver, after having been based in Minneapolis for more than 10 years.
The company has named a new editor-in-chief and created the new role of publisher. It also has added several senior staffers, including longtime QBP manager Ryan Johnson, who joined GearJunkie last summer as VP of marketing and operations.
"Our strategy this year is to scale the operation and to stake a claim in Colorado as the base of our editorial operation," said Stephen Regenold, the founder of GearJunkie. "After a record year for traffic and revenue growth in 2017, we spent the past six months evaluating our company structure to retune for a new phase of growth," he said.
Longtime managing editor Sean McCoy has been named editor-in-chief effective immediately. McCoy will lead an editorial team in a new Denver office, overseeing all day-to-day operations of the publication. McCoy said, "After 6-plus years on the team, I'm thrilled to lead GearJunkie into a new era of outdoors journalism." He added, "Our new Denver bureau gives us access to world-class writers and many of the brands at the spear-tip of product development."
Regenold, formerly editor-in-chief, has been promoted to serve as publisher of GearJunkie. He now oversees all departments of the publication, including editorial, projects, and media sales.
Johnson was most recently VP of marketing at QBP. He has been tapped to serve as lead in the Minneapolis office and spearhead a new division, GearJunkie Media. The Minneapolis office will now focus on business and projects, including video, custom content, experiential events, activations, social media, advertising/media sales, SEO, interactive development, and content/affiliate commerce initiatives.
Johnson said, "With our editorial team transitioning to Denver, the GearJunkie Media division in Minneapolis will be focused on creating deeper connections with consumers and the outdoor brands they know and love," Johnson said. "Because we leverage the same data, insights, and tools as our editorial team, we provide our brand partners access to the most authentic audience in the outdoors industry."
Other new hires include Zach Burton, who joins the GearJunkie sales team. On the editorial side, new hires include editors to cover the Hunt/Fish, Auto, and Fitness categories.
Monopoint Media, launched with GearJunkie.com in 2006, will now function as an independent business from The GearJunkie LLC, with a focus on design, video, content, and marketing services.
"For more than a decade, since launching GearJunkie as a newspaper column in the early 2000s, we've focused on organic growth based on quality content and a solid team," said Regenold, who owns The GearJunkie LLC with business partner and company CFO Mike Santi. "For 2018, we're applying what we have learned to scale the company."
