Dot-com incentive is called outdoors boon

An Internet retailer received a state financial incentive Friday, but not without a hearty discussion about the merits of giving a tax rebate to a retailer, let alone a dot-com retailer.

The Governor's Office of Economic Development Board approved up to $1.37 million for Backcountry.com, a Park City-based retailer of outdoor gear through five Web sites. It has 430 employees in Park City and a 200,000-square-foot distribution center in West Valley City and is expecting sales to grow nearly 500 percent over the next five years. It is considering Utah, the East Coast and Canada for its expansion.

Board documents say the company could add 654 new full-time employees in Summit and Salt Lake counties, of which 274 would qualify for state incentives.

The board typically has shied away from providing incentives to retailers and rarely has had applications from Internet retailers reach the board level. But Backcountry.com, members said, was different, in part because its activities are part of the outdoors industry economic cluster — identified as one of the state's strengths but capable of continued growth.

"It's been a real success story for Utah ... and they're now in an expansion mode," board member Jerry Oldroyd said of Backcountry.com. "It's a little bit different for us because it is an Internet retailer and we typically don't do retailers for incentives, but this is right at the heart of our outdoor cluster, and we felt that it made perfectly good sense to try to keep them in Utah."

"I think if it had not been in a cluster," board member Mark Howell said, "we probably would not have gone along with it."

Board Chairman David Simmons said Backcountry.com is "quite different from Wal-Mart" and has "terrific economic benefit within the cluster."

Board member Mel Lavitt said the board needs to separate Internet retailers from "on-the-ground" retailers and lauded the potential for Backcountry.com

"They are becoming a major factor on the Web, and it's the kind of business that eventually, I would guess, will become a public company and maybe be a high-profile one, so I think this could become a real interesting jewel for the state of Utah," Lavitt said.