If you kept your ear tuned to the gossip at this year’s Outdoor Retailer trade show you couldn’t help hear about Jannine Witte and womenspecific.com. The site connects women to the outdoor industry, fellow athletes and a growing virtual community of active women. outdoor DIVAS is excited to work with Jannine, 33, who resides in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and her growing team of product reviewers from across the country. We interrupted her on a warm winter afternoon in February to talk about the new project. outdoor DIVAS: Where did you get the idea to launch womenspecific.com? Jannine: About two years ago I was trying to organize women’s cycling camps in Jackson and I realized there wasn’t an easy way to research all the awesome programs available. The idea was to create a directory of camps, clinics and retreats. It kind of evolved into this idea to be a one-stop source for women’s activities and products. We want women to ACTUALLY be out skiing instead of spending four hours trying to find information on skiing. outdoor DIVAS: How do you balance work and personal time while launching a new business? Jannine: [My fiancé and I] both played our faces off through our twenties and are trying to make something of ourselves. His business, Fitzgerald’s Bicycles is really successful here in Jackson. Our motto is, let’s spend our thirties working our butts off and any chances we get to enjoy it we don’t take for granted. It’s stressful but he’s doing what he loves and I’m doing what I love so it’s a good kind of stress, I guess. outdoor DIVAS: There are a lot of places to buy gear on line these days. How did you choose who to partner with? Jannine: I really believe in shopping locally and having a relationship with local shops. We want to feel good about the place we’re sending women to online, so we picked specialty retail shops like outdoor DIVAS. We know we can feel good about the level of customer service being provided to the users. outdoor DIVAS: Have you been able to get outside despite the recent site launch? Jannine: My mother is a pretty devout catholic. She called the other day and asked my friend “Where’s Jannine?” My friend said, “Well, she went to church Mrs. Witte.” I was raised catholic but I don’t practice anymore, so, going to church means skiing on Glory Bowl [at Teton Pass] – that’s my church! Not everybody has the opportunity but if you spend 30 minutes getting out into the backcountry, you know you’re lucky. It’s addicting and for a lot of us it’s our religion. I do whatever it takes to stay in touch with the outdoors. outdoor DIVAS: What has been your biggest business challenge? Jannine: It was difficult to be taken seriously for a while. A lot of companies weren’t comfortable with online advertising. It’s been a challenge holding onto and forming relationships. But we’re not going away. The other challenge is trying to stay on top of the [outdoor] industry with the women’s specific movement. We try to act as quality control to make sure [companies] are not just shrinking and pinking – keeping an eye on the industry and making sure the companies stay true to what women believe in. This is why we are excited about our new public gear review feature. This is an unbiased venue for women to say what they feel about the products they use in the outdoors. Hopefully the industry will keep an eye on this review and keep up with what we want. outdoor DIVAS: Was there one “a-ha” moment when you knew your business idea was working? Jannine: There were a bunch of different moments. A BMX mom from Chicago emailed me and was so excited about having this resource for women. Another woman emailed me and was so excited about having a camp directory for women. [The Web site] started reaching women outside of the mountain region and I was getting emails from women about needing a space like this. We’re still looking for the advertising that will make it succeed. We’re working other jobs and it won't be reality until we’re working full time. We’re excited about the future, but realistic and have mortgages to pay, so we can’t jump up and down quite yet. Check out Jannine’s online community at womenspecific.com. Please take the time to post reviews for any products that you have purchased through outdoor DIVAS. Look for the outdoor DIVAS logo on reviewed products available through outdoordivas.com. | 
