Reviewing the Reviewer: Luke Koppa (Ep.58)



TOPICS & TIMES:

  • Random Review: Orange Vanilla Coke (5:52)
  • Luke’s Background (7:02)
  • How did you first get connected with BLISTER? (19:05)
  • What are you ski preferences? (22:30)
  • Who is your favorite reviewer at BLISTER? (25:13)
  • What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done? (26:32)
  • What are you better at than Sam Shaheen? (37:07)
  • What gear are you most & least picky about? (38:11)
  • Questions from ON3P’s Scott Andrus (43:07)
  • Rank your siblings from favorite to least favorite (50:07)
  • Top 3 favorite books, movies, and musicians (52:29)
  • Give us a random review (1:03:19)
  • What’s the best question I haven’t asked you? (1:04:32)

Today we are launching a new series on GEAR:30 called, “Reviewing the Reviewer,” and the idea here is pretty simple: we’ll be asking various Blister reviewers questions about their backgrounds and gear preferences, to give you a more complete picture of the people behind our reviews.

And since we like to rank & review things around here, we will be scoring each of our reviewers’ answers to come up with a review grade for each of them. That last part — rating our reviewers — was actually Luke Koppa’s idea, though when he came up with that, he had no idea that we were going to make him go first. So that kinda feels like poetic justice.

I sat down with Luke in Blister HQ and asked him about where he grew up and what he was into as a kid; his gear preferences and what gear he is most picky about and least picky about and why; then we had number of guest questions from ON3P Skis founder, Scott Andrus; and, among other things, I asked Luke who his favorite BLISTER reviewer is; and I actually got him to rank his siblings from most favorite to least favorite, before wrapping up with some questions about Luke’s favorite books, music, and movies.

One caveat: we do at the end of the episode tally up the scores of Luke’s answers, and then assign a grade. But if any of you happen to be exceptionally “Type A,” you might want to follow along and check our scoring, because there’s a very good chance that I might have messed something up here. So feel free to check my math.

This episode is presented by Tribe Alpha — tribealpha.com

Tribe Alpha is great ecommerce for the great outdoors, and can help you improve the performance of your ecommerce site. With more than 25 years of web experience, Tribe Alpha has a long and successful history working with retailers in the outdoor industry, and will help you grow your ecommerce business.

Bonus: GEAR:30 listeners get a special discount. Just visit tribealpha.com to receive 10% off their standard pricing.

Jonathan Ellsworth talks with Blister managing editor, Luke Koppa, about his background, skiing, biking, running, and fishing preferences, and more on Blister's GEAR:30 podcast.
Luke Koppa showing off his signature trick in Crested Butte, CO. (For reference, his cranky face is due to the fact that he had just chickened out of a backflip and was very disappointed in himself.)
Jonathan Ellsworth talks with Blister managing editor, Luke Koppa, about his background, skiing, biking, running, and fishing preferences, and more on Blister's GEAR:30 podcast.
Blister’s managing editor and reviewer, Luke Koppa. (photo by Chris Fuller)

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