If you’ve ever ordered anything from the Geocaching Shop, you may have wondered, “Where does all this awesome stuff actually come from? Is it from a warehouse? Is it located inside of Geocaching HQ in Seattle? Is it made and packaged with love by geo-elves?” Well, we now present to you the story behind the SWAG and introduce The Geocaching Shop Boyz.

Meet the five guys who do everything geo-related for all orders made within the USA.* Long overdue for a shining moment of glory, here they are:

Dylan literally wears many hats at the Geocaching Shop, and is the youngest of the Shop Boyz. Technically, he’s been at Geocaching the longest since he used to come to the office with his dad when he was a little kid, but he’s been an official employee for about two years. His responses are always typically Dylan-esque: clever, quirky, and understated. For example, his favorite item is, “Anything that goes out of stock, because it’s ‘good business’.”

Dylan got the job when, “…one of the guys was moving to the main office, so one of the founders offered their first son as a sacrificial lamb, I mean, hard-working employee.”

Don’t let his uncanny resemblance to Sasquatch scare you—Gary is actually the sweetest one of the bunch and perhaps the smartest. A little known fact is that he aced all three semesters of Calculus in college. Perhaps the theory that mathematics and music are well connected comes in handy since Gary plays a mean bass for a local band called the Greenriver Thrillers. Gary has worked at Geocaching HQ for almost six years and knew one of the founders, Bryan Roth, from a previous employer.

As an organizational fiend, Gary keeps the Geocaching Shop in tip-top shape. He’s also responsible for most of the “interior decorating” which includes a holiday tree covered in tape rolls and a geocaching T-shirt. It’s very avant garde.

Known as a family man and all around nice guy, Mark is also the designer of the Build Your Own Ammo Can Brick Set. He got the idea while building bricks at home with his son. After collaborating with one of our amazing vendors, these have become a very successful item in the Geocaching online Shop.

“Shipping and logistics are my specialty. I also pack and ship most of the international distributor orders and volunteer shipments that come through the door. There are many other components to my job, but these are my primary daily functions.” He’s been with Geocaching for close to eight years, and also knew Bryan Roth from a previous job. Side note: if you want a job at the Geocaching Shop, apparently knowing Bryan is a prerequisite. 🙂

At some point in time, a fun tradition began at the Geocaching Shop. Customers and other Geocaching employees would leave cartoon drawing requests in their order notes and Mark would animate those requests. Sometimes they’re good, other times not so good. But he tries his best to accommodate.

Now the Operations Manager of the Geocaching Shop, Marty started as a temporary employee about 3 1/2 years ago but eventually became a full-time Geocaching HQ employee after a few months. He wants to offer items that inspire geocachers and give them ideas (like our devious geocaches), are top quality (like our packs, bags, and tools) or are best practice (like large clear ammo cans as requested by law enforcement).

The best times Marty had geocaching were with the Shop Boyz during the 31 Days of August Geocaching campaign that ran in the summer of 2013. “We keep very busy with clearing out all orders twice a day, but needing to find a geocache every day for a month got us out exploring. We went as a group every day to a geocache nearby. Some of our best selling items (like our Cache Maintenance Kit) came out of these days of geocaching. It was a lot of fun to explore the area with this interesting group of characters, and we learned a lot about geocaching.”

But don’t let the calm and cool demeanor fool you. Marty is terrified of adults dressed as animals. “When I saw Cats, I did not enjoy it. Adults dressed as cats is probably the one thing I dislike the most. So creepy!”

Of course, we saved the best for last: Phil! He’s the guy that makes showing up to work seem like a party. Funny, hardworking, engaged, and big hearted, Phil also plays drums for the Greenriver Thrillers with Gary.

He’s worked at Geocaching for about five years and his favorite Geocaching Shop item is the Pelican Cache Containers – because they’re indestructible (just like Phil’s spiked hair). And yes – Phil wears his hair spiked every day – not just for blog post photo shoots. The color scheme is usually in support of Seattle’s NFL team, the Seattle Seahawks.

All the Shop Boyz pitch in to cover every area: logistics, customer service, ordering, receiving, creating kits, putting items on the website, writing item descriptions, figuring out the best items for the Geocaching Shop newsletters, etc. In addition, they all have input as a group on what items to carry, and work together to come up with the next great items for geocachers to use.

Have you ordered anything from the Geocaching Shop? Tell us in the comments below!

*If you are outside of the United States, please look up one of these great international retail partners for all your geocaching and SWAG needs.