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A True Camper
By Gregg Gardner, Jewish Sentinel
Bunk1 founder Ari Ackerman wires up parents without stressing them out
With an easy stride and a cheery grin, Ari Ackerman enters his office on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Small, unfinished and cluttered with recently unpacked boxes, Bunk1’s base bears a strong resemblance to the rustic cabins used by its clients—sleep-away camps.
The room is also peppered with computers, printers and scanners of all kinds.
Indeed, just as Ackerman has stocked his one-room business headquarters with the latest hardware and software technology, he is also wiring the camping industry—but without diminishing its classic rural feel.
“Parents want to have access to their kids while they’re away at camp,” says the longhaired Ackerman. “And our services provide a very nonintrusive type of access. Kids are still out playing ball; they’re not sitting at computers writing e-mails. [Bunk1] allows the kids to experience the fun and camaraderie of being at camp.”
Indeed, serving some 1,100 camps in North America, Bunk1 has rapidly become a mainstay in the industry.
“I’ve heard anecdotes of parents saying, ‘I’m switching my kid from one camp to another, and I want to make sure that I can still see pictures of them [on Bunk1.com],’ ” says Ackerman, who, at 32, is the oldest worker in his 25-employee office. “So I wouldn’t say that [Bunk1 is] a prerequisite to sign up for that camp, but the parents are definitely asking for it.”
Blending technology to complement an “old economy” industry without altering its character is the essence of Bunk1.com, a one-stop e-services provider for summer camps across the country. The Internet portal provides clients with home page hosting and design. But perhaps the most unique service of Bunk1 is its one-way communications system connecting parents to their children.
After logging on to the password-protected Web site (which requires a one-time, $10 registration fee), parents can write a message addressed to their kids via Bunk 1’s “Bunk Notes” service. The letter is then e-mailed to the camp’s main offices, where it is printed out and distributed along with the daily mail. Parents are charged about $1 per e-mail, depending on its size.
The Bunk Notes system proves more efficient than snail mail, which is often erratic in rural regions.
“[Bunk1] allows the parents to write more often,” says Debbie Shriber of Camp Poyntelle-Lewis Village. “Parents now feel more comfortable sitting in front of a computer than writing a letter that might not get there.”
Indeed, regular mail takes up to five days to be delivered from the metropolitan New York area to Shriber’s JCC-affiliated overnight camp. Located in Wayne County, Pa., near the New York State line, the facility is serviced by a one-woman post office.
The Bunk1 service has also been lauded because it manages to utilize technology without allowing it to devalue the camping experience.
David Fischberger appreciates Bunk1’s subtle form of communication.
“The children do not sit at computers and email back,” says the owner and director of Camp Lavi with satisfaction. “They write back the old-fashioned way, with a letter or a postcard.”
Fischberger’s camp utilizes the services to do away with an older, more intrusive form of technology used for keeping in touch.
“We went with [Bunk1] because we did away with phone calls,” notes Fischberger, whose camp in upstate New York serves the Orthodox community, “We used to have a phone day once a week, but it was disruptive to the camp’s programming and routine. When we eliminated it, we decided to go with Bunk1 to provide a mechanism for parents to contact their children.”
Indeed, in the age of slick telecom gadgets, the camping sector remains one of the few industries stubbornly resistant to the recent information technology revolution.
Like most sleep-away camps, Camp Seneca Lake bans all cellphones.
“Sometimes, parents send their kids with cellphones,” says Irv Bader, Seneca’s owner and director. “If parents want to play games, it’s their business. But it’s not what they should be teaching their kids.
“Sometimes, they send phones with kids as young as 10 years old. But there are no cellphones allowed at camp. When we find [the cellphones], we throw them in the lake—of course, not while the kid is still using it!” he jokes.
Bunk1’s services also include some distinctly Jewish features, which cater to the 300 Jewish camps registered with the portal.
“I’m very sensitive to the Jewish camps,” says Ackerman, a Manhattan native and graduate of Ramaz. “I grew up religious, and these issues are very important to me. E-mails can be sent out and delivered right before Shabbat starts. We try to make the deadline for parents as late as possible.”
In addition, Bunk1 provides the infrastructure necessary for Jewish camps and potential Jewish staffers to find one another.
Bunk1 also allows parents to view photos of their children at play. At each participating camp, a designated staffer roams the grounds flashing photos of kids at the softball fields, mess hall and swimming pools. These digital photos are then posted on the camp’s section of the Bunk1 Web page. Parents are given the option to purchase a print of the photo ($4 to $7 each) or have them made into T-shirts, magnets, mousepads, puzzles or mugs ($8 to $20 each).
Fischberger notes that despite the fact that he hires a full-time employee to handle all of Lavi’s Bunk1-related activities, it’s still difficult to make all parents happy.
“I would receive e-mails from parents saying, ‘Why are there only pictures of girls on the Web site? Are there no boys at Camp Lavi?’ ” he says. “So we would take a full day of pictures of the boys, and then I’d get an email saying, ‘Well, where are the girls at Camp Lavi?’ ”
Eventually, Fischberger says, his camp gradually found the right balance as the summer wore on.
Camp Pinemere has taken e-camping a step further, offering a “Bunk1 activity” as part of its programming.
“Instead of having the counselors run around, we have the campers take the pictures and write the newsletters,” says Aaron Selkow, executive director of the JCC-affiliated camp. “It teaches [the campers] skills about digital photography and computers. It also gives them a way to connect to their parents during the summer. And when they go home, they get to see the photos that they took.”
When the photographer visits an activity, kids often jump in front of the camera, making silly faces or doing handstands to get their pictures on the Web page. In many ways, Ackerman utilized the same strategy to get noticed when he launched his company five years ago—as he was willing to go through great, unorthodox lengths to get Bunk1 moving.
While researching a project for a venture capital class as an MBA student at Northwestern University’s prestigious Kellogg School of Management, Ackerman molded his love affair with overnight camps into a working business plan. He uncovered a $9 billion mom-and-pop industry that has survived, nearly unchanged, for almost 100 years.
“There are ways to find opportunities within those kinds of industries that we can capitalize on,” says Ackerman, his voice taking a more
measured tone as the conversation changes from camp activities to business. “Many camps can’t build this technology stuff on their own. And even those that can—why would they? This is something they would want to outsource. There are all kinds of incredible opportunities
in this industry, and it’s only growing every year.”
Selkow concurs.
“We used to offer similar services on our own,” he recalls. “But it was not very effective, mostly due to problems with [Internet] security and usability. And that was three or four years ago, when the technology was simpler. Camps can’t do it on their own today; the technology is too cost-prohibitive.”
Ackerman’s ingenuity, research and presentation wowed his classmates and professors at Kellogg, and caught the eye of Chicago’s venture capital firms. In June 1999, a week after graduation, Ackerman set off to bring his business plan to fruition, driving across the country to meet with more than 100 camp directors.
“This was at the peak of the dotcom rage, so everybody was starting up an Internet company,” says Ackerman, who recently launched CampAlumni.com, which invites Web surfers to re-establish contact with old camp friends and flames. “Today, we’re one of the few survivors, probably because we’re a different type of Internet company.
“The idea was always to stay small, stay focused, perfect the technology and capture a niche. And we’ve been, knock on wood, successful,” he says, adding that Bunk1 has been profitable for the past two years.
Given Ackerman’s impeccable résumé, including a bachelor’s degree from Duke University and three years of service on Capitol Hill for Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y., 5th Dist; no relation to Ari), some wondered why he would forgo the world of pressed suits, expense accounts and power lunches for color wars, leaky cabin roofs and institutionalized food.
“When I started out,” Ackerman explains, “my father said, ‘What, are you nuts? You turned down a $150,000-a-year job to do this?’ But it’s a fascinating industry.”
A true camper, with wide eyes and a smile from ear to ear, Ackerman is proud that his underlying motivation for the initial Kellogg project—the launch and maturity of Bunk1 into a healthy business—is his childlike love for summer camps.
“I attended Camp Winaukee in New Hampshire for seven years,” he fondly recalls. “I still remember all the camp cheers.”
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