Speak with Joanne Bienskie for only a minute and you’ll quickly see her passion shine; her love for the outdoors, her entrepreneurial spirit, and her ambition to create more welcoming spaces for women.
That passion led her to create Alpinistas, an outdoor retailer that’s determined to help more women connect with the natural world.
Finding opportunity in the great outdoors
“In my early career I was working in New York, snowboarding recreationally when I could. As I got better, I got the West bug in me,” she said with a laugh. “I wanted to live in a mountain town, and when I got there, my snowboarding eventually turned into backcountry snowboarding. That led me to splitboarding, which led to mountaineering… all of these more technical outdoor sports that get you off of the resorts and out into the real wilderness.”
Bienskie sought out bigger peaks to summit. A lot of her skills were self-taught, but many of the other skills necessary for higher-level climbing required more technical instruction.
“In those experiences, I was usually one of the only women,” she said. “Sometimes, it was fine; I wouldn’t have issues. But there have also been times where I was essentially overlooked by the course leader.
“On top of that, there’s this gap in the market in terms of women helping other women learn these skills. A lot of these classes and workshops are taught by tough, macho guys wearing all their technical gear. It’s really intimidating for someone to sign up for that,” she continued. “So I recognized pretty quickly that there was a need to provide approachable, entry-level courses for women wanting to get into the outdoors.”
The world closed, but a door opened
While the need for women-led and women-focused training became apparent, Bienskie also had an opportunity to become a women’s apparel buyer for a local outdoor store. But as the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold, the brick-and-mortar store closed its doors.
The store’s closure led to her ultimate decision to combine her passions — entrepreneurship and the outdoors — and create the business that she had always wanted: Alpinistas.
“It was just this weird eureka moment where I was like, ‘Why don’t I just open my own store,’” she said. “I was able to spin up my website on BigCommerce, create this legitimate business with a purpose, and start placing orders to suppliers really quickly.”
Alpinistas Adventures arrives
This initial move into clothing and apparel helped Bienskie bring her full vision to reality. While Alpinistas was getting off the ground, she was also running meetup groups to help local women get outdoors.
During one of these meetups, she was introduced to someone who wanted to do more for women’s outdoor education, “which is exactly what I wanted to do,” Bienskie said. “I wanted to start a guide business to help provide this training and education. I knew there was this huge need, and she did, too.”
The two began filing applications and filling out paperwork with various federal land agencies in their region to begin teaching these kinds of courses and leading expeditions through the wilderness.
“That eventually became Alpinistas Adventures,” she explained.