News Release

01/30/2008
Smells Like Yukon celebrates one-year anniversary with downsizing

WHITEHORSE (SLYwire) On the anniversary of the first Smells Like Yukon radio broadcast and launch of the website, Smells Like Yukon has completed a major divestiture and initiated a shift in strategic direction.

In a deal worth a reported $36.5 million, Smells Like Yukon has sold a large chunk of its online portfolio to an unnamed Whitehorse publisher. Included in the sale are valuable assets such as Smells Like Yukon’s Unbecoming Events and Free Store, as well as the content on Smell-O-Vision. Effective immediately, these features will no longer appear on the Smells Like Yukon website.

“We wish the anonymous buyer all the best in his new venture,” says Smells Like Yukon VP Process Improvement J.D. Sparkles.

According to Sparkles, Smells Like Yukon will now focus on its core business of radio production and smell-related online features.

“We just felt the time was right to scale back,” he explains. “We’d accomplished pretty much all the goals we’d set for our Internet venture. We helped more than 1,600 people from 48 countries waste more than 100 hours of time they’ll never get back. And we’re proud to say that the vast majority were right here in the Yukon, working for the Yukon government.”

Sparkles highlights a number of other major accomplishments.

“We poached traffic from lousy typists trying to find BoingBoing.net, ranked in the top three for the valuable search term ‘ross mercer sex kitten’, toyed with Bulgarian job seekers, and created more than a dozen online polls that have contributed immeasurably to our collective understanding of Yukon life,” he says. “Any attempt to surpass the results of our inaugural year would require a sustained creative effort and a certain amount of effort which, in case you missed the Men of Action / Lazy River radio segment, doesn’t hold that much appeal to Smells Like Yukon producers Jesse Devost and Mark Koepke.”

Sparkles adds that Smells Like Yukon will continue to publish the online polls and caption contests because of the potential synergy with the radio segments.

“The high ROI on our caption contest was another big reason we decided to hang onto that feature,” he continues. “Essentially, we get free content in exchange for prizes no one ever collects. You can’t beat that.”

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For more information, contact:

Media & Public Relations Officer
Smells Like Yukon
Whitehorse, Yukon