A customer recently asked us how All Things Jeep’s Go Topless Day got started. That’s a dirty little secret I never really wanted to give away but feeling nostalgic as 2017 marks the 10th anniversary of this event, I thought I’d share the story. It’s a perfect example of small business bootstrap marketing! If any of you are small business owners, you will nod your head in appreciation.
Back in the early part of 2008, All Things Jeep was still a fledgling company. We were about to turn 5 years old. We had gained enough traction to just recently move into a real warehouse, in a larger office park, and outside vendors were showing up at our door regularly. The guy who wanted to sell us retirement services for our employees, the company who wanted to sell us an alarm system for the warehouse, and the local newspaper that wanted us to advertise were just a few of the people ringing our door bell.
Turns out the woman wanting to sell ad space in the local paper also did some writing for it. And she happen to be working on the Springtime section of the paper, “Happenings around Boston this Spring” which was going to be published the following week. It was April 2008. Did All Things Jeep have a springtime “Happening” for the paper? It did not. A small e-commerce company selling hats and t-shirts to Jeep enthusiasts doesn’t have “happenings”. But if it meant getting a write-up in the local paper for 1000s to see, well then, heck, we were going to have a happening!
The 2nd week of April 2008 we came up with the idea that Jeep owners in New England have the spring ritual of taking the top off their Jeeps and let’s celebrate it as the national holiday it should be! Let’s pick a day and call for a celebration and let’s see if we can get free publicity for the company. Thus, Go Topless Day was born. Once the “Happening” was submitted to the paper, we had no choice but to make it happen, just in case the paper published the event! We called a local farm stand with a big parking lot and asked if we could hold an event there. We got our designer to create a logo for Go Topless Day, and we started talking it up to the local Jeep community.
The paper never published our event (I suppose the name had something to do with it), but by then, we had the t-shirts (above) and were marching forward with the event. And to incent people to show up, we said that we were going to cut the top off a Cherokee so it could go topless too!
Thus the opportunity for free publicity became local Go Topless Day. But you know Jeep enthusiasts! But they time the day arrived, it had become the First Annual International Go Topless Day for Jeeps! Our local event occurred in Lancaster, MA and about 80 Jeeps and owners showed up. Through word of mouth, we had Jeep clubs all over the world also participate. We had a photo contest and gave away cool prizes. We had some kick-ass entries! Here’s a 2008 Go Topless Day write-up a blogger did.
Here's one of our all time favorite entries into our Go Topless Day Photo Contest.
The event that was invented to get our name in a local paper has become a phenomena in the Jeep community and next spring, we celebrate the 10th Annual International Go Topless Day! We are thinking about ideas on how to celebrate a Ten Years of Topless Day! If you have suggestions, post them in the comments section. And remember, when opportunity knocks, go topless!
Full frame soft tops are most similar to the factory soft tops and feature metal bows to support the top’s fabric, removable side and rear windows, and a sunroof on certain models. The advantage to a framed top is that the bows stay attached to the roll bars at all times. This means that you can easily undo the top from the windshield and flip it all the way back for the topless experience. The bows lay flat along the sides of the cargo area while the fabric of the top folds behind the rear seat. If the clouds roll in, it’s just as simple to pull the top back up and reattach it. Even with windows, it takes less than 5 minutes to fold down or put up a fully framed soft top once you've gotten the routine down. The versatility and weather protection offered by a complete framed soft top is unbeatable. 
The other option for a complete soft top kit is a frameless soft top. As the name implies, these tops do not use a metal bow system to support the fabric, but rather your Wrangler’s roll bars. This means that the top will follow the contours of your roll bars in the cargo area. For 4 door Wranglers, this does lead to a slight decrease in overhead cargo space when the rear windows are installed. This decrease in overhead cargo space is not as noticable on the 2 door models. On frameless tops that feature removable side and rear windows (hint, some models only have a removable rear window), the style is extremely similar to that classic bikini top look. At the same time, complete frameless soft top kits will include door surrounds, which allow you to seal the top to the Jeep and keep water from coming into the passenger area. When the windows are installed, a frameless soft top will be 100% waterproof. The disadvantage to a frameless top is that it does not have the capability to fold all the way back as a full framed soft top does. Some models have a sunroof feature so that the top can flip or roll back over the front driver and passenger seats. For many owners, having the sunroof back and the rear windows removed creates enough of an open air ride, while other owners find this set up doesn’t feel truly topless as the rear seats are covered. A frameless soft top does have to be completely uninstalled from the Jeep in order to go fully topless, and there is no built in storage mechanism as with the framed soft tops.
Bikini top, safari top, brief top, Bimini top, combo top, island top – whatever you call it, the summer top is a staple of Wrangler culture. Summer tops are the closest you can come to riding topless while still having a bit of weather protection overhead. All summer tops require a windshield channel in order to attach to the windshield area of the Jeep and use straps to attach to your roll bars. They come in a variety of styles, including brief, which covers only the two front seats, or extended, which covers front and rear seats. Summer tops are available in mesh and solid fabrics of varying colors. While a summer top will keep precipitation from coming straight down into the Jeep, they do not seal to the Jeep the way that a full soft top does, and as such, are not waterproof. Certain models have the plastic belt rail built into the sides of the top so that they can seal with factory door surrounds, but this varies widely by manufacturer and year. 
There’s a few varieties of 
