All Things Jeep Blog & Musings

May 19th, 2018 marks the 11th Anniversary of All Things Jeep's Worldwide Go Topless Day® and celebrations are scheduled around the world! We started this as a local event in our sleepy little town in Central Massachusetts and it's turned into the biggest celebration of Jeep ownership in the world! Back in May of 2008 we had just finished a particularly brutal New England winter and we wanted to celebrate the beginning of warm weather and the beginning of topless weather for us Jeepers. So we created an event. We had about 65 Jeeps show up at the meet-up we created at a farm stand in Lancaster, MA. And some of our customers in other parts of the country heard about it and wanted to also host events. So they did. But Jeepers are an enthusiastic bunch. By the following year, our local event had a DJ, an ice cream vendor, off-road trails, a few RTI ramps and vendor giveaways. I bet some of you reading this were there! 

The next year it grew. Jeep clubs, dealerships and groups wanted to participate also. We said, "Absolutely", and the number of hosted events grew. We created Go Topless Day® apparel, made GTD stickers that we gave away for free, and year by year, more Jeep communities began participating. We launched a "Getting Ready for Go Topless Day®" Photo Contest and gave away some fun prizes. (Photos here are compliments of our entries this year!) We had events planned on multiple continents. Jeepers had fun and have turned the day into a day of raising money for charities. Which brings me to this year....

This year we currently have over 130 Go Topless Day® events scheduled across the country and across the world. This year you'll find events like Jeep'n Alaska's Go Topless Day® 2018 event in Wasilla, AK and Big Island Jeep Club's first Go Topless Day® event in Kailui-Kona, HI and almost every state in between. There's GTD18 events in Australia, Columbia, Canada and South Africa. 

One of the largest and most fun Go Topless Day® events is our flagship event in Monson, MA that we co-host with Ocean State Jeepers. It's grown into an event with almost 1000 Jeeps and over 3000 Jeepers. Folks show up to do the trail rides, shop the vendor midway, enter raffles for some great prizes, hang out with other Jeepers, and, of course, to admire almost 1000 Jeeps. Jeep Beach Jam in Panama City Beach, FL will be aiming to make a Guinness World Record with the most topless Jeeps in one place. The great thing about Go Topless Day® Jeep events is that they can be anything! Our goal has always been to simply celebrate the fun and adventure that comes along with owning a Jeep. 

This year there are poker runs, beach cleanups, drive-in movie nights, coastal cruises, Show & Shines, picnics, events at Jeep dealerships, in the woods, on the beaches and in the parks. 

The complete list of All Things Jeep's Go Topless Day® 2018 registered events is here. No matter where you are or what kind of Jeep you drive, we hope you'll take some time on May 19th, 2018 to join in the Go Topless Day® spirit, and get behind the wheel of your Jeep, crank up some tunes and enjoy the ride. It's a Jeep thing and we DEFINITELY understand! 

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!