Brett Couric
Raised on old vinyl records in a generic suburb of Oakland, California, Brett Couric brings a notable
lack of expertise to the UncommonGoods team. After a stint at In-N-Out Burger, Brett dove into
the South for four years to study liberal arts at a university in central North Carolina. From there, he
rambled into New York City, where he got an apartment in Brooklyn, only to fi nd that the Dodgers had
left town 55 years ago. Now he pulls for the Cyclones instead.
Brett spends most of his time in Coney Island and Prospect Park, though he has been told that in
Bret
Bret
the winters here you could freeze right to the bone, so during the colder days he checks out the
Greenwich Village folk scene near UncommonGoods, or just stays inside and reads The Economist. He
can speak Spanish and Portuguese with equal mediocrity, but he's quiet fl uent in his native tongue, and
can also stumble around on piano, drums, and harmonica.
Brett has spent summers working as a community organizer in North Carolina, studying Brazilian
culture in Brazil, and teaching community health in Paraguay. He also spent a summer lying on a raft in
his parents' pool, where he decided to pursue a career in plastics. That turned out to be bad advice,
though, so he now does work on writing, editing, and marketing for UncommonGoods.
Thomas Epting
Born in a sleepy town in rural Texas, Thomas Epting has learned to love the city that never sleeps, and
it wasn't a diffi cult courtship. For a bicycle-commuting photographer-turned-businessman, with an
unfortunate tendency to work all night, New York City has been the perfect place.
When he fi rst moved to New York, Thomas interned with legendary photographer Irving Penn, while
completing his BFA photography/design course work, and later worked on ad campaigns for clients
like Clinique, Cole Haan and Ralph Lauren. He was originally hired to work on UncommonGoods'
photography and visual direction, and now serves as the Chief Operating Offi cer in charge of content,
design, catalog, engineering and operations. It's a position that provides him with as many challenges
as his job teaching rock climbing in the mountains of Southern Utah, only this one doesn't require a
harness.
If Thomas isn't in his offi ce, or pedaling in between taxicabs, he's probably strapped to a pair of skis,
carving tracks or hucking off cliffs on mountains like Blackcomb Glacier in British Colombia, the site of
past extreme skiing championships.
5
anything but ordinary
www.uncommongoods.com
". . . absolutely, 100%, without question a
treat for the eye, heart and psyche"
- I.L.
(UncommonGoods customer)
