Black Diamond is bringing several new faces on-board for engineering, design and administrative positions in an effort to re-structure to cope with the changing nature of the climbing and ski hardgoods market.
“In the past several months, Black Diamond has reorganized and expanded our manufacturing and design engineering area to take us to the next level as a lean manufacturer and catapult designs more efficiently into manufacturing,” states Peter Metcalf, CEO. “We have added new positions to augment our talented staff, promoted from within and filled vacancies, as in the case for SCARPA. We see this continued commitment to excellence as critical to our success as a Utah based manufacturer and global leader in outdoor retail markets.”
Mark Vent has joined Black Diamond filling the new position of Director of Manufacturing Operations. Vent joins BD after twenty-five plus years as a business consultant with lean manufacturing and implementing 6 Sigma. Joining Vent is Nick Rueff, who formerly worked at Toyota manufacturing. Rueff will assume the role as Line Engineer for sewn goods and the ice line.
Stepping into the newly created position of Director of Performance Lightware is Anna Martens. Anna previously consulted with K2 Womens Telemark and developed markets beyond outdoor for Leatherman Tool Group.
Paul Terry has been hired to head up the newly created position of Senior Industrial Designer. Terrys background includes work as Senior Designer at Porsche Styling and previously Nissan Design International.
In Engineering and Support Services, Bill Reiman has been promoted to the new post of Director of Project Engineering. Two new engineers, James Grutta and Wendy Langan, will join Reiman and his colleagues. Grutta joins BD from Delphi where he optimized designs for the auto industry. Langan specialized in planning and process engineering for Hershey Chocolate. Both Grutta and Langan are backcountry skiers and moved to BD in order to work in an atmosphere that incorporates their passion.
Finally, Roch Horton “returns” to Black Diamond as the SCARPA Business Manager. A former Chouinard Equipment employee, who left in 1989 to rep for Patagonia, Horton has long been a part of the extended BD family.
In related news, Black Diamond Equipment, in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a voluntary recall of about 1,000 Soliras Headlamp Lithium Ion Batteries. The headlamp battery may overheat, posing a burn or fire hazard to users. No incidents or injuries have been reported.
The recalled batteries are found in Black Diamond Soliras headlamps. The headlamps were sold for about $150 at authorized dealers nationwide from March 2004 through May 2004.
“BD was notified by the manufacturer of the Lithium Ion battery cells that they had experienced a 1 in a million failure rate when the battery is used in a high-current draw application. While our lamp does not fall into the category of “high current draw”, the possibility of failure is NOT ZERO,” Peter Metcalf, CEO of Black Diamond, told BOSS. “As we are acutely sensitive to eliminating the possibility of failure, we chose to join the recall, along with many other major OEM manufacturers such as Apple computers.”
Consumers have been told to stop using the headlamps immediately and return the battery to the nearest authorized Black Diamond dealer for a free replacement.
