Mountain Hardwear, owned by Columbia Sportswear, announced three internal promotions, including a new vice president of product line management and merchandising, plus two new hires.

Mountain Hardwear said it saw “tremendous growth” in 2021 over the past year, including a 33 percent increase in net sales and a 30 percent increase during the fourth quarter. Product development and additional leadership set the stage for anticipating another banner year in 2022.

“At Mountain Hardwear, we celebrate the strength of our brand through our people and their diverse experiences,” said Troy Sicotte, president, Mountain Hardwear. “These significant promotions will supercharge our ability to nurture our continued brand growth. With our growth, there has been a profound need to expand the team. More so than other growth metrics, celebrating the type of world-class talent we’ve been able to attract among the ‘Humans of Hardwear’ family is how I measure Mountain Hardwear’s success with more to come later this year.”

  • Becky Avila was appointed vice president of product line management and merchandising. She had been the director of product merchandising at Mountain Hardwear for more than two years. Before Mountain Hardwear, she worked at The North Face as global product director, adult and youth logo wear, for nearly 12 years.
  • Sara Lin was promoted to director of sourcing, manufacturing and quality assurance. In this newly created role, Lin will oversee its sourcing, manufacturing and quality assurance as an individual brand while helping to integrate and leverage the Columbia Sportswear Company’s manufacturing Center of Excellence. Lin joined Columbia Sportswear in 2004 and has been part of the Mountain Hardwear team since 2014.
  • Malorie Benz was promoted to senior manager, marketing operations and is responsible for leading Mountain Hardwear’s growth among its brand pillars of product, people and place.

Each of these promotions follows the recent appointment of Sablle Scheppmann as director of sales in January 2022.

  • Greg Garrigues was hired as director of innovation. Before joining Mountain Hardwear, Garrigues spent the last four years working in the vertical product/innovation team at W. L. Gore & Associates. He has also held leadership and innovation roles at Hyalite Equipment, Baladeo USA, Teko Socks USA, and Dana Designs.
  • Sanda Williams was hired as director of material research responsible for leading and driving the company’s sustainability efforts through its materials. Over the past five years, Williams has worked for Nike as the senior director of materials.

“We take great pride in our mission to design and build the best products possible and hire the best people,” said Peter Valles, VP, product & brand creative, Mountain Hardwear. “To align with our goals, we added two key leadership roles to our product creation team and couldn’t be more excited to advance our products and brand.”