new lines of Black Diamond boots

Ski boots made to perform
By Mike Gorrell
The Salt Lake Tribune


The Black Diamond ski revolution continues.

A year ago, the Salt Lake County-based outdoor recreation company introduced 10 lines of skis capable of being used with equal ease at Alpine resorts and in the backcountry.

Now Black Diamond is coming out with nine lines of high-performance boots to complement those skis and to complete efforts to blur distinctions between in-bounds and out-of-bounds skiing.

"The opportunity for true innovation lies in the gap between where the market is and where it's going," said Pete Metcalf, chief executive of Black Diamond Equipment Ltd., confident that "front, back and sidecountry skiing are all merging."

After spending more than three years and $4 million developing the boot line, Black Diamond is in the midst of an aggressive marketing campaign to spread the word about what its research has wrought.

"Our goal is to be the No. 1 [all-terrain] and telemark boot marketer in five years," said company spokesman Adam Chamberlain. "We've turned up the volume with this product and we need to turn up the volume in marketing to do justice to this product and to compete seriously in the marketplace."

Black Diamond will do just that at this week's Outdoor Retailer Winter Trade Show, which begins Tuesday with the fifth annual Backcountry Base Camp at Snowbasin Ski Resort above Ogden. The exposition, which draws nearly 20,000 people, then shifts to the Salt Palace Convention Center from Wednesday through Saturday.

Metcalf said Outdoor Retailer will allow Black Diamond to display its products, which range in price from $530 to $730, to a broad spectrum of retail recreation outlets, part of the company's multipronged campaign.

Earlier this month, Black Diamond unveiled the boots to the national ski media, such as Skiing, Ski, Freeskier, Powder, Outside and Backcountry magazines and Telemark Tips. Company officials now are showing off their products to leading free-ski retail shops in Colorado, Montana and the East. Then it's off to Las Vegas for the big Snowsports Industries America show.

A European promotion starts this week, and China will be the target next month. This spring, Black Diamond will make a series of regional demonstrations to dealers and ski-shop personnel - "the ones selling it," said Black Diamond ski category director Thomas Laakso.
The initial response of ski publications has been positive.

Wrote Tom Winter, editor of Freeskier: "The Factor boot heads up a strong lineup and is, as far as we're concerned, the boot you should take a hard look at if you ski big mountains and spend any time touring. It's also an intriguing choice for park riders, as the boot features one of the best 'walk' options we've ever tried."

For CEO Metcalf, that kind of praise validates his claim that Black Diamond's new boot line represents "the biggest ski boot launch since Salomon released rear-entry boots in 1980."

Salomon figures into this endeavor, as well. When Salomon bought Atomic skis earlier this decade, it brought an end to a ski-manufacturing partnership between Black Diamond and Atomic. That precipitated Black Diamond's decision to develop its own crossover ski line, a move followed by the creation of a telemark binding and, now, the boot line.

This all-out effort was invigorating for Jake Hall, one of 15 engineers and designers involved in creating the boots, because the team was not strapped by the need to be consistent with company tradition. Whatever worked best was used. "The sky was the limit," he said.

Not that everything came easy.

Laakso noted that company officials spent 1 1/2 years studying the human foot before they even began formulating the boots' plastic shells.

"If you don't come to the party with a shoe that fits, nobody is going to wear it," he said, knowing full well that plenty of people "gave up Alpine skiing because their feet hurt."

So Black Diamond bought hundreds of competitors' boots and utilized a $60,000 foot scanner to develop three-dimensional images that compared actual foot shapes with the interiors of most boots.

Then, designers and engineers built a boot from the bottom up - from an insulated boot board, foot bed and a liner equipped with a "boa" lacing system that can be cinched snug with the turn of a knob, to a shell that is flexible at the ankle for walking but also has enough high-torsion stiffness to drive and steer skis on steep descents.

"A high-performance boot needs a high-performance foundation to build upon," Laakso said.

Under the supervision of boot team leader David Narajowski, Black Diamond employed people around the globe to design, develop and build the line. Much of the parts work was done in Asia, while a couple of Austrians focused on foams, nylons and buckles in Europe. Final product testing is being done in Black Diamond's manufacturing facility on Salt Lake's east bench.

In total, more than 360 parts were used in the boots, and to make each, a tool had to be designed and created. Boot components were sewn, die cast and forged. Around-the-clock e-mail conversations kept the process on track, Narajowski said.

But in the end, he added, the new Black Diamond boot line "was designed in Utah powder, the way people here ski - short access, and it's all about the down."

Which is precisely why Metcalf moved the company from Ventura, Calif., to Salt Lake: to take advantage of its access to the mountains and the skiing possibilities.

"It's fun to be an American company, a Utah company here in the beauty of the Wasatch, launching a unique line of boots we feel will be successful [worldwide] . . . This is as close as we'll get to knowing what it's like to face a curtain raising on Broadway."