Chouinard Equipment was founded in the 1950's by Yvon Chouinard when he started forging pitons in Ventura, California to use in his rock climbing adventures. By the early 1970's it had become the largest climbing equipment supplier in the US but remained marginally profitable. At around this time, Chouinard started selling clothing which had better margins than the equipment side of the business.
Clothing grew and the Patagonia brand was born. Eventually Patagonia was split off into its own company. Later, when product liability issues would threaten Chouinard Equipment, the separation of Patagonia into its own legal entity would allow Chouinard to isolate Patagonia from the problem.
In 1989, Chouinard placed Chouinard Equipment in bankruptcy. A management group lead by Peter Metcalf, who was then heading up the company, set about trying to pull together a deal to purchase the assets of Chouinard Equipment and form a new company. They started working with some investment bankers and put together a plan... and then started to try to raise the money to get Black Diamond Equipment, Ltd rolling.
By 1989 Chouinard Equipment was relying on Patagonia for all its Finance and IT functions. Someone would be needed to build and lead this part of the organization. In the summer of that year, a small ad was placed inClimbing Magazinelooking for a CFO. I saw the ad and sent in my resume. I arranged to meet with Peter Metcalf at the Outdoor Retailer Show in Reno, Nevada in
August, 1989. After we got acquainted, he explained what he was trying
to do and gave me a copy of the business plan he was using to raise
money. We hit it off and I told him that I'd review the business plan
and give him my feedback.
After looking the plan over I must admit I didn't think they had a chance in hell of raising the money. And even if they did, they'd have very a tough time making a go of it. But Peter was determined and we stayed in touch. Three months later he'd somehow cobbled together a deal and invited me to Black Diamond's birthday party. After the party he asked me to come help build the company. I agreed, thinking that I'd put my career on hold for a year or two to help BD get set up and off the ground. Although it didn't quite turn out that way, it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
I joined BD about 60 days after its birth and set about trying to figure out what had to be done. It was a daunting task list. We needed to wean ourselves off of Patagonia's systems and move out of Patagonia's offices and warehouse within two years while we were working to build the organization and run the business.
BD had secured asset-based working capital financing per its business plan. It was provided by a commercial finance subsidiary of Far West Savings and Loan (which would shortly thereafter be taken over by the RTC... but that is another story altogether) and it was expensive and administratively onerous. It kept us on a very short leash but we made it work because we had to. BD never missed a payroll, we paid our bills and shipped product.
It was a struggle but by Fall, 1991, we were running our own systems and we had relocated to Salt Lake City into a derelict shopping center that we bought and refurbished under very favorable terms from a local Utah bank. And we were profitable and growing.
I had also laid the foundation for Finance and IT that would keep the fires fed and the wheels turning for the next eight years of my tenure and well into BD's second decade.
· Implemented new ERP systems (twice) and the second system is still in place
· Moved the company from Ventura, California to Salt Lake City, Utah
· Hired the next two CFO's
· Established a credit relationship with Zions Bank that has lasted over 20 years
· Personally built and deployed BD's first generation intranet
· Personally built and deployed a web-based sales forecasting system
· Advocated for and built BD's first public web presence
· Personally had input into every important strategic decision made in BD's first decade
. By the time I left BD, we had recorded ten straight years of growth and profitability
When I first started looking into the WWW, what I saw was simple, static HTML pages and I wondered what the big deal was. But with Microsoft's release of Active Server Pages (ASP), an add-on to Internet Information Server (IIS) in Windows NT 4 sometime in 1996, I saw the possibility of a dynamic, programmable web and I knew I had to jump in with both feet.
For the next six months I spent evenings and weekends teaching myself ASP, VBScript, SQL and putting together web applications. This was very challenging for me as I had essentially no programming training. But I was fascinated and made enough slow progress that I kept at it.
My interest in internet technology would drive much of my future career.