"Niche marketing" has become a business buzzword in recent years, but I never really grasped its implications until I walked through the $4 million manufacturing plant of Black Diamond Equipment Ltd. last week on the heels of company president Peter Metcalf.
Where Hank the Petunia King once sold plants, rakes, shovels and Weedeaters - items with which I am painfully familiar - the 7.5-acre complex at 2084 East 3900 South is now dedicated to the manufacture and sale of hundreds of separate items, not one of which I have ever purchased nor likely ever will. Things like Camalots, Scarpas, Bod Harnesses, Daisy Chains, Peckers, Cliff Hangers and the ever popular Airlock Screw-gate carabiner.How could it be that a Holladay-based business could do $20 million in annual sales without a dime coming from me or my family - four of the most avid consumers to ever wield a Visa card.
The answer is that we are essentially flatland consumers, whereas patrons of Black Diamond like to spend their spare time clinging to gigantic rocks and mountainsides, searching for tiny cracks to insert their callused fingers as they inch their way to the summit.
For them, Black Diamond is more than just a business, it's the source of the gear with the funny names that helps them up one mountain and survive to climb another. The source of life, if you'll allow me a bit of poetic license.
That is classic niche marketing - or niche manufacturing. I may never buy a Rurp, a Big Easy Bayonet or a Hexentric nut, but there are many thousands out there who will, and their numbers worldwide are growing: Estimates range from 100,000 to 500,000 new climbing devotees per year.
"Climbing isn't just a sport, it's a lifestyle," says Metcalf, who took a bankrupt company and, in six years, turned it into a thriving business - a feat that earned him the designation last month of "1995 Utah Small Business Person of the Year" by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
It's certainly a lifestyle for BD's 203 employees. Walking through the 80,000-square-foot facility, I became aware that my body's fat-to-muscle ratio is way out of whack. When they aren't making climbing gear, Black Diamond's staffers are using it, and climbers are in the same physical fitness league as gymnasts.
That includes Metcalf. The demands of the job have cut deeply into his climbing time, but he remains as dedicated to the sport as to the business. His idea of taking a break isn't to kick back for coffee and doughnuts, but to go do a few dozen chinups.
At age 39, Metcalf can scarcely remember not being a climber. A native of New York, he made his first climb at age 14, courtesy of the Boy Scouts. At 16 he was the youngest person to climb the Kain Face on Mt. Robertson in the Canadian Rockies. At 17 he and a partner were the youngest, at the time, to make it up the Grand Teton's North Face, and later that year to lead a group up a new route on Mt. Fairweather, Alaska.
At 19 Metcalf led a team on the first ascent of a difficult new route on Mt. McKinley, and at 24, he led the first alpine-style climb of the difficult South Face of Alaska's Mt. Hunter, a feat that remains vivid in his mind despite many first ascents and climbs that he has made around the world in the years since.
Thus did Metcalf live the exhilirating life of a "climbing bum" until 1982 when he went to work for Chouinard Equipment, the company founded by mountaineer Yvon Chouinard and a division of outdoor clothing maker Patagonia, Ltd.
Metcalf moved up fast at Chouinard, helping it expand into the growing sport of backcountry skiing. But he couldn't stop the losses that stemmed from a seemingly endless array of product liability lawsuits, the bane of any company that makes gear that is used - or misused - in a potentially risky sport.
The result was a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing for Chouinard. But out of the ashes Black Diamond emerged. Metcalf led a leveraged buyout of Chouinard's assets and formed the new company in Ventura, Calif.
But BD's tenure in California was short. Real estate prices where high and the regulatory climate unfavorable to business. Metcalf launched a nationwide search for the perfect place to live and operate a climbing business. The winners were, surprise!, Park City, where the Metcalf family now resides, and Holladay, where the business now flourishes.
"The climbing in Utah is very good," said Metcalf. Big and Little Cottonwood canyons are favorite spots, along with American Fork Canyon, Moab and the San Rafael Swell, among others. As an added incentive, Provo Canyon has excellent ice climbing, a small but growing sub-niche in the sport.
But the best part of the move to Utah was not the rocks but the welcome, said Metcalf. He recalls the warm reception he and his associates received from the mayor and governor and the economic development community. "The people in Utah made us feel like we made a difference," he said. "In California, it didn't seem as though they cared that we'd left."
The lower costs of operating here didn't hurt, either. After the move to Utah, Metcalf says the company's annual worker's compensation costs went down $75,000 and its medical insurance bills declined $20,000.
Is Metcalf happy with the move to Utah? "It's worked beyond our wildest dreams."
Although BD has a single retail store located at its headquarters, the bulk of its business is done through a variety of specialty outdoor retailers - Metcalf refers to them as "our partners" - the largest being Seattle-based REI.
Even that single factory store did not initially sit well with BD's retail clients, but Metcalf points to 30 percent growth of sales of BD products among the stores as assurance that the company store is not cribbing their business. Also, he notes, the BD factory store is not a discount outlet and does not undercut prices of its retail clients.
In addition to climbing gear, Black Diamond also produces a wide array of equipment and clothing for back-country skiing.