Black Diamond is splitting from XXL, which has been its French agent for a decade, to hire three sales representatives in the country from the beginning of next year. The company explained that the switch was not part of a wider European strategy, but that Black Diamond required strong technical focus from its distribution partners since it widened its offer with more categories, particularly backpacks. XXL has other partners led by Five Ten and Arc’Teryx, and it started selling Keen earlier this year. Black Diamond will not open a full-fledged French subsidiary but it will have a showroom in either Annecy or Grenoble to support the three salespeople. They will sell only the Black Diamond brand while Gregory will still be handled separately by PL Diffusion, a specialist French distributor with brands from MSR to Source, Zamberlan and more.
