PARK CITY, Utah (BRAIN) — The Sweden-based snowsports and bike brand POC has moved its North American offices from Salt Lake City to Park City following its sale last year to Investcorp. The brand's North American managing director, Willie Ford, told BRAIN on Wednesday that the company is investing heavily in back office capabilities, including credit management, finance operations and logistics services.
POC is celebrating 10 years in business this year. It started in snowsports and began offering mountain bike products in 2008 and road cycling products in 2012. The company was owned by the outdoor brand Black Diamond from 2012 until last year, when Investcorp, a European venture capital fund, bought it from Black Diamond for $65 million. POC's North American offices had been in Aspen, Colorado, until it joined Black Diamond in Salt Lake City soon after that purchase. POC's world headquarters remain in Sweden, and it also has offices in Austria.
Under Black Diamond's wing, POC was able to rely on that company's infrastructure for everything from human resources to financing, shipping & receiving and more, Ford said. Now moved in to offices near downtown Park City, the comapny is in the final stages of setting up a new warehouse in Salt Lake City that Ford said is "super sophisticated."
"We're going to be able cut down on transit times and costs. It's going to be amazing for the people we ship to," he said. "We learned a lot being on the same platform as Black Diamond and now we are excited to have control over what we are doing and what our customers' experience with us will be. Now we have the ultimate say about how we do things."
The new Park City offices are close to mountain bike trails, road riding opportunities and alpine skiing, while still being convenient to the Salt Lake airport, Ford noted. "We plan to fully immerse ourselves in the Park City community — hosting events, supporting local ski and bike clubs and shining a light on everything Park City has to offer."
POC's new space also allows it to invest in new personnel, including the hiring of a marketing director, David DeMartini. DeMartini joins POC from Backbone Media, where he managed media programs for numerous active lifestyle brands, including POC. In addition to DeMartini, POC has hired several new customer service team members, a new controller, credit manager and a finance team. POC also is revamping its website.
The company unveiled its largest bike-related product line ever at last fall's Interbike, and went public with the lines March 1. The new cycling gear includes the Fondo recreational road clothing line and the new Resistance mountain bike clothing line, as well as new eyewear, helmets and other protective gear.
Life under Investcorp is "awesome," Ford said. "They are really attracted to what we’ve done in niche markets. They are a vehicle to achieve what you want to achieve as opposed to day-to-day reporting. They are quite hands-off in that they see the vision of POC and want to empower us to achieve what we want to achieve. I know they are excited to be in the snow and cycling markets."
Investcorp bought the Italian protective brand Dainese in 2014. Ford said POC and Dainese will remain separate. Although POC and Dainese both offer mountain bike protective gear, Ford said Dainese remains more focused on powersports products.
While the North American offices have increased capabilities, POC remains very much a Swedish brand, Ford said.
"We are one brand around the world. Product design is still done in Sweden — nobody in-house here is an engineer. We take a lot of pride in the brand being Swedish, and our designs and positions are very Scandanavian," he said.
