Popular Black Diamond Equipment Opens in Fremont

A popular and highly regarded outdoor gear purveyor has set up shop in rival REI’s backyard.

Black Diamond Equipment, a Salt Lake City-based outdoor gear retailer that sells, among other items, climbing gear, ski equipment, and apparel, just opened its largest and most immersive store yet in the heart of the Fremont neighborhood. It’s the company’s first store in the Pacific Northwest and its ninth in North America. The grand opening is this weekend.

The flagship store is Black Diamond’s largest. It opens as Google recently announced it was closing its Fremont office and moving employees to South Lake Union, leaving 300,000 square feet of vacant space. 

Black Diamond has already forged local partnerships with RMI Expedition, Evo and Cripple Creek Back Country and joins outdoor companies Evo, the Seattle Bouldering Project and Brooks Running in the neighborhood.

“Seattle is a city that embodies adventure,” says Ethan White, the company’s director of stores. “This store is our way of fully embracing that energy.”

Seattle’s REI Co-op, the nation’s largest consumer cooperative, recently laid off 400 workers and is dealing with labor issues.

Black Diamond is the second popular retailer in the past month to announce a store opening in Seattle. San Francisco menswear company Taylor Stitch said last month it would open a retail outlet in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, its first outside of the Bay Area.