The former president of Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc. and key force behind the company’s 2005 buy of France’s Skis Rossignol SA, is joining a Montreal clothing maker.
Bernard Mariette, who left Quiksilver in early 2008 after 15 years with the clothing maker, was named chief executive of Coalision Inc., a maker of clothes inspired by skiing and snowboarding based in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil.
Mariette has served as a director of Coalision, which is owned by Toronto-based private equity firm Kilmer Capital Partners.
He said in a statement his role will be to “accelerate the company’s growth in North America and to further establish its brands in the rest of the world.”
Mariette was a close No. 2 to Quiksilver Chief Executive Bob McKnight until his departure more than a year ago.
The Frenchman played a leading role in the buy of struggling ski maker Rossignol, which moved Quiksilver beyond clothes and shoes inspired by surfing and skateboarding and into skis, snowboards and other winter sports gear.
The move proved disastrous. Late last year, Quiksilver sold Rossignol to Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd. and Rye, N.Y.-based Jarden Corp. for $50 million, a fraction of the $560 million it paid for the French company in 2005.
Mariette is a longtime friend of France’s Boix-Vives family, which owned most of Rossignol before the sale to Quiksilver. He worked on the Rossignol buy for more than a year before the deal closed.
For a time after Mariette left Quiksilver, he looked at possibly buying Rossignol’s snow gear business.
Coalision makes the Orage and Lole brands of clothes. It has estimated yearly sales of about $20 million.
