Outdoor USA Magazine

As K2 Sports celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, the ski and snowboard manufacturer is announcing plans to launch an expansive outerwear program in Fall 2013. The men's and women's winter sports outerwerar program is designed to complement its current all-mountain, park and backcountry-focused hardgoods offering.

During 2011 K2 has recruited a full product creation team in order to achieve the goal of delivering the collection at the end of 2012 for the 2013-14 season. The team includes K2 Apparel Director Mark Valdez, who spent the past 20 years in sourcing, product development and production with Nike; David Peterson, category merchandising manager, who has a background in the ski industry and spend the last 16 years merchandising at Eddie Bauer; and Diane Sheehan Egnatz, senior outerwear developer, who brings eight years of experience developing technical outerwear in an athlete focused environment.

Athlete, artist and filmmaker Eric Pollard, famous for bringing his fluid park-style riding to the backcountry, has signed a long term contract as K2 Outerwear's first flagship athlete. The Oregon native, who has already committed almost a year to the development of the line, is heavily involved in the look, fit and function of K2's initial apparel collection.

K2 has also signed a license agreement with W.L. Gore to collaborate on product development throughout the outerwear collection. K2 will begin to preview the collection internationally in late 2012.