Trade of the tools: Diamondback and its $400 tool belts are turning tradesmen into 'superstars'

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Trade of the tools: Diamondback and its $400 tool belts are turning tradesmen into

Salt Lake City solar energy contractor Brandan Sirrine had long viewed leather tool bags as essentials.

“Leather bags are kind of a badge of honor,” Sirrine told The Daily Progress. “So I was really hesitant to transition from leather tool bags over to their system.”

He’s talking about the modular work belts from Diamondback Tool Co., a Charlottesville-based firm that has recently parlayed its ergonomic and customer-forward products into a business approaching $10 million in annual sales. Sirrine recently showed his 85,000 Instagram followers his new Diamondback pouches.

“I have very specific tools, like big crimpers, and I need to carry them on a roof,” Sirrine said. “With Diamondback, I can customize my bag to be simple and perfectly designed for me on a roof.”

Sirrine is part of a growing number of workers willing to spend upwards of $400 on a tool belt. The leading leather belt company actually charges less, but Sirrine said he’s sticking with Diamondback.

From left to right, Damani Harrison, chief style officer, and Connor Crook, CEO, stand at Diamondback Toolbelts in Charlottesville on Aug. 31.

“I will never go back,” said Sirrine. “This is the highest-quality design and material.”

Diamondback builds its gear from military-grade nylon, and the designs get tweaked by input from people such as Sirrine who field test and then, warts and all, post about it. Another tester is Watertown, Connecticut, electrician Andrew Ubaldi.

“There are all these fussy, little things that occur with products that you don’t notice until you use them,” Ubaldi told The Daily Progress. “I found screwdrivers would fall through a slot, and this webbing loop was too tight.”

He said Diamondback then tweaked the pouch before bringing it to market.

“So by the time you see the end product,” Ubaldi said, “it’s the best it can be.”

Diamondback Toolbelts' products hang on a wall at its facility in Charlottesville on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023.

Such public interplay between customer and merchant shows a level of transparency that Diamondback customers seem to appreciate.

“For so long, people in the trades were sort of looked down upon,” Lynchburg carpenter Andy Moore told The Daily Progress. “It’s really cool to have a company that respects people in the trades.”

Moore credits much of that approach to Diamondback’s chief style officer: Damani Harrison. Every morning, a caffeine-fueled Harrison pores over the social media mentions and integrates one or two of them into his daily “Diamondback Damani Show.” It’s part pep talk, part social commentary and, tucked somewhere into Harrison’s six- or seven-minute monologue — which then disappears like a Tibetan monk’s sand mandala — is a bit of boosterism for the company that has rewritten the rules of tool belts.

“Damani is really good at identifying the ins and outs of the industry,” said Moore. “He’s really good at seeing things through the eyes of the customer.”

He also sees things through the eyes of Instagram, where the company has more than 100,000 followers, many of them vying for a Diamondback repost.

From left to right, Connor Crook, CEO, and Damani Harrison, chief style officer, talk in the conference room of Diamondback Toolbelts in Charlottesville on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023.

In recent weeks, there was a woman who posted herself doing yoga in her Diamondback belt. Repost! Then there was the guy doing a several hundred-pound deadlift in his belt. Repost!

“We’re going to carpenters and treating them like athletes,” Harrison told The Daily Progress. “They feel like superstars.”

A well-known Charlottesville musician, journalist, soccer coach, DJ and educator, the 45-year-old Harrison seems to be combining his past careers into this one.

“We have to be relevant to the digital generation,” Harrison said. “They’re all about sharing information.”

Strolling through the 10,000-square-foot Diamondback warehouse and office last week, Harrison introduced the company CEO: 47-year-old Connor Crook. A lawyer and former litigator whose prior limelight was serving as counsel to 1990s Downtown Mall redeveloper Lee Danielson, Crook purchased Diamondback in 2016 when it was little more than a Facebook group whose members were wondering when it might start making belts again.

Among other products, Charlottesville-based Diamondback Toolbelts sells pouches, belts and vests.

What Crook bought was the name, a succinct web address in the form of toolbelts.com and an ergonomic design. He credits the creator, a now-deceased man named Jim Skelton who, despite suffering a back injury, just wanted to ply his trade as a carpenter.

“His whole concept was to make something that was ergonomic,” said Crook. “He created this ingenious product, but he never could grow it.”

As Crook and Harrison walked past several big cardboard boxes bound for a store in Korea, they said their focus on social media gives them not only a younger demographic but an international audience.

German carpenters were recently yearning for a bag to store their lengthy structural screws, they said. The resulting “Quiver” pouch soon became a must-have not only for the Germans but also for American electricians and solar installers to hold oversize zip ties.

“Now we’ve got all these guys in the solar industry who buy these,” said Harrison.

Diamondback Toolbelts employees work at the Charlottesville facility on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023.

While the open approach has helped Diamondback innovate, it has also begun biting back.

“People are knocking us off,” Crook said.

Consider hammers: Long stored near the rear of a conventional tool belt, Diamondback has always geared its hammer holders to the front.

“When we first started pushing this, people said, ‘Why would you carry your hammer like that? It looks f--king stupid,’” said Harrison. “Now every major tool belt company is providing an option to do this.”

To remain competitive, Diamondback recently expanded its modular system into wall storage and high-tech worker pants. And, like police departments that are finding that vests distribute weight better than belts, Diamondback recently made a leap into vests.

Diamondback Toolbelts warehouse manager Rob Cheatham puts labels on boxes for shipment at the company's Charlottesville facility on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023.

“If we take ergonomics to the next step, the vest becomes an integral piece of that,” said Crook, noting that Diamondback has more than 200 vests on back order.

The company has a network of American manufacturers making products on contract. Sales, Diamondback said, are about equally divided between a global network of distributors and direct-to-consumer sales from the website. The company has also recently started some sales on Amazon.

“To sell a product at our price range, you’ve got to have something more than just the quality of the product, and that’s the authenticity,” said Crook.

If not for their slightly different skin tones, Crook and Harrison might be mistaken for brothers, particularly due to their near-constant ribbing of each other.

“Connor has done some borderline cancelable things on social,” said Harrison.

“Borderline?” Crook asked with a laugh.

Connor Crook, CEO of Diamondback Toolbelts, gives a tour of the company's facilities in Charlottesville on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023.

“We’ve even been criticized by other companies as unprofessional,” said Harrison. “We hang on to the fact that this is just who we are.”

They offer no apologies, even after a beer-fueled Instagram Live on a recent Saturday night.

“We made some comments that some of our customers thought were unprofessional,” said Crook.

“If that doesn’t make us traditionally professional, then so what?” asked Harrison.

“Yeah, I tried the professional gig for a while,” said Crook, the former lawyer. “It sucked.”