Vista Outdoor, the sporting goods and outdoor company recently spun off from Alliant Techsystems (ATK), has appointed a vice president of marketing, Brett Merrell, and a vice president of investor relations, Michael Pici. They report to Mark DeYoung, chairman and chief executive of Vista Outdoor. Merrell has been placed in charge of the company's brand strategies, innovation and new product development, advertising, research, consumer and market insights, and analytics and brand performance. He started off at Procter & Gamble and worked for several companies. He acted as general manager and vice president for Gerber Products Company and as senior vice president at Giant Eagle. Pici previously managed investor relations at ATK. Vista owns Bushnell, Bollé and a raft of other brands, mostly in the firearms segment. It is evaluating several merger and acquisition opportunities to diversify its product portfolio in areas such as camping, cycling, fishing, golf, snow sports, trail sports and water sports. The company started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Feb. 10 at an initial price of $29 per share, giving it a market capitalization of $3.62 billion. Vista Outdoor had an adjusted Ebitda margin of 16.2 percent on pro forma sales of $2.28 billion last year.

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