How much engineering staff do you need to make some walking sticks?

Black Diamond makes a lot more than just walking sticks. But even if that's all they made ..

You're seriously underestimating how hard it might to to engineer and test even something as seemingly simple as a walking stick. These are lightweight, high-tech materials we're talking about (carbon fiber), which even SpaceX gave up on for their latest spacecraft. They're also collapsible/foldable. Simply put, this is harder than you think it is.

How much engineering staff do you need to make a search engine?

I have no idea, I've never made an artificial walking stick. Good strong wood is quite sturdy however, but not nearly as light as a synthetic walking stick. Trying to replicate the strength of a hard wood in a very lightweight synthetic material is probably a challenging engineering task.

Anyway I'd think production/manufacturing and quality assurance would be more to blame, particularly if the same products used to perform better than now.

Enough to keep your manufacturer from doing something stupid.

Designing the walking stick is simply the start. The problem is that you specified some really expensive materials with exotic manufacturing requirements that your supplier probably doesn't understand unless they are in aerospace.

Of course, aerospace manufacturers are ferociously expensive, and your customer can't really tell the difference if you are 1 or 2% less effective, but they can tell if you are 10% cheaper, so you start downgrading your manufacturing.

And then the problems start. The new manufacturer probably doesn't understand exotic materials as well, or they would be an aerospace supplier charging you more money. So, maybe they don't apply a cross layer, maybe they change the binding agent, maybe they use a cheaper material.

How do you, as the manufacturer, know?

You would have to put people on quality assurance analysis, but those are valuable engineers.

For a product that is $200. Max. For a company that has a revenue of roughly $100 million a year and basically no profit.

So, go find a company that charges $500-$1000 for your sticks and creates an actually good product, or suck it up and buy the Chinese crap.

They are about 150g per pole, so a fair bit I suspect.