Bauer Scores with New Products and Acquisitions

Bauer Performance Sports, a powerhouse in the ice hockey equipment market, continues to expand not only its product lines, but business as well, boasting more than 500 employees and offices in the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland. It beefed up its offerings for lacrosse equipment by acquiring Cascade, a lacrosse helmet designer and manufacturer in 2012, and Maverick Lacrosse, a designer, developer, manufacturer and marketer of lacrosse equipment, apparel and accessories in 2011. Bauer's products are now available in more than 45 countries through more than 3,700 distributors.

You might expect the company, which began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2011, to call Canada, land of hockey enthusiasts, home. But Bauer's corporate headquarters is in Exeter, having relocated to NH from Montreal in 2001 when it was a division of Nike. Bauer Performance Sports, which also owns Bauer Hockey and Mission Roller Hockey, only had 45 employees when President and CEO Kevin Davis joined the company in 2002. Their ranks have since swelled to 550, with 140 of them in NH.

When Nike sold Bauer to the New York private-equity firm Kohlburg & Co. in 2008, business took off, Davis says. Bauer has since acquired five companies in the hockey and lacrosse sectors, and doubled revenues to more than $400 million. In October, Bauer closed a deal to acquire Inaria International, a global provider of team sports and active apparel, a new market for Bauer.

While Bauer offers a diverse line of equipment for hockey and lacrosse players from age six to adult, Davis says it is a technology company at its core. People don't think of tech and ice hockey, he says. However, the company developed and recently released the React helmet, which has been certified to prevent skull fractures (it is made with a foam that absorbs blows more effectively). Bauer has exclusive rights in hockey to use this particular foam, Davis says. Such innovations continue to fuel the company's growth. When we went public, we had 44 percent market share and now we're at 52 percent market share globally, Davis says.

This month the company is kicking off a 10-year global initiative to recruit 1 million more children to play hockey. It will spend the next year studying the barriers to entry for families with hockey-aged children who are not playing the sport. Davis says 90 percent of children eligible to play hockey in Canada do not do so, creating an opportunity for the game moving forward to dramatically increase participation.

In the short term, Bauer has plans to bring more new products to market in 2013 and to increase its workforce by 10 percent in the coming year, Davis says. The company has seen a 12 percent increase in holiday season orders. We have every expectation to grow in every category we have here. The future is bright for Bauer Sports, he says.

For more information, visit www.bauer.com.