Bauer grows Cascade plant in Clay, applies its expertise

CLAY — Nearly a year after acquiring lacrosse helmet maker Cascade Sports in Clay, Bauer Performance Sports Ltd. has boosted employment at the local plant and is taking advantage of its capabilities for other products.

Exeter, N.H.–based Bauer (TSX: BAU), which says it’s the world’s market-share leader in ice-hockey and roller-hockey equipment, has added five employees at Cascade’s 72,000-square-foot facility at 4697 Crossroads Park Drive in Clay since acquiring the business for $64 million last June.

The plant now employs 65 and has room for more production and staff growth. “We expect the production in the Cascade facility to continue growing,” says Tory Mazzola, global communications manager at Bauer. He says the new hires included people in research and development, human resources, and sales.

“We’re very pleased with the first year. It’s absolutely met our expectations and in many respects surpassed them,” Amir Rosenthal, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Bauer Performance Sports, says of Cascade Sports and the acquisition.

“We’ve thrown a lot at them in a short period of time …  the more we ask them to do the more they do,” he adds, regarding the Cascade team of employees.

Cascade says it’s the top-selling brand of lacrosse helmets in North America. Cascade designs and makes all its products at its Clay plant, which allows it to provide 48-hour turnaround time for custom helmet orders and more than 750,000 different color and size combinations. It’s those customization capabilities that helped attract Bauer to Cascade in the first place and has the parent company making plans to apply them to its other products.

“It’s a very unique platform they have that allows them to design an end product exactly to meet a consumer’s expectations. It’s been a big part of their success,” Rosenthal says. Over the course of the next couple of years, Bauer will look at expanding that customization to other products.

Rosenthal adds that the Cascade plant has begun manufacturing two new Bauer-branded hockey helmets, incorporating Cascade’s patented Seven Technology, which disperses the impact from a blow to the helmeted head.

Cascade Sports, which was founded in 1986, generated $22 million in revenue in 2011, the last full year before its acquisition by Bauer. Cascade’s 2012 revenue figure is not available because Bauer doesn’t break out sales by operating unit.

On April 10, Bauer reported that it generated $313 million in revenue companywide in the nine-month period ending Feb. 28, up 6 percent from $294 million in the year-earlier period.

Bauer was founded in Kitchener, Ontario in 1927.

Contact Rombel at arombel@cnybj.com