You may have heard recently about Adidas buying Reebok, thereby creating a megaproducer and marketer of sporting goods that they hope will be able to compete with Nike.
While this merger may not at first seem to have much of an impact on hockey, at closer look you can see that it will. And this merger is not unprecendented. Slowly but surely, Canada's homegrown hockey equipment industries are being swallowed up by multinational behemoths, and this has me worried.
This doesn't have me worried in a "grab your gas mask and protest multinationals at the G8" kind of way. Rather, I have a growing concern about the quality, variety and innovation of hockey equipment available to us, due to a reduction in competition. Especially skates. I'll get back to this point later. But first, a bit of history.
There isn't much left in Canada as far as homegrown and Canadian owned manufacturers of equipment and accessories go. In the early '90s, following their disastrous attempt to enter the hockey market with their own brand, Nike (remember the clunky skates Gretzky used to wear) decided to buy the Bauer brand. Subsequently, Bauer's skate manufacturing facility in Cambridge was shut down by the new powers that be, with the jobs going overseas.
This was followed last year by Reebok buying the CCM brand. More specifically, as I understand it, Reebok bought a Quebec-based outfit called The Hockey Company. You may not have heard of them, but I assure you every sports equipment retailer in the country has. For years, The Hockey Company has been amassing various brands...Koho, Jofa, Titan, Canadien, Heaton, and their flagship, CCM. That's right, all of these brands are manufactured by the same company. Of course, now that Reebok has acquired The Hockey Company, they've started sticking Rbk stickers on just about everything and marketing the equipment as a Reebok product. The CCM Vector skate, the Vector stick and their helmets are now being marketed under the Reebok name as well as the CCM name. Same product, slightly different look.
On the Nike/Bauer side of the store, while I haven't taken a close look, I imagine that the same thing is happening with the Bauer Vapour and Nike Quest lines. They sure resemble each other quite a bit. Are these the same skates with a few aesthetic differences?
With Adidas now in the picture, how long until we start seeing a skate line with the famous three stripes down the side? This is particularly probable given the cachet and market share that Adidas enjoys in Europe, and the popularity of hockey among the populace of many European countries. Canadian players want Bauer or CCM skates, and I'm sure that, given the chance, European players would prefer a homegrown skate made by Adidas.
As I stated earlier, I don't have a problem with the mergers themselves, per se, (hey, that's capitalism...I've learned to live with it) rather, I have a growing concern about the quality, variety and innovation of hockey equipment available to us. As these companies look for production efficiencies, as they'd rather spend their money on marketing than producing the best quality product possible, to what degree with the pool of truly different equipment dwindle? Will players be able to choose among different equipment from different manufacturers? Equipment that fits differently, equipment for which the differences in prices reflects a difference in quality of the model rather than which brand's logo has been stickered or sewn on?
My concern is that the day will come when we have essentially two choices at different levels, whether it be sticks, gloves, pants, helmets, skates or pads: Model A, from Adidas, and marketed under either Adidas, Reebok, Koho, Titan, CCM, etc. and Model B, from Nike, and marketed under either the Nike or Bauer brands.
There was a time when many of these brands really were made by different manufacturers, and they competed against each other to produce a superior product. Over my lifetime I've had skates made by Bauer, CCM, D'Aoust (those awesome Gretzky signature skates with the blue blade chassis), Lange, and a few others.
Fortunately, those days are not gone completely, yet. Sherwood, Graf, Hespeler, and Flarrow are companies that immediately come to mind as smaller producers bucking the trend and providing hockey players everywhere with other options. Let's hope their independence continues.
