Cooper Canada Ltd.

Cooper Canada Ltd. was a sporting goods and fine leather goods manufacturer based in Toronto, Canada. In its heyday in the 1960s through the 1980s, the company was Canada's leading producer of leather baseball mitts and protective hockey gear. The company pioneered team-colored hockey equipment and the use of nylon, foam and modern plastics in equipment manufacturing.

Inception

In 1949, Jack Charles Cooper, a former leather goods buyer for Eaton's department store, and partner Cecil Weeks, a cousin of General Leather Goods owner R. H. Cameron, bought General Leather Goods from Cameron, who had founded the company in 1905, and was 78 years old at the time. (Cooper had joined the company of 15 employees in 1932 after admiring the quality of the company's products.) The company was re-styled as Cooper Weeks. On June 15, 1971 the company was renamed to Cooper of Canada.

Innovation

Prior to Cooper and Weeks's purchase, the company had made ski and snowshoe harness sets. With the Great Depression impacting sales, they switched focus to economy-priced protective hockey shin guards (in 1933) and gloves (in 1935). Frank Selke, manager of the Montreal Canadiens in the 1950s and early 1960s, worked with Cooper to decrease the weight and improve the durability and safety of hockey equipment. In 1969 the company introduced the plastic hockey stick replacement blade widely used in road hockey.

Expansion

Following the July 5, 1972 acquisition of hockey stick and baseball bat maker Hespeler-St. Mary's Wood Specialties Ltd. from the Seagram family, the company expanded into the bat market, with Major League approval of their bats finally coming on March 27, 1986. The bats gained popularity with such players as Tony Fernández, Buck Martinez, Tim Raines, Paul Molitor, Kelly Gruber, Jesse Barfield, Cecil Fielder, Joe Carter, and Hubie Brooks, and were the first Canadian-made bats used in major league play. The factory maxed out production capacity to gain 30% market share in baseball bat sales by 1988, remaining No. 2 behind Louisville Slugger. A move of the production facilities in 1996 coincided with the decline of professional use of Cooper bats.

Product criticism

Some Cooper products met with limited consumer acceptance. A hockey pant and girdle called the Cooperall, Cooper shin pads, and the Cooper XL7 helmet have been named by critics among the worst hockey products of all time. Though used in the National Hockey League, the Cooper XL7 helmet met with particular criticism as being unsafe because of a plastic clip that could break upon face checking or puck impacts, detaching the faceguard. (This same faceguard is now prized among collectors for its use in the construction of replicas of Crow T. Robot, the puppet robot from the 1990s television series Mystery Science Theater 3000.)

Dissolution

Canstar Sports Inc., the parent company of ice skate manufacturer Bauer, acquired the hockey division of Cooper in 1990, and was itself acquired by Nike five years later. Former Cooper lead staff purchased the baseball bat manufacturing division in spring 1999 to form KR3.

Jack Cooper was elected to the U.S. National Sporting Goods Association's Sporting Goods Industry Hall of Fame in 1979 and the Canadian Business Hall of Fame in 1989.

As of 2008, The Cooper branding is applied to budget line Volleyballs and Basketballs sold at discount stores.

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