Innovative Hockey
 | |
| Founded | 1996 |
|---|---|
| Defunct | 2005 |
| Fate | Acquired by Warrior Sports |
| Successor | Warrior Hockey |
| Website | Archived official website at the Wayback Machine (archived 2003-12-26) |
Innovative Hockey, Inc. was an American manufacturer of ice hockey sticks that operated from 1996 to 2005. The company was founded in California by Ronald H. Kunisaki and operated a factory in Tijuana, Mexico. Innovative was a pioneer in the development of composite hockey stick shafts and one-piece sticks. Later, Innovative became notable for its association with the Detroit Red Wings, and for a time around half the club's roster used Innovative sticks. In 2005, Innovative was purchased by the lacrosse company Warrior Sports and served as the foundation for Warrior's new hockey division.
History
[edit]Innovative Hockey originated in the company Innovative Sports Technologies, Inc., which was founded in March 1990 by Kunisaki, Richard Carr, and Kirk S. Oshinomi. The original company designed and manufactured graphite golf club shafts. At a charity golf tournament, Los Angeles Kings player Dave Taylor met Kunisaki and suggested Innovative try making hockey stick shafts, and offered to test them. In 1996, Kunisaki started the company Innovative Hockey, Inc. and began selling shafts. The first NHL player to use an Innovative stick was Alexei Kovalev, and shortly thereafter, Sergei Fedorov adopted the stick as well. Within a couple years of operations, around 30 NHL players were using Innovative.
In the late 1990s, Innovative struck a deal with Bauer to produce the company's composite hockey sticks under license. For the rest of the company's existence, the majority of its production was for Bauer, while Innovative sticks were a boutique product. At its peak, Innovative was producing approximately 10,000 sticks per month at its factory in Tijuana.[1]
Innovative was especially notable for its association with the Detroit Red Wings, many of whom used Innovative in the late 1990s and early 2000s. From the club's 2002 Stanley Cup champion roster, Kirk Maltby, Brett Hull, Kris Draper, Luc Robitaille, Tomas Holmström, Darren McCarty, Igor Larionov, and Sergei Fedorov all used Innovative sticks. While Innovative was popular with professionals, the company lacked the marketing power of other brands brands that were owned by major sporting goods companies. Consequently, Innovative's products were never sold to the wider public.
In January 2005, Homayoun Ghassemi of Easton Sports arranged a meeting between Kunisaki and David Morrow, the president of Warrior, to discuss the potential sale of Innovative.[2] In 2005, Kunisaki sold Innovative to Warrior Sports, a lacrosse company owned by New Balance. The Innovative operations served as the basis for the company's new hockey division, Warrior Hockey.[3] After the sale, Kunisaki remained with the company as president of Warrior Hockey for three years. After leaving in 2008, in 2009 Kunisaki founded Base Hockey, a custom stick company, with former NHL player Cliff Ronning.[4]
References
[edit]- ^ A. J. Perez, "Composite sticks made south of the border," USA Today, (10 January 2008).
- ^ Deborah Orlik, Ethics for the Legal Profession, (Pearson, 2007), 273.
- ^ Eric Pope, "Lacrosse outfitter gets fully into hockey game," The Detroit News, (21 July 2006), 2.
- ^ Andrew Fleming, "The science of hockey sticks," Burnaby Now, (6 October 2010).