Sticking to It.

BASEBALL-BAT MAKER EASTON SCORING BIG IN HOCKEY MARKET

Ten years ago, the greatest hockey player ever switched hockey sticks, and Easton Sports Inc. no longer would be known only for making aluminum baseball bats.

At the time Wayne Gretzky agreed to endorse Easton's aluminum stick instead of the wood one he had been using for a decade, very few National Hockey League players used anything but wood sticks. Van Nuys-based Easton, which invented the aluminum stick, was something of an afterthought.

But in 1990 Easton invited Gretzky, who had been traded to the L.A. Kings two seasons earlier, to try its stick. He liked it, and the company signed the Great One to a seven-year, $2 million endorsement deal.

Today, almost 40 percent of NHL players use Easton sticks, far more than any other brand. Its aluminum sticks have given way to sticks made of an even lighter composite. And Easton is now a hockey powerhouse.

"Gretzky went to L.A. and started using that flashy aluminum stick," said Wayne Karl, editor of the Hockey Business News in Toronto. "It set the groundwork for things to come. Not to say it's all Easton's doing, but the company was among the first to popularize the aluminum stick. And now it has the lion's share of the composite stick market."

As a private company, Easton isn't obliged to disclose financial details. But revenues from hockey products are expected to hit $50 million this year, up from $27 million three years ago, said company President Anthony Palma. Easton's total sales are projected at $150 million.

The hockey line includes skates and protective gear like gloves, but sticks account for around 80 percent of sales.

"The growth in hockey has been exponential," Palma said. "Our baseball and softball division has been growing at around 8 percent a year the past three years, but with hockey, the growth has been huge."

Hockey sticks are a $45 million market in the U.S. and a $35 million market in Canada.

Easton sticks are so popular that many NHL players use them without asking for compensation. Only 10 players are under contract to use Easton equipment; stars like Paul Kariya of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks use the sticks just because they like them.

"Guys like Kariya prefer not to be signed (to an endorsement deal) so they can choose whatever products they want," said Ken Goldsmith, the company's vice president-of hockey.

Easton only entered the hockey-stick market in 1981, years behind such established brand names as Bauer (now owned by Nike Inc.), Titan, CCM and Koho (all of which are manufactured by Canada's The Hockey Co.). At the time, no one made anything but wooden sticks.

"Because they were a new company, they didn't have decades of preconceived ideas," said Karl. "Since then, they've brought their innovation to things like skates as well."

Karl cites a high-tech protective glove made by Easton using a special foam for the back of the hand that is effective in reducing the impact from the kind of contact hockey players experience every day.

"A friend of mine gave me a few good whacks on the hand with a stick and I felt no pain," Karl said.

James D. Easton founded the company in 1922. A custom maker of wood bows and cedar arrows, Easton moved his shop from Watsonville, Calif. in 1933 and began manufacturing arrows from aluminum tubing a few years later. When archery was reintroduced as an Olympic sport in 1972, Easton arrows were used by every gold medalist for the next 20 years.

The company is still the largest maker of aluminum baseball and softball bats in the world. But bolstering its reputation for state-of-the-art technology, the company has diversified not only into hockey equipment, but bicycle parts, golf shafts and ski poles.

The importance of hockey rose as the softball and baseball market softened in the mid-1990s. The 1995 strike by Major League Baseball players had some impact in diluting general interest in the game, and the Asian economic turmoil of 1997 and 1998 hurt some of Easton's overall sales, because aluminum bats are used in Asian professional baseball leagues.

But hockey has been growing in popularity in some unlikely places in the United States, including the Sun Belt. Arizona and Texas have popular NHL teams, giving rise to a new generation of fans.