Canada Goose jackets are piled up at the company's factory in Toronto on April 2, 2015.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
High-end jacket maker Canada Goose Holdings Inc. says it has snapped up fellow cold-weather gear producer Baffin Inc. as it looks to expand into footwear.
Toronto-based Canada Goose said Thursday it will pay $32.5 million for Baffin, which focuses mostly on outdoor and industrial boots but added a clothing line in 2011.
“It’s a really exciting part of our footwear journey and it’s a really important part of our long-term growth strategy,” said Dani Reiss, CEO of Canada Goose.
The company plans to use Baffin’s technology, intellectual property and reputation to take some of the risk out of the eventual launch of a Canada Goose-branded line of footwear.
“Baffin is the gold standard when it comes to cold-weather footwear. And I have seen many apparel companies try and get into footwear and fail, and we wanted to find, for us, the best formula for winning,” said Reiss.
He said that Baffin, founded in the Hamilton community of Stoney Creek in 1979, will remain a stand-alone operation with its own distribution and sales channels but Canada Goose will look to improve its operations and offerings.
Canada Goose has expanded rapidly in recent years including by taking the company public, opening retail stores abroad, and adding knitwear and rainwear to its product line.
The company opened its third manufacturing facility in Winnipeg in September that it says will create more than 700 new jobs over the next three years to add to the more than 1,000 people already working for the company in the city.
Canada Goose, founded in 1957, sells its products in more than 38 countries and has retail stores in North America, Europe, and Asia.