David Golbert (left), Jacques Golbert (centre) and Michel Golbert in the Pajar showroom at their Montreal head office.Supplied
The world of family-run Canadian winter-boot makers is a small one, and word gets around. So, in August, when Pajar Canada president Michel Golbert heard that competitor Cougar Shoes Inc. was in financial trouble, he picked up the phone. The ensuing conversation led to a deal for Montreal-based Pajar to acquire Cougar, expanding its presence in the industry at a time when climate change has made the business much less predictable.
“We pray for snow every year,” Mr. Golbert said in an interview Friday after the deal was announced. “For sure, the Canadian market is a little bit more complicated these days because of the weather. But we’re very hopeful and we’re still very optimistic for this year as well.”
Both Pajar and Burlington, Ont.-based Cougar have been around long enough to see plenty of changes in the boot business – and the weather. Pajar was founded more than 60 years ago (Mr. Golbert’s grandfather took the letters from his first name, Paul, with his son Jacques and his wife Rachel, to come up with the brand name) and Cougar began more than 75 years ago, operating out of a former parachute factory.
But recently, the companies’ fortunes have diverged. Pajar has expanded its sales to more than 25 countries, has annual sales of more than $100-million and is growing, Mr. Golbert said. For Cougar, business had been difficult since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the retail industry hard. That affected sales, as did milder winters in many important markets in recent years, said Cougar co-owner and president Steve Sedlbauer.
“We just don’t get the winters of the severity, and early enough, to make the category robust,” Mr. Sedlbauer said in an interview. “So, the retailers are divesting from it, because it’s difficult to make money in that category.”
Brick-and-mortar stores account for roughly three-quarters of Cougar’s sales. When cold weather fails to arrive until January, Mr. Sedlbauer explained, discounting comes into effect and those stores are forced to sell products at lower profit margins.
“The owners are all near retirement age, and we just sort of had enough. I don’t know how else to put it,” Mr. Sedlbauer said.
But Pajar believes there is a promising future for the Cougar brand, which became famous throughout the 1980s for its distinctive brown leather “pillow boot,” a style that has sold more than eight million pairs since its debut in 1978.
“The Cougar brand is also a very beautiful heritage brand, and we always viewed them as a good competitor,” Mr. Golbert said. “We figured that if it wasn’t us purchasing it, it would be somebody else. We wanted to corner the market a little bit, at least in Canada and North America, and we thought it would be a great idea to expand.”
Both companies declined to provide annual sales figures for Cougar and declined to specify the terms of the deal. Mr. Golbert said Cougar is “a nice, sizeable business” that appealed to Pajar. For one thing, the brand is positioned in a complementary price range to Pajar’s own footwear. Pajar boots generally sell for $250 or more a pair, while Cougar’s tend to sell in the $100 to $200 range.
And Mr. Golbert believes Cougar has room to grow, by expanding to international markets where Pajar already has relationships with distributors. Eventually, he said, he would like to expand the Cougar brand into outerwear such as coats and vests, as Pajar did roughly 15 years ago.
Pajar continues to manufacture its heritage collection at its factory in Montreal’s Plateau-Mont-Royal neighbourhood, but the majority of both brands’ manufacturing happens overseas, in China and, in Pajar’s case, in Italy, Romania and Portugal.
“We’ve been growing our own brand for the past 60 years and we’ve been distributing a lot of brands over the years, but this is really our first acquisition, buying a brand outright,” Mr. Golbert said.