While expanding its footprint in hockey and other categories fast, partly through acquisitions, Warrior Sports, the American company bought by New Balance five years ago, is making big strides into the European market. Just before the last Ispo show, where it had a booth full of new products, Warrior bought out HS Sport, the German-based European distributor of Innovative Hockey and Montreal Sports, two important hockey companies that are now part of Warrior.

Still led by Matthias Wolf, who founded it 10 years ago with a partner to sell hockey equipment all over the continent, HS Sport has been renamed Warrior Sports Europe. The acquisition is meant to give the group a leading position in the European hockey market, where it is still relatively small compared with big suppliers such as Bauer, CCM Reebok Hockey or Easton. Lately it has been selling only about 50,000 pro sticks in Europe, including 10,000 goalie sticks made by Montreal Sports that are sold primarily in Russia.

Based in Warren, Michigan, Warrior has already become a big factor in the premium segment of the North American market for hockey sticks. For products sold at more than €120 apiece at retail, Warrior claims to have become the second-largest supplier of premium hockey sticks in North America after Easton. Warrior has also become second to Easton in terms of the number of NHL players it sponsors. There are now about 50, including 14 goalies, who endorse Montreal Sports, a Finnish company that Warrior took over last August.

The hockey division, which now represents about one-third of Warrior’s total business, has been built up in the last three year by a 37-year-old manager, Neil Wensley, who previously spent five years with CCM and another nine with Easton. He reports directly to Lorrie Owen-Turner, who was appointed chief executive of Warrior last January. Owen-Turner was previously general manager of New Balance for Canada, a position that he had taken over from Jonathan Ram, the Canadian executive who is now running New Balance for Europe, the Middle East and Africa out of the U.K.

New Balance bought Warrior in February 2004. With Wensley on board, Warrior, which started out in 1992 as a high-performance brand specializing in lacrosse, moved forcefully into hockey in July 2005 with the takeover of Innovative Hockey, a company in California that specializes in composite sticks, made at an OEM factory in Mexico that was a major supplier of Nike Bauer Hockey. It put out the first carbon sticks at about the same time as Easton.

The acquisition of Montreal Sports in August of last year helped Warrior to complete its range of products, which includes customized sticks for pro players and Montreal’s most popular product, its goalie sticks in polyurethane, made at its own factory in Finland. HS Sport has been selling wooden sticks made for it by Montreal in Finland, but their production has been stopped. It had its own brand of relatively cheap carbon sticks, Ferland, which has been sold to Warrior as part of the whole package. Ferland produced PU goalie sticks similar to Montreal in the Baltics, but this is over, too.

Warrior is not stopping here. It has already launched its own line of hockey gloves. At Ispo, Warrior also presented its first range of protective equipment for hockey, which will be introduced on the market next June, as well as an interesting line of youth-oriented lifestyle clothing. Capitalizing on its ties with New Balance, it also showed a few prototypes of sports shoes for training, but company officials said no decision has been made to market them.

Targeting mainly young consumers, Warrior is positioning itself as a youthful and creative all-around action sports and team sports company. It has also started to tackle soccer in the U.S. and Canada with a big range of products marketed by Brine, a lacrosse brand that Warrior took over in August 2006 to assert its dominance in the lacrosse category. However, it may take a couple of years before its soccer products are brought to Europe.

Originally founded by a lacrosse champion, Dave Morrow, Warrior became famous for its titanium lacrosse shafts and now claims a market share of 70 percent in this category in North America. While this sports activity is not very popular in Europe, the lacrosse products of Warrior and Brine are already sold by distributors in the U.K., Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.

Wolf is now looking at developing the group’s lacrosse business in Germany, but his focus will continue to be on hockey. Wolf, who distributed in Germany the Gaf range of ice hockey skates, made in Switzerland, through HS Sport, will continue to do so through Warrior Sports Europe. He will not continue to sell the DR brand of protective equipment formerly distributed by HS Sport as well.

Warrior Sports Europe is leaving basically all the previous distribution agreements of HS Sport, Warrior and its subsidiaries in place, at least for the time being. In Russia, for example, two distributors are selling different products from the group. HS Sport’s Finnish sales office will take care of all the brands. The only change is taking place in Sweden, where its products will be sold by the office of New Balance in Gothenburg.