Globe Manufacturing buys Falcon Footwear
Photo / Amber Waterman
Falcon Footwear uses injectable molds to create high-performance boots. The Auburn company was recently bought out by a New Hampshire manufacturer.
Firefighter-suit maker Globe Manufacturing has risen from minority owner to full owner of the Auburn-based Falcon Performance Footwear in a deal both companies say will be mutually beneficial.
Roland Landry, a co-owner of the 55-employee Falcon, told Mainebiz the sale gives the company’s workers access to better benefits and a more established human resources department. It also keeps the footwear manufacturing operation in Maine for the foreseeable future, where he and partner Neil Hanley will continue to manage the facility. Falcon will now operate as Globe Footwear, a division of Globe Manufacturing.
Robert Freese, a co-owner and senior vice president of marketing for the family-owned Globe, said full ownership of Falcon will increase its responsiveness to the detailed and typically small orders of specialized boots that he says will make up around 10% of the company’s projected $75 million in revenue for 2014. Freese said the former Falcon hopes to make further refinements to its supply chain, sourcing more products from U.S. manufacturers. The company has just one component sourced abroad but is working toward using an alternative supplier based in Maine.
Increasing responsiveness to individual orders is important for the company in part because the average order size for the company’s boots is eight. That order size can also go into the thousands for clients like the Canadian military, which Globe won as a client in December. Each pair costs about $350.
The company said it’s the second-largest supplier of firefighting footwear, by unit sales, after Honeywell.
Freese said he expects footwear sales to continue growing as a percentage of Pittsfield, N.H.-based Globe’s overall business. In the United States, Canada and Mexico, he said the company estimates its market share for footwear is in the mid-20% range, a number he expects it can boost by around 8%.
For its flagship firefighting suits, he said the company has around one-third of the North American market. Those clients make up around 90% of the company’s total sales, but it has found customers in 82 countries, including Saudi Arabia, where it counts oil and natural gas titan Saudi Aramco as a client.
Globe became a minority owner of Falcon seven years ago and decided with the retirement of Falcon partner Carl Spang to take over the remainder of the company.
Prior to the sale, Landry said Falcon had plans to expand its own brand of safety boots for the mining industry, but filling orders from Globe kept production at full tilt and marketing costs for developing their own product were too high.
Landry said boot sales tripled in the last four years -- growth the company achieved through increasing efficiency.
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