
By John Cullen
Often when we think of big acquisitions in curling, we think of ones that happen on the ice. Brad Jacobs teaming up with Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert. Rachel Homan with Tracy Fleury. But last week, one of the biggest off-ice acquisitions in the sport’s history took place, as it was announced that Goldline Curling has acquired Hardline Curling in a massive deal that merges two of curling’s most trusted (and largest) equipment brands under one roof.
It’s a huge move for curling, as the equipment manufacturers in the sport have all tended to stay in their lane and keep their piece of the pie. It’s a significant move that shows where curling might be heading, with the promise that a growing sport may need businesses with very solid infrastructure built from acquisitions and mergers to support that growth. My initial reaction to seeing the news — after the initial surprise — was why now?
I’ve known Archie Manavian for the better part of a decade, and anyone who knows Hardline’s founder knows he’s a dedicated guy who would do anything to succeed in business. In fact, one of the qualities the Goldline press release mentions that Manavian has is grit. I assumed he would be in this business forever. But as we know, the curling world is small, and Goldline Curling’s CEO Pete Townshend told me that they actually acted off a rumour.
“We had heard they were getting to a point where retirement was in the cards,” Townshend said. “Once we heard through the grapevine they were looking to get out, I think the first time we talked about it was us making the call to see what it might look like if we were to buy their company.”
Townshend knew Manavian’s story of working two jobs for the bulk of his time at Hardline, spending his mornings in his “day job” at Canada Post delivering mail, and then the rest of his afternoons and nights at Hardline trying to get the company off the ground. What Archie and his brother Hratch, along with initial founder Stan Fong, were able to accomplish in the curling space was massive, and it’s something Townshend acknowledged had them interested and excited about acquiring Hardline. It was actually Hardline’s product design that had Goldline rethinking some of their own business strategy.
“If you go back to 2018 when we took over the company from Doug (Flowers, Goldline’s founder), we did a lot of market research and talked to a lot of curlers, and our No. 1 goal was to always make sure we had the best price in the market, and that was the ethos behind the company at that time,” Townshend said.
While Townshend noted that it wasn’t as though Goldline was trying to sacrifice on quality to meet that price, he had a few realizations about curlers and what they want from their equipment.
“As we moved on, we realized that price is actually the third-most important thing behind quality and design,” he said. “If you focus on those two things and your pricing is good, people will be happy with the products you’re selling them. And let’s be honest, Hardline has some very good quality products and they’re used by a lot of the best curlers in the world for that reason.”
Hardline Curling brand to remain active
With that in mind, Townshend told me that their plan is to keep the Hardline brand active, feeling that it would be “short-sighted” to eliminate a brand that he feels is very strong and well-regarded. With Hardline’s reputation as a brand and Goldline’s infrastructure, Townshend feels like it is a “really good marriage” that should keep curlers happy for years to come with the sport’s equipment requiring constant innovation as we continue to move forward towards professionalization.
It did make me wonder, however, if this would mean that Hardline would become their “pro brand,” and Goldline would shift to being their more recreational brand for the casual curler. While there aren’t exact figures floating around in the ether, it doesn’t take a genius to realize the recreational market dwarfs the pro market, and your average club curler doesn’t want to spend $200 on a broom. But Townshend believes there’s room for both.
“That was definitely something that came up in conversation as we were thinking about acquiring Hardline,” Townshend said. “But if you consider the last 12 months, I think we have proven that Goldline is also a very competitive-focused product that can be used at the highest levels.
“If you look at the Brier last year, almost every team was using the (Goldline) Impact head. I know that part of that was the uniqueness of the moment, but I don’t think it would make sense for us to position one brand as our pro brand and one as our recreational brand.”
Townshend did say that while Hardline may not have the penetration in the recreational market that Goldline does — and perhaps vice versa, as Townshend did acknowledge the role “Foamgate” may have played in Goldline heads being used more by pro players last year — the company’s goal is that whether it’s your first time on the ice or the Olympic gold medal game, Goldline will have the product you’d want to be using.
It’s an admirable goal, but it’s one Goldline is clearly aspiring to, with Townshend also saying they may be adjusting the manufacturing processes on Hardline and Goldline broom heads and handles to ensure they can all be used in concert with one another, which is just another benefit to the acquisition. Curlers will be able to have the exact equipment they want and, in a sport where feel is so important, it is a vital and welcome change from where curling equipment has been in the past.
How will existing broom sponsorships work?
Now, as the guy who “made Broomgate,” there were a few questions I wanted to ask Townshend that were perhaps a bit outside of the norm. As people will know from the podcast or from watching pro curling in general, Hardline is the vastly preferred brand of the pro player, and a lot of that comes not only from the quality of the product but also from Hardline’s aggressive sponsorship strategy. I was curious how that might be sorted out, with Hardline no doubt carrying a lot of sponsorship contracts that would extend to the end of the Olympic quad that wraps up at the conclusion of this season.
For Townshend and Goldline, while he couldn’t get too far into the details, they will be honouring all of the contracts Hardline has, while also understanding that in the future, the process might need to be more streamlined.
“I think both companies took a little bit of what you might call a haphazard approach to sponsorship. It’s different for every person you talk to, and for every team, and the reality is that sponsorship isn’t just for the top teams,” Townshend explained. “It goes much deeper, all the way down to the junior level of the game, and so whether you’re a junior curler that’s looking for your first sponsorship deal all the way up to the top team in the world, we need to find a way to best support the community.”
While there doesn’t seem to be a set idea or contract structure in place with regards to how these sponsorship deals might work, Townshend feels that having two of the largest broom brands in the game under one roof will make that easier.
“We’re not looking to strip a bunch of cash away from the players or anything like that, but we are looking for ways to support teams that make sense,” he said. “If you look at Rachel Homan for example, we have been sponsoring her and Emma (Miskew) since they were junior curlers. We were their first sponsorship deal and have been sponsoring them the whole way throughout their career, so I think we’re trying to find an approach to supporting teams that is meaningful for them and for us.”
Off the heels of “Foamgate,” I did wonder if this move was also strategically motivated. One solution that kept cropping up this year as we went through another difficult year with regards to equipment rules and policing was borrowing from Formula One and their approach to tires. Similar to curling, F1 teams previously could use whichever tires they wanted, which led to a very competitive approach amongst tire brands that upset the competitive balance of the sport. This led to a rule being installed where each car must use a uniform tire. Tire brands bid on the right to become the uniform tire for the circuit, and each driver must use that brand of tire, regardless of car manufacturer.
I asked Townshend if he felt as though this acquisition could potentially allow for something like this in curling, whereby two of the sport’s major broom suppliers being owned by one company could open the door for a uniform broom head. He didn’t like the idea.
“Right now, equipment sponsorship deals are hugely beneficial to curlers, and are putting money in the curlers’ pockets. The curlers need access to those sponsorship dollars to support their curling career. I think if you start saying, ‘Here’s the product you have to use,’ then it becomes an event sponsorship, and takes money out of the curlers’ hands,” Townshend said, as this is the way it works in Formula One. Pirelli—the circuit’s current tire provider—has a contract with F1 itself, and not the individual drivers, and Townshend imagines that, similarly, a broom provider would sign a deal with a governing body like The Curling Group or World Curling, and not any of the players.
“I don’t know if it’s necessarily impossible that there’s a way that money flows back down to the players, and maybe that benefits everybody, but my gut reaction is it’s not the best way forward for the sport.”
Goldline Curling remains committed to growing the sport
If curlers were worried about this acquisition potentially signalling an eventual monopoly for Goldline in the sport’s pro shops, it’s answers like that from Townshend that illuminate that this brand does have the best intentions for curlers in mind. But I did ask Townshend about that directly, since it was something I saw coming up on a lot of posts in the wake of the announcement, and Townshend didn’t shy away from the question.
“I understand why people have been making that comment, but what I want people to understand is we are curlers,” he said. “Everybody in a leadership position in our company is a curler, and most of us are very heavily involved in the sport whether it’s being on the board at our respective curling clubs, coaching high-level competitive players, or playing at that level ourselves, we are strongly and deeply involved in the curling community.”
“We’re not planning on doing anything that would hurt the community, and we are here to help. If you ever saw a copy of our brand guide, it is right there in our mission statement, that our main goal is to help grow the sport, not shrink it. And let’s be honest: even though it is an acquisition of two of the biggest brands in the sport, there are still very strong, competitive brands out there that would hold us to account if we ever tried to skyrocket the prices or anything like that,” Townshend remarked with a laugh.
While we don’t see these types of acquisitions in curling very often, it’s clear that Townshend is excited about the process, and leaves lots of reasons why every curler from the very top of the sport to the Tuesday Night Mixed Leaguer should be too. As the sport and its equipment continue to evolve, this is a company that seems prepared to evolve with it, and for that, there’s lots of reasons to be optimistic about the future.