Gov. Deval Patrick and Leslie “Buddy” Lewis, managing Partner of Nokona Athletic Goods Co., attend the groundbreaking for a new bat factory last week in Fall River.
Batter up.
A Texas-based company that manufactures bats used by Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz broke ground last week for a new facility in Fall River. The opening for the $2.5 million building is scheduled to coincide with the start of the baseball season next spring.
“This is great for Fall River,” said Leslie “Buddy” Lewis, co-owner of Nokona Athletic Goods Co. “This will not be just a bat factory, it will also be a tourist attraction with an on-site amphitheatre for hitting clinics and a baseball diamond. It will be neat.”
Gov. Deval Patrick joined dozens of officials under a tent at the Fall River Industrial Park on Sykes Road to launch a production plant for Nokona’s line of maple bats. The 12,000-square-foot facility is expected to employ a dozen workers.
“I am so fond of Buddy and so excited with this announcement,” Patrick told the crowd. “I am happy to welcome Nokona to the commonwealth and to Fall River.”
The pair met several years ago in Richmond, a small, rural community located in the Berkshires near the New York border where the Patrick and the Lewis families have second homes. Lewis built a baseball diamond on his 18-acre farm complete with a pitching machine. Neighbors have an open invitation to practice their skills on Sunday mornings starting at 9:30 a.m., he said.
“One day last summer the governor and his wife came over to visit,” Lewis recalled. “I told him that our bat business had really taken off and that we were considering building another factory. He suggested that we build it in Massachusetts and mentioned that Fall River would be a great place. That’s how it all got started.”
Within months, plans to build a factory were in the works, said Lewis, whose primary home is in Brookline. For the last few years, the company contracted with a Pennsylvania furniture manufacturer to make bats. But as business increased, the company was unable to keep pace with the demand and the quality suffered, he noted. As a result, Lewis said, it was time for the company to build its own factory.
Job Creation
Founded in 1926, Nokona’s primary business has been the manufacture of baseball gloves. The Texas plant burned to the ground in 2006, shutting down operations at the 70-year-old building. An investigation into the blaze found that a short circuit in an exhaust fan at the rear of the building sparked the early-morning fire. No one was hurt and employees managed to save 80 years’ worth of memorabilia. With nothing left standing but the casts to make the baseball gloves, Lewis found a new home at a former boot factory.
Last summer, Nokona signed Ortiz, Los Angeles right fielder Vladimir Guerrero and Miguel Cabrera, who plays third base for the Florida Marlins, to endorse a new line of bats. The trio has been featured in ads as the “Nokona Wrecking Crew.”
“We wound up making bats for Dominican players and lo and behold, five or six players wrapped their arms around the company and the product,” Lewis said. “We have out-stripped the capacity of the furniture maker.”
Lewis said the new factory will have the ability to take a baseball player’s idea for a bat and make a prototype in less than two minutes. “It won’t be the finished product, but a player can try it in the batting cage or on the baseball diamond and we can improve it based on their suggestions.”
Still, Nokona faces competition from nearly three-dozen U.S. bat manufacturers. Perhaps the most popular is the storied Hillerich & Bradsby Co., the Kentucky-based company that produces the Louisville Slugger brand.
The birth of baseball’s most famous bat came in 1884, when a 17-year-old John Hillerich watched Louisville player Pete “The Gladiator” Browning of the Louisville Eclipse become frustrated after breaking his favorite bat. Hillerich, a woodworker, approached Browning after the game and offered to make him a new one. They went to the woodworking shop, selected a piece of white ash and Browning supervised as the teenager made the new bat.
The next day, Browning went three-for-three with the new bat and word spread. Soon the Hillerich family was in the baseball bat business. Demand quickly grew and today the company manufactures 1.8 million wooden bats annually, while Lewis’ firm has sold 50,000 so far this year.
“I guess we’re like a microbrewery,” said Lewis. “But being a small company does not mean that Nokona cannot compete with the large companies.”
Kenneth Fiola, executive vice president of the Fall River Office of Economic Development, said Lewis purchased a 3.1 acre parcel at the industrial park for $200,000. He said the city has helped the owners secure a low-interest loan of between 6 percent and 7 percent for the project. In addition, his office is exploring the possibly of Tax Increment Financing. A TIF uses the increased property taxes that a new real estate development generates to finance costs of the development.
Construction of the bat factory is the latest addition to the city’s pair of industrial parks. There are 50 acres still available for development, Fiola noted.
“The Nokona project is different,” Fiola said. “Typically these parks contain manufacturing facilities. Not only will they make bats, but there will be a retail and tourism component. The public relations value makes it good for the park, the city and the region.”
Groundbreaking for the Nokona plant comes as the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC), a nonpartisan research and educational organization, released a study that said the Bay State is down 100,000 jobs from the peak of the business cycle in 2001. The state ranked next to last in job creation between 2001 and 2006, besting only Michigan.
Given that Massachusetts is an older state that already is highly developed, it makes sense that Massachusetts is not a leader in job creation, the study said. But the fact that Massachusetts trailed other New England states in job creation in recent years requires more debate and discussion, researchers found. The study describes how job losses have contributed to large numbers of residents moving out of the state, seeking better opportunities elsewhere. MassINC recommends that Massachusetts develop a long-term strategy that includes creation of export jobs, better workforce training to fill the many current vacancies, improvements in the business climate and a regional approach to meet varying needs across the state.
