Roger Cleveland Golf Plans Surf City Move
By MATHEW PADILLA
Golf club maker Roger Cleveland Golf Co. plans to move from Cypress to a new 130,000-square-foot headquarters and plant being built in Huntington Beach.
Roger Cleveland Golf, a unit of France’s Skis Rossignol SA, plans to shift 275 workers from Cypress and expects to add about 25 more, according to Chief Financial Officer Bill Bird.
Sales have been growing at a 15% to 25% clip in the past five years, Bird said. The unit, known by its brand name, Cleveland Golf, had more than $100 million in sales last year.
Cleveland Golf is a major seller of wedge clubs worldwide, shipping more than 600,000 a year, Bird said. Growth has come from expansion into woods and irons and, more recently, putters, he said.
In June, Cleveland Golf bought the name and other assets of Never Compromise, a now-defunct Vista-based putter maker.
Irvine developer Centra Realty Corp. is set to build Cleveland Golf’s headquarters on 6.75 acres in McDonnell Centre Business Park II on Skylab Road and Astronautics Drive. The golf club maker has about 90,000 square feet in Cypress.
Property owner Skylab LLC, a partnership of wealthy investors, bought the land in Huntington Beach from Boeing Realty for an undisclosed amount. It will lease the finished building to Cleveland Golf, sources said.
Centra Realty is set to break ground in February, according to Keith Ross, a principal with the developer. He said the site, formerly part of the McDonnell Douglas campus, is part of Boeing Co.’s plan to redevelop surplus land it owns in Huntington Beach. Construction is expected to wrap up next year.
Randy Teteak of Irvine-based O’Donnell/Atkins represented Skylab in the land sale. Brian DeRevere, Bob Goodmanson, Brad Bierbaum and Ian Britton of CB Richard Ellis Inc. represented Boeing.
Teteak said Cleveland Golf initially considered buying a site for its headquarters but decided to rent an OC facility built to suit its needs.
Although Cleveland Golf is expanding, its number of manufacturing workers has remained flat, according to the company’s Bird. He said the company continues to assemble its clubs here, but some production jobs have shifted to China and other offshore regions.
The U.S. continues to shed manufacturing jobs, even as the economy appears to be rebounding.
In OC, October job figures reported by the state Employment Development Department showed a decline of 4,200 manufacturing jobs, versus a year ago. The business and professional services sector, meanwhile, added 3,800 jobs in the period.
The golf industry has slowed in the past few years. U.S. retail sales of golf clubs was $476.3 million last year, down from $568.3 million a year earlier, according to the U.S. National Sporting Goods Associa-tion. Meanwhile, the number of golfers is expected to grow about 5% a year in the next few years, versus 10% growth in the 1990s.
Fortune Brands Inc., the maker of Titleist and other brands, said that weak economic conditions and a decrease in travel have hurt the industry.
Roger Cleveland founded the company that bears his name in 1979 to make replicas of classic golf clubs from the 1940s and 1950s. Skis Rossignol bought the golf club maker in 1990.
