Ice King

Source: Technology Digital

Date :31/08/2007 16:27:10

Canlan Ice Sports is working hard to grow amateur hockey in Canada and the U.S. in order to build its brand as being the place for ice sports

By James Buchanan

When looking at the operations of a manufacturing company, one would look at processes and how they could be made more efficient.

Questions you might ask include: Does the company engage in a lean program? Do they follow the Toyota model? How do they manage supply and distribution?

However, for a company that is primarily service based — especially one that specializes in providing recreational opportunities — the key measure for its operations is to ask, “Are people having fun?”

“Everything that we do, in terms of describing ourselves and the functionality of the organization comes from our mission statement, where we say that Canlan is a world leader in the development, the operation and ownership of ice arenas,” says Joey St. Aubin, senior vice president and COO of Canlan Ice Sports Corp.

“We are committed to providing services of exceptional quality to our customers, and to continuously improve our people, our facilities and programs, which results in superior returns to our investors.”

In short, Canlan is very committed to providing the best quality ice arenas, while also doing everything it can to promote ice skating in general, and ice hockey in particular.

This combination is intended to drive a love for ice sports, which in turn will drive the Canlan brand as being the outlet for amateur ice hockey enthusiasts, or those who just love to skate.

To this end, the company owns 22 facilities, with 64 sheets of ice — across Canada and the U.S. Of those, 21 are in Canada while only one is in the U.S. However, St Aubin says the company is looking to expand its holdings in the U.S., where Canlan sees great growth potential for amateur hockey.

While he says that the company’s core competency is ice — and providing the best ice possible to its customers — the company also works very hard to develop its customer base.

“One thing that we do differently than most companies in this industry is that we’ve developed and grown our brands,” says St. Aubin. “We offer and aggressively market our own internal programs for youth and adult hockey in three different categories instructional, league and tournament categories.”

In this sense, the key to Canlan’s operations is facilitating good hockey.

Perhaps its signature program is Canlan’s youth hockey league, which is the largest three-on-three youth hockey league running from May to August in North America, says St. Aubin.

The company compliments this league with a number of youth camps and hockey schools throughout its facilities and programs. In all, the company saw 32,000 kids come through its programs in 2006.

Canlan also operates the largest adult hockey league in North America under the title Adult Safe Hockey League (ADHL), which had 55,000 players playing for hundreds of teams throughout the organization’s facilities in 2006. The league culminates in championships for each of the company’s facilities, followed by an organization-wide competition known as the Canlan Cup.

“It’s a bit of an unusual name — bit of a tongue twister at first; but the purpose of it is that we work hard to make sure it is a safe league,” says St. Aubin. “Hockey is a very competitive sport, but this is a non-contact league. The objective is that the players who play during the week can come, have a very competitive, fast, enjoyable game of hockey, and not go to work the next morning with a split lip or a couple of stitches.”

He adds that the league separates players based on skill levels to ensure each player is challenged, but also able to enjoy the experience of competitive hockey.

“We go out of our way to make it a fun experience and that’s what it is all about — and it’s not just guys,” says St. Aubin. “The fastest growing area of adult recreational hockey is women’s hockey.”

The women’s leagues mirror the men’s leagues, in that they offer a variety of skill levels and teams that play for a facility championship and the Canlan Cup.

“One of the things that have become quite popular at one of our rinks on the north shore of Vancouver is a coed hockey league,” adds St. Aubin. “It really is kind of a social thing, because the guys and their wives or girlfriends can come out and play hockey on Friday and Saturday, and then they can socialize in the bar afterwards.”

To facilitate the social aspect of the recreational opportunities Canlan provides bars and restaurants within its facilities. It also has fully equipped sports shops in order to support its programs.

“We are all about developing our own brands and making sure the on-ice quality delivery is there and that we maintain our buildings to a very high degree,” says St. Aubin. “We also want to make our facilities a one-stop-shop. We have well stocked sports stores with all of the consumables customers require. We also have very popular sports bars and restaurants, and have even become a leader in that sector.”

While the company is somewhat hockey-centric, it does work to accommodate the non-stick-in-hand crowd by offering public skating hours, morning skating, senior skating during the day, and late night skating.

Asked about growth, St. Aubin says there is still room for organic growth, as the company hasn’t maxed out its leagues and programs.

“We feel that in most of the markets where we are, there are adequate ice surfaces, so we are not as much looking to build new ice surfaces as we are managing rinks for third parties. So we look for management contracts with either private owners or municipal owners of ice surfaces,” he says.

Opportunistically, we would look at buying or leasing rinks. We recently bought a six pad facility in Toronto that was in difficulty, and will do very well under Canlan management. But those types of opportunities don’t come up very often.”

Over the past couple of years, adds St. Aubin, the company has grown at an average rate of 8.9 percent. Sales in 2000 were $39.5 million, and then last year grew to $55.2 million.

Overall, Canlan is seeking to do more than provide a smooth flat skating surface. Putting skates on the ice requires promoting hockey and other sports as recreational and social opportunities as well as a chance for families to spend time together.