Schutt Sports, the worlds leading maker of football helmets and faceguards, won the prestigious Best New Product of 2008 from the National Athletic Trainers Association. The ION 4D^TM football helmet, the game’s best performing helmet, won the award for the Best New Sports Equipment and Apparel category for 2008, beating out  competitors like Riddell® and Xenith.

The award was voted on by membership of the NATA and attendees at this year’s NATA Convention held in St. Louis.

“The athletic trainers are a notoriously tough crowd to please and they should be,” said Dave Rossi, of  Schutt Sports.  “After all, the safety of the players is in their hands, so I’m glad they’re extremely diligent about what new equipment they’ll put on players. The fact that they voted the ION 4D^TM the Best New Product for 2008 is a tribute to our entire ION team and something we’re very proud of.”

The ION 4D^TM features design and engineering never before utilized in a football helmet. The helmet uses SKYDEX2^TM TPU Cushioning, a cushioning system that absorbs up to 55% more force from impact than its top competitor. In addition, the ION 4D^TM also features the Energy Wedge Faceguard, a completely new design that acts as a shock absorber for direct frontal impacts to the helmet.

“All of the athletic trainers we talked to were blown away by the advanced design of the ION 4D^TM,” said JC Wingo, Executive Director of Football Development at Schutt. “The goal of any athletic trainer is simple: do everything they can to keep their players as safe as possible and the ION 4D^TM helps them do that better by as much as 55%.”

The SKYDEX2^TM TPU Cushioning inside the ION 4D^TM is the latest generation of advanced padding first introduced by Schutt in 2003. The new Energy Wedge faceguard on the ION 4D^TM adds yet another wall of protection developed by the Schutt team.

“Our designers were able to incorporate technology and features that do more to protect players from the force of impacts than other helmets,” said Rossi. “Instead of measuring how hard a player just got hit, we focused on preventing as much of that force as possible from actually hitting a player. We also spent a great deal of effort creating a helmet that performs its best at temperatures consistent game-like conditions, not at room temperature like most helmets. In our mind, those are better places to focus our efforts and this vote of confidence from the NATA membership shows we’re on the right track.”

Sales of the ION 4D^TM have far outpaced expectations in its first year, said Rossi. Along with the ION 4D^TM, Schutt also introduced the AiR XP^TM - a helmet featuring much of the same technology as the ION 4D^TM, except in a traditional helmet shell. A third helmet, the DNA Pro, was also updated with the new SKYDEX2^TM TPU Cushioning and all three helmets have youth versions available.

Company Posts Largest Monthly Sales Total in 90-Year History

Schutt Sports, Inc., the world’s leading manufacturer of football helmets and faceguards, made company history in July, posting the best sales month since the company was founded in 1918. Sales for the month of July shattered the previous record by 13%, based upon strong sales of the company’s three new flagship products: the ION4D^TM and AiR XP^TM football helmets and the AiR Flex^TM shoulder pads.

“The sporting goods industry is struggling to keep its head above water and that’s what makes our July so rewarding,” says Robert Erb, CEO of Schutt. “Everyone in our company is pushing it to the limit, thanks to these new products. From our sales force to our factory to our distribution center, everyone is just knocking it out of the park right now.”

In a move unprecedented in the football hard goods category, Schutt has introduced two new football helmets during the last eight months. Normally, that’s a process that takes several years. But demand for the ION 4D^TM and the AiR XP^TM has been so great, the company has been forced to deal with a good problem - keeping up with demand.

“The AiR XP^TM is the fastest growing helmet in the NFL and in college football,” says J.C. Wingo, Executive Director of Football Development for Schutt. “One team in the NFL ordered 100 helmets from us. Usually, teams are slow to adapt to new helmets, testing the water by purchasing 5 or 10 helmets when it’s introduced. With the AiR XP^TM, we’re finding colleges are ordering 30, 40 or 60 at a time. Boston College hasn’t ordered a helmet from us since Doug Flutie left. They just ordered 30. That’s just unheard of.”

Several major Division 1-BCS schools have decided to go completely with Schutt helmets, thanks to the ION 4D^TM and AiR XP^TM.  Penn State and South Florida will be using Schutt helmets exclusively, as will West Virginia and TCU, to name a few. 

The new shoulder pad, the AiR Flex^TM, has been flying under the radar, as the new helmets grab all of the headlines. But, the AiR Flex^TM has been widely accepted at the highest levels of football and is also the fastest growing shoulder pad line in the NFL and college football.

“The AiR Flex^TM pads bring to the elite player a quality in their equipment they’ve been lacking,” says Wingo. “A truly lightweight shoulder pad that is strong enough to withstand the most violent impact and performs well enough to keep an average of 66% more of that impact from getting to the player’s body. Once we got teams and players to understand that, the AiR Flex^TM was the talk of locker rooms across the country. In one NFL locker room, in fact, we went from zero players wearing our shoulder pads to twenty - just by letting them try it out in the off season.”

The company is poised to ride the wave of opportunity with these two new helmets even farther, as August is trending upwards towards an even higher total. The company could wind up breaking the sales record it just set in July. That success has reverberated throughout the company, at all levels. In fact, the company just expanded its customer service program to six days a week because of the demand.

“I have the utmost confidence we’ll keep this going,” says Erb. “We’re just weeks away from introducing our new football product line for 2009 and we’re going to turn a few heads when they see what’s in our pipeline. We’ll be breaking our monthly record a few more times in the foreseeable future.”