Spent the week at Cascade Headquarters last week, and had a great time. It was my first time back in 4 years, and three things really stuck with me coming out of the week. The People, the R&D, and The Culture.

The first part of the week I was able to reconnect with a lot of old friends at the company. It is one of the nicest, most honest, and hardworking groups I have been around in a long time. Everyone there really likes what he or she is doing, and you can tell they enjoy coming to work every day. It was refreshing. A lot of this must come from the culture they have created there. Guys like Steve Moore, Bill Brine, and Tim Ellsworth make sure to only hire good people, and as a pre prerequisite, they all have to be athletes. I think these types of personalities gel together really well, and lead to a competitive atmosphere that pushes them forward in a positive way. They’ve installed TV’s on the walls that show hockey and lacrosse games all day long. As a helmet company who makes hockey and lacrosse helmets, it is a great way to keep everyone stoked on what they are doing.

After being reacquainted with the folks in the office, I took a tour of the manufacturing facility where Cascade makes all of its helmets. It is an impressive site. Cascade makes every helmet in this area. They do not stock any helmets. Each helmet ordered is built and shipped in under 48hrs. Seeing this live was an exciting site. Hockey and Lacrosse have their own assembly lines, each station manned with a person who connects each part of the helmet and then sends it on to the next person. The helmet ends up fully built, hand inspected, and then placed in a box to be shipped. I was impressed with the detail they all put into their stations. It was quickly clear to me why Cascade has such excellent quality control on everything they build. Real people, cutting edge machinery, and hand built in the USA.

Overall, great people, and a great culture in the office and the manufacturing facility.

The bulk of my time there was spent working on our new (top secret) helmet coming out this season. Being up close and personal to the design process, it is clear why Cascade has always had BY FAR the best helmets in the game. Cascade in essence is a research and design firm. They place almost all of their recourses into making better products, and are constantly thinking of ways to improve head protection. With all of their focus on this research and design process they keep looking for ways to make the best helmets even better. For 15 years they have had 90% of the worlds lacrosse helmets, and this is a big reason why. I can’t say a whole lot about the new helmet coming out, but I will say that the Cascade product team takes a lot of its inspiration from the auto industry, and this helmet borrows a lot of proven design techniques that have been in practice in the auto industry for years. The helmet looks SICK, and feels even better. The testing of it is off the charts in terms of protection, and when I played in it that week, the performance was right up there with the Pro 7.

I also got to design a Golden State Lacrosse helmet that we’ll be giving away at camp this summer. We’re doing something I’ve never seen with a lacrosse helmet design before, but I think it looks awesome. I hope to have some pics on line in the next week.

We definitely still found time to have some fun at Cascade. Most lunch hours were spent on a slack line President of Cascade, Steve Moore connected to two trees in from of the office. That thing is hard, but it was a great way to get some fun exercise during the lunch hour.

A week at Cascade. A great week hanging out with a great company.
-Chris Rotelli

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