Bain Capital Keeps Warm With Canada Goose

The timing couldn’t have been better for Bain Capital and its investment in jacket maker Canada Goose. The brand’s reputation for ultra-warmth and style has coincided with the most brutal winter in years.

“I was in New York [a few weeks ago] and the jackets were everywhere,” says Steve Pagliuca, Managing Director at Bain Capital, which made an undisclosed majority investment in the company in December 2013.

Last month has gone down in the record books as the third coldest February in New York City’s history, but it may actually be better known as the month Canada Goose took over The Big Apple, as thousands of the company’s jackets were seen daily on the streets of Manhattan and in hip neighborhoods in Brooklyn, made conspicuous by a patch with its red, white and blue logo placed on the upper left sleeve of every coat.

“Canada Goose was a growing company that needed a global partner to realize its potential, and in our research on consumer preferences, the big words that came out were ‘warmth’ and ‘quality,” Pagliuca says. “I, along with Josh Bekenstein and Ryan Cotton, also managing directors at Bain Capital, felt there was a large functional segment that would need that warmth and quality, and we really hit it off with [Canada Goose] CEO Dani Reiss, who is really driving the whole strategy.”

Whether by accident or design, that strategy now involves gaggles of celebrities, athletes and supermodels who have flocked to the patented goose down-filled parkas, helping the premise of making “the warmest coat on the planet,” into what has quickly become the most sought-after winter coat of the 21^st century.

“It was helped by the fact we bought in before the first polar vortex, and now we have ‘snowmageddons,’ so I don’t think we could have [had] two better years to own the company,” says Pagliuca.

Indeed, since 2005, annual sales have increased from just $5M a year to some $200M and climbing, as the parkas—selling for $800-plus—continue to sell out in store after store, perhaps surpassing Bain’s wildest dreams for the company.

“We’re trying to figure out how to get more populated,” Pagliuca says. “Jackets are flying off the racks, so we are figuring out how to get the right distribution agreements and the right stores, globally.”

And while spring is just around the corner, meteorologists are already forecasting an even harsher winter for 2016, meaning Bain and Canada Goose will have their work cut out for them in the next few months.

Pagliuca made his comments during an onstage interview by Privcap CEO David Snow at the February 18^th Privcap Presents networking event in New York. A longer version of that interview will be released soon.