It's football heaven: Riddell facility adds another layer to Ohio's reputation as football mecca

NORTH RIDGEVILLE — Ohio is widely known as the birthplace of football.

And everywhere you look around the Heartland state, it is obvious that Ohio is obsessed with the most popular sport in the United States. The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton and the Wilson Football Factory in Ada are just a couple of examples. But there is a place in North Ridgeville just a few miles off of Interstate 71 in Northeast Ohio that is football heaven.

Riddell, the biggest supplier of football helmets and football helmet services, has a 350,000-square-foot build-to-suit facility that is further engraining Ohio as the football mecca of the entire world. Every year, more than one million helmets make their way through the doors for reconditioning making the facility the leading conditioner of athletic equipment in the world. Throw on the shoulder pad and laundry services Riddell provides and the facility becomes the central hub for football all over the nation.

Every single football-playing high school, key Division I NCAA program and National Football League organization has seen some, if not all, of their equipment make its way to North Ridgeville.

"Riddell works with the majority of the football-playing schools and organizations throughout Ohio," said Erin Griffin the Senior Vice President of Marketing & Communications at Riddell. "Riddell is a proud authorized supplier of helmets to the NFL, as well as the exclusive licensing partner of collectible helmets for the NFL, working with the league and all 32 clubs in both capacities. Riddell is also a proud supplier of protective equipment and services to all elite college programs, including all the Power Five conference schools."

As soon as the final whistle blows on a football team's season, that is when the real season starts at Riddell with truckloads of helmets and shoulder pads making their way to the North Ridgeville facility where Riddell puts each piece of equipment through the ringer. Each helmet is disassembled down to the outer shell where it is then inspected for any faults that compromise the integrity of the helmet and its safety. If it fails, it is bagged, tagged and returned to the team or organization it belongs to with a detailed reason.

The rest are sent through the ringer. They are sanded and prepped for painting before being reassembled and tested. If the padding inside of the helmet needs replacing, it is all done during the process. If it fails during testing, it is returned with a sticker that alerts teams that the helmet should no longer be in circulation.

Once it passes tests, it goes through a final inspection from top to bottom and is sent back to the team. On any given day, helmets from the Oregon Ducks to the Philadephia Eagles and down to Pop Warner teams will make their way through the assembly line.

"As a company, Riddell reconditions more than one million helmets per year as the leading reconditioner of athletic equipment in the world," Griffin said. "Riddell’s North Ridgeville operations serve as its primary production facility and is a combination of office-based, sales, and manufacturing employees that totals approximately 700 people during its peak leading into the football season."

The North Ridgeville plant is also tasked with producing brand-new full-sized on-field helmets as well as collectible, replica helmets for display purposes only. About 800,000 on-field and collectible helmets are produced each year in North Ridgeville and those are distributed to high schools, colleges, professional and youth teams all over the country.

Without Riddell in Northeast Ohio, football wouldn't have a heartbeat.

"The expansive North Ridgeville facility is not only home to the production of Riddell’s on-field helmets and full-size collectibles, the development of custom shoulder pads, and an array of reconditioning and team laundry services, but also represents the hub for our consumer business and distribution of football gear and apparel," Griffin said. "The support provided by the State of Ohio, Lorain County, and the City of North Ridgeville was a key factor in Riddell’s decision to reinvest in Northeast Ohio when it relocated from Elyria to North Ridgeville in 2017 to its new 350,000-square-foot facility.

"Riddell is proud to have a significant footprint in Ohio, given the area’s rich football history and the other brands with locations and notable landmarks throughout the state. Importantly, we are also a destination employer in Northeast Ohio, boasting a team that is passionate about the game and understands the importance of how their work each day improves athlete protection in football."

Riddell is one of the most recognizable brands in football. Its name is plastered on the front and back of every helmet it produces. And the company takes great pride in putting its name on quality products that only help grow the game and make it safer for everyone involved.

"At Riddell, our history is football’s history. As the industry leader in football helmet technology, it is paramount to continue our legacy of innovation at the forefront of the sport at all levels," Griffin said. "While much of the news and interest surrounds the elite level of the game (NFL and college), it’s important to Riddell that our wide variety of products and technologies are accessible to players across the whole football community.

"I know Team Riddell gets great satisfaction seeing our products under the Friday night lights of high school football, on the Pop Warner fields in communities around the country, and on TVs everywhere during college and NFL/professional games."

Riddell is even the leader in transformative technology aimed at making the game safer. In the fall of 2022, Riddell released a revolutionary new helmet called Axiom equipped with its patented Tru-Fit system. Riddell's Verifyt scanning app is used to capture a 3D image of an athlete's head and customizes a padded liner system that is built specifically for the singular athlete wearing an Axiom helmet eliminating fitting foams and air adjustments to greater reduce head injuries associated with poor-fitting helmets.

Axiom also had a frontal protection system that removed the top bar of a traditional facemask to provide additional flexing and more energy-managing material and a better impact response, according to Riddell's website. Each Axiom helmet is equipped with InSite Smart technology that sends a report to an app in real-time to alert when an athlete has sustained an impact hard enough to raise concern. It also provides periodic reports that help coaches and programs understand Head Impact Exposure (HIE) their players experience during games and practices further adding to the safety of the game.

"With each new technology and helmet platform introduced by Riddell, we aim to take a measurable step forward in player protection," Griffin said. "This is represented in our next-generation, advanced technologies ecosystem. Examples include Tru-Fit, which includes a proprietary 3D scanning app for player-customized helmets; our newest helmet platform Axiom features a novel design with four strategic panels of researched-based energy attenuation while also improving the athlete’s field of vision; and InSite Analytics, Riddell’s latest smart wearable technology that provides data surrounding an athlete’s head impact exposure from practices and games, which comes standard in Axiom helmets. As the head protection leader in football, we will continue to innovate with a focus on personalization and the integration of data collection technologies in Riddell’s helmet technology as we move into the future."

Further making Ohio, with the help of Riddell, continue to be the heartbeat of football around the world.

For the full story, please visit the original article here: https://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/story/sports/high-school/football/2023/08/28/riddells-north-ridgeville-facility-an-authorized-supplier-of-nfl-college-football-helmets/70630773007/

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