Four bicycle makers, three initials and a pair of skates.

CCM began as a bicycle company. English Wikipedia says Canada Cycle & Motor was formed in 1899 when the operations of four Canadian bicycle makers were brought together: H. A. Lozier, Massey-Harris, Goold and Welland Vale Manufacturing. The company built bicycles for many years in the Weston area of Toronto, Ontario, and for a short time it also produced the Russell automobile. Two book-length company histories cover those decades: one by Merrill Denison, published by Canada Cycle & Motor in 1949, and Canada Cycle & Motor: The CCM Story by John A. McKenty, published by Epic Press in 2011.

Hockey arrived as a side line. Wikipedia says that by 1905, with the bicycle market saturated, CCM began making hockey skates from the scrap steel left over at its plant from building bicycles and automobiles, and then moved on to other hockey gear. In 1937 the company acquired the Tackaberry skate brand, made by George Tackaberry of Manitoba. Shortened to “Tacks”, the name remained the company’s signature skate until late 2006, Wikipedia says, when it gave way in turn to the Vector, U+, RBZ and Jetspeed lines; Tacks was reintroduced in 2014.

The equipment range widened over the following decades. Wikipedia lists sticks, skates, helmets, shoulder pads, elbow pads, knee pads, throat collars, goaltender masks, pads and gloves, and team uniforms for the American Hockey League among CCM’s hockey products.

For more than eighty years the initials stood on bicycles and on skates at the same time, made by one company. That changed at the start of the 1980s. In January 1983, after CCM Inc. went bankrupt in 1982, the company was sold in two parts: the bicycle division went to Pro-Cycle Inc. of St-Georges-de-Beauce, Quebec, and the hockey division to Sport Maska Inc., also of Quebec. From that point the hockey brand followed its own line of owners.

Sport Maska, Reebok, Adidas, Birch Hill and Altor.

Sport Maska had its own Quebec history. Wikipedia says it was founded in 1936 as G. C. Knitting Inc., was bought in 1976 by David Zunenshine and was renamed in 1979 after the Seigneurie de Maska. The company entered the toy business in 1988 by acquiring Coleco Industries, and added Buddy L, a maker of toy cars and trucks, in 1990. In 1991 Zunenshine created a holding company called SLM International, an acronym for St. Lawrence Manufacturing. In 1998 SLM bought the Montreal-based Sports Holdings, adding the Koho, Titan, Jofa, Canadien and Heaton names, and in 1999 it was renamed The Hockey Company.

Reebok came next. CBC News reported on 8 April 2004 that Reebok International had unveiled a takeover bid for The Hockey Company Holdings, owner of the CCM, JOFA and Koho brands, and that the company held a long-term licence with the National Hockey League to supply team jerseys. Wikipedia dates the purchase to June 2004 and says every brand other than CCM was then retired, while Reebok introduced its own RBK Hockey gear, later renamed Reebok Hockey. Reebok was itself acquired by Adidas in 2005. Wikipedia says Adidas created a new goaltending line under the CCM name in the autumn of 2013 and from 2015 began phasing the Reebok name out of its hockey equipment, creating equivalent lines under CCM.

Ownership then moved to a Canadian investor. The New York Post reported on 20 July 2017 that Adidas was selling CCM, then described as based in Weston, Ontario, to the private equity firm Birch Hill Equity Partners. The paper said the CCM apparel licence was not part of the sale, and that Adidas, which held the NHL uniform licence, would replace the CCM and Reebok logos on those uniforms with its own. Wikipedia says the hockey business, still held through Sport Maska, passed to Birch Hill in 2017, and that the company hired Rick Blackshaw as chief executive in 2018.

On 2 October 2024 the Stockholm investor Altor announced that its Altor Fund VI had signed an agreement to acquire a significant majority stake in CCM Hockey, with CCM’s management reinvesting. Altor’s release said the group would remain headquartered in Montreal, with operations in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia, and that the business also includes Jackson Ultima, a maker of figure skate boots, blades and complete skates. Wikipedia dates Altor’s purchase of the majority share from Birch Hill to October 2024 and says Northleaf Capital Partners of Toronto took the minority share in January 2025. Altor lists CCM Hockey among its companies.

Design and documentation.

Protective and playing equipment gives a logo very little room and a great deal to compete with. A helmet is curved in two directions, carries vents, clips and face guards, and may also have to hold a team’s own crest, numbers and stripes. A stick or shaft is long and narrow, so a name usually runs along its length and is read sideways, often from across a field or a rink. A skate boot offers a heel, a tongue and a quarter panel, each seen from a different angle, while a ball is round, scuffed and spinning, and its print is broken up by panels and seams.

Brands working on these surfaces tend to lean on a short word or a simple symbol that survives being stretched, shrunk, repeated or partly hidden. Colour matters too: a mark has to read against team colours it does not control, under floodlights and on television.

Each guide that follows sets out who started the brand, who has owned it since, and how its name and mark have appeared on equipment, separating what independent sources record from what a company says about itself.

Three letters, three logos and a revived skate name.

The CCM identity is built on initials. The three letters began as the short form of a corporate name about bicycles and motors, and today they appear on hockey skates, sticks, helmets and goaltender equipment. Wikipedia says CCM has changed its logo twice and continues to use all three versions, so the earlier marks remain in use alongside the newest one.

Product names carry much of the remaining identity. Tacks, brought back in 2014, ties the current range to the 1937 purchase of George Tackaberry’s skate brand, while Jetspeed names another skate family, and Wikipedia lists the Extreme Flex, Axis and youth YT Flex names among CCM’s goaltender lines. Wikipedia also says CCM ended a long goaltending partnership in 2020 with Équipements de gardien de but, a Quebec family firm that began making hockey equipment in the 1970s and whose products were marketed under the Lefebvre name.

Players are part of the presentation. Altor’s 2024 announcement named Auston Matthews, Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Thatcher Demko and Sarah Nurse among the NHL and PWHL players who represent CCM, and Wikipedia lists Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Patrice Bergeron, Nathan MacKinnon and McDavid as endorsers of its player gear. Wikipedia says CCM was one of the NHL’s official licensees, sponsors and on-ice equipment suppliers until 2014. In the Nordic countries, Altor’s release noted, the group also carries the Jofa and Koho names, two of the brands that came into the family with Sports Holdings in 1998.

For a design guide, CCM shows how a set of initials can hold a brand together through a change of industry and a long run of owners, from a Toronto bicycle combine to Sport Maska, Reebok, Adidas, Birch Hill and Altor. Compare it with Reebok, which bought the business in 2004, and Adidas, which sold it in 2017. For this guide we use skate red, ice white and ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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