Wilson Sporting Goods Company
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Sports equipment |
| Founded | 1913 (as "Ashland Manufacturing Company") |
| Founder | Thomas E. Wilson |
| Headquarters | Chicago, United States |
| Products | |
| $930 million (2010) | |
|
Number of employees
|
1,600 |
| Parent | Amer Sports |
| Subsidiaries | DeMarini |
| Website | wilson.com |
The Wilson Sporting Goods Company is an American sports equipment manufacturer based in Chicago, Illinois. Since 1989, it has been a foreign subsidiary of the Finnish group Amer Sports. Wilson makes equipment for many sports, among them badminton, baseball, basketball, softball, Canadian football, American football, golf, racquetball, soccer, padel, platform tennis, squash, tennis and volleyball.
The company traces its roots to the Schwarzschild & Sulzberger meatpacking company (later changed to Sulzberger & Son's) based in New York, that operated meat packing slaughterhouses.
Sulzberger & Son's founded the Ashland Manufacturing Company in 1913 to use animal by-products from its slaughterhouses. It started out making tennis racket strings, violin strings, and surgical sutures but soon expanded into baseball shoes and tennis racquets.
In 1915, Thomas E. Wilson, former president of meatpacker Morris & Company, was appointed President by the controlling banks and renamed the company Thomas E. Wilson Company. The company acquired the Hetzinger Knitting Mills to produce athletic uniforms and a caddie bag company which produced golf balls but soon expanded into footballs and basketballs.
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