Bradenton Herald - February 17th, 2007

Bradenton Herald, The (FL)
2007-02-17
Section: BUSINESS
Edition: BRADENTON
Page: 1B

LOCAL COMPANY EQUIPS THE WORLD FOR PLAY
THE MECHANICS OF BASEBALL

Bonnie Merrill Limbach, Special to the Herald

As pitchers and catchers report for the start of spring training, don't ask Danielle Huff to name her favorite baseball team. "I can't," she said. "They're literally all our customers." Huff, majority owner of C & H Baseball in Bradenton, has earned a right to her reticence. Her company has supplied field equipment, cable, netting and other systems to every Major League Baseball team as well as many Little League teams, high school, college and minor league squads around the country.

Huff and her husband, Rob, bought the company in 2000 from Rob's parents, but C & H Baseball's story actually starts in 1968.

That was when a hitting coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates came to the then C & H Welding & Metals with a problem and an idea. The problem was that the team's battery, infielders and outfielders had to practice separately. His idea was for protective screening so multiple practices could take place concurrently.

Developed from the dilemma was the first aluminum portable batting cage and "a new side business" of the welding company was born. By 1990, Huff explained, the company was "inching toward baseball only." In 1992, the transition was completed as C & H Welding became C & H Baseball.

By the mid-1990s, the company was doing stadium construction and renovation projects, installing its own equipment and others' products.

Today C & H Baseball has become the industry leader in new stadium construction netting and field equipment, Huff said. It also has become a leader in supplying and installing field wall padding, windscreen, barrier nets, batting tunnels and artificial turf, she said.

"We come in at the end of the project and put on the finishing touches," Huff explained.

Jeff Slusarick, an architect for the Pittsburgh-based Astorino company, said he first worked with C & H when his firm renovated McKechnie Field in Bradenton. Turning to the hometown manufacturer apparently was an obvious decision. "Whenever I think of netting or backstops or portable batting cages, I think of C&H," he said.

Since 1996, the company has worked on every new Major League stadium built from San Diego to Milwaukee to Philadelphia, Huff said.

"We have doubled our annual sales since 2000," Huff said, adding that the company has added two full-time employees to the operation since then."

The company also is branching out internationally, Huff said. It provided field equipment for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, as well as for teams in countries such as Italy and the Czech Republic.

"At the moment, we're getting ready to ship two containers to the Dominican Republic for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' summer league," she said. C & H also has provided equipment to U.S. summer leagues in Colombia and Venezuela.

The world sometimes comes to C & H as happened last year at Disney's Wide World of Sports, which hosted the World Baseball Classic in March. Rick Braun, a planned work specialist at the complex, said he has worked with C & H for three years and appreciates the quality products it offers.

C & H does all this, Huff said, with eight employees --- including herself and her husband --- and teams of subcontractors who do the installation work around the country.

The business used to be seasonal, but C & H now stays busy all year as its own net has widened to capture an increasing number of high school, college and Little League teams.

The company's path to success has been unique in that way, Huff pointed out. "We're a top-to-bottom company. Most companies like ours start with Little League and try to move their products up the line through high school, then college and then the Major League." At C & H, she said, "we started at the top and worked our way down."

However, a growth area for the company these days is found a little higher in the chain with the minor leagues as new parks are being built and new teams keep forming, Huff said.

With the growth, the company is planning a new facility in the Commerce Park in Lakewood Ranch. Scheduled to open in late 2007, the 14,000-square-foot complex will be "part manufacturing and part indoor baseball-training facility," Huff said. "We are also looking at over one million dollars in capital expenditures with the construction of the new building in Lakewood Ranch."

The sports center will be open to the public and will include six batting tunnels and pitching machines. It is intended for use by both individuals and teams through memberships or rental of the facility and the Huffs have been in contact with coaches interested in teaching there.

The sports facility, which also will serve as a showcase for the C & H Baseball's products, "is going to be extremely user-friendly," Huff said. For instance, parents whose children are practicing in the complex can retire to an area where they can use their laptops.

"It is also a way we can give back to the community," she said.

Huff, who was an advertising account executive before purchasing C & H, and her husband, a former professional golfer, live in Bradenton with their three children.

"The question I get most," she said, "is how the heck did you get into this business?" The answer, she explained, can be found in her childhood. She "grew up around manufacturing," doing office work for her uncle, who made stainless steel galleys for ships.

With that exposure, she said, "I always knew I wanted my own business."

And with that goal accomplished, she is --- it would seem --- having a ball.