The iconic US motorcycle brand Bell Helmets and its recently associated big-league motocross apparel brand Fox Racing have fallen into the hands of a freshly rapacious team of private equity investors. Strategic Value Partners has bought them as part of a cash deal apparently worth a cool $1.125bn (£862m in proper money).
They were included in a portfolio of other brands – Giro, Bushnell, Stone Glacier, Camelbak, Sims, Camp Chef, Primos and QuietKat – during an assets carve-up of previous owner Vista Outdoors Inc. Taken together, they constituted Vista’s Revelyst group of companies, built up over the past two decades. Bell, along with some of the other brands, had been acquired by Vista for $400m in 2016. Fox Racing was added in 2022 for a further $540m.
Prior to their disposal, Revelyst had groomed the various sporting brand operations to attract buyers, reducing workforce headcount and streamlining production facilities to just three locations, at Irvine and San Diego in California, and Bozeman in Montana. Its adventure sports, outdoor performance and precision sports technology brands were concentrated across these sites. A press release from Strategic Value Partners subsequently said its investment would “unlock new potential” for the brands. And that the new owners “have deep respect for each brand’s core audience”.
Quite what the outcome for a truly historic enterprise like Bell Helmets will be is a moot point. Founded as Bell Auto Parts in 1933, it was acquired by Roy Richter in 1945 and he produced a first batch of production helmets in 1954. These featured polyurethane foam liners and hand-laminated fibreglass outer shells. Bell moved to Long Beach, California in 1968, from where the first Bell helmet with full-face protection was developed.
The company merged with football helmet manufacturer Riddell to form Bell-Riddell in 1980. The Bell-Riddell motorcycle division was sold in 1991, becoming Bell Helmets. The rest was renamed Bell Sports until the auto racing division was sold and split into Bell Racing Company North America and Bell Racing Europe in 1999. Bell Sports reacquired Bell Helmets in 2002 and it merged into Easton-Bell in 2006, ten years before the Vista acquisition. In 2023, Vista Outdoors was most notable for slashing the number of Californian Bell employees in an attempt to integrate relevant motorcycle brands into Fox Racing.
In a separate deal from the Strategic Value Partners purchase, Vista Outdoors hastily remonikered a second corporate entity alongside Revelyst as Kinetic Group, to sell off its lucrative but controversial Remington rifle ammunition division to the Czech defence and aerospace company CSG for $1.96bn.