Every year sports lovers hit the slopes, the pool, the court, and the field to participate in everything from cycling to snowboarding, to play tennis or baseball, to enter skating competitions, to run marathons, and to go rock climbing. The sporting goods industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar business providing the shoes, skis, balls, helmets, and vast array of other items that help participants go further, faster, higher, and perform better.

The sporting goods sector is made up of companies engaged in the design, development, and testing of sports equipment. These are the companies that make the bicycles, tennis rackets, cross trainers, and gym clothes we use when we go out to play. They may specialize in a single item or goods for a particular sport, or they may put out a wide range of products suitable for a number of activities. They might be a supplier who has developed a new cushioned insert for running shoes or a new substance to coat snowboards.

For all the variety and diversity among the members of this sector, the one thing that they all have in common is the drive to improve and innovate. Sporting goods makers are constantly striving to create and adopt new technologies, with great success. Equipment manufacturers make sure that new technologies are introduced as soon as they can be tested and put into production. All this is in effort to get consumers to buy new goods, upgrade their old ones, or add new accessories to their previous purchases.

All that effort pays off. This sector is more profitable each year. Recent surveys estimate that the world consumption of sporting goods in 2006 reached an all time high of $256 billion. Manufacturers' sales in the U.S. were $66 billion - an increase of 13% over 2005. Though that was a particularly sizable increase, sales have been increasing steadily over the past several years. According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA), much of that success comes from the overall growth in sports apparel and footwear. With positive and enthusiastic consumer responses to technological advances in performance fabrics, this category has seen sales increase 20% over the past two years.

While the U.S. has the largest consumer market for athletic consumer goods, other markets – especially in China and the rest of Asia – are booming as well. China’s impact on the consumer goods industry as a whole has been significant for many years, with companies sending manufacturing functions overseas in an attempt to gain a competitive edge on price.

In an industry this varied and immense, engineers play many different roles, and our next section touches on just that idea.