Jon Pritchett's Dream of Reviving AstroTurf Became a PR Nightmare

Should he go all out to save the brand?

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Mark Hartman

TURF CONTROL: Prichett met AstroTurf's critics head on.

In the fall of 2007, New Jersey state health officials made a troubling discovery: A playing field at a Newark park contained extremely high levels of lead. They assumed the contamination was coming from the abandoned scrap-metal yard next door. But the problem turned out to be deep in the fibers of the artificial turf covering the field. When the news broke the following spring, it set off a nationwide scare, and for tiny GeneralSports Venue, a public-relations nightmare.

The company, a five-year-old artificial-turf supplier with 42 employees, wasn't at fault. But the brand name it had just adopted was. GeneralSports had acquired an exclusive license on the name AstroTurf -- the same one used by the now-defunct company that had manufactured the Newark field almost a decade earlier -- and had spent millions of dollars to resurrect it. But now that familiar name was at the center of fears about the safety of playing fields, and GSV's big investment was suddenly at risk. "I'm a parent, and if you think about children, turf, and lead, it's pretty scary," says Jon Pritchett, the company's co-founder and CEO. "Not a whole lot more needs to be said."

Just how much more to say was, in fact, the critical question. On the one hand, it's rarely advisable for a company to keep quiet in a crisis. But no one was claiming that GSV was responsible for products made long ago by another company. So, anything it said risked drawing even more negative attention. Yet the AstroTurf name, which to many is synonymous with all brands of artificial turf, was being invoked in every story about the lead scare, often erroneously. Could GSV really stay silent while AstroTurf was trashed?

The granddaddy of fake grass was invented by Monsanto and was a household name from the moment it was rolled out in the Houston Astrodome, in 1966. The brilliant-green carpet became the surface of choice for America's new climate-controlled domed stadiums. But by the 1990s, AstroTurf started to fade. Athletes complained of injuries suffered on the abrasive, unforgiving nylon, and a softer polyethylene turf marketed by rival brand FieldTurf became the industry standard. AstroTurf changed hands twice, and in 2004, its owner filed for bankruptcy.

At the time, GSV was a bit player in the artificial-turf business. The company was formed when Pritchett, a sports marketing executive who worked in the University of South Carolina's athletic department while getting his M.B.A., hooked up with Michigan sports and entertainment entrepreneur Andy Appleby. With a business plan based on consolidating a fragmented but growing market, they raised $3 million from investors, including a New Jersey telecom executive named Michael Dennis.

But the company's brand struggled to gain traction against FieldTurf. In 2006, sensing that AstroTurf's worldwide name recognition could vault it into contention, GSV negotiated a license lasting 50 years with the brand's owner, Textile Management Associates, which continued to handle manufacturing.

Pritchett quickly set about bringing AstroTurf back, starting with an announcement in December 2006 at the ESPN Zone restaurant in New York City's Times Square. GSV rebranded its existing product line and hired a national sales force. An ad campaign emphasized the storied brand's place in sports history and its new, cushier, player-friendly surface. Pritchett even hired football great Archie Manning, father of NFL stars Peyton and Eli, to be AstroTurf's brand ambassador. By the end of 2007, sales were up 67 percent, to $25 million, and were projected to hit $40 million in 2008. With 10 percent of the market, up from less than 2 percent in 2006, AstroTurf now trailed only FieldTurf.

Then, during a March 12 staff conference call, Pritchett was notified about the lead discovery in Newark. GSV believed its current products were safe, but it couldn't vouch for AstroTurf installed by others years earlier. GSV began gathering information from industry experts as well as its own suppliers, trying to understand the depth of the problem.

But AstroTurf's troubles grew. On April 14, the New Jersey state health department announced it had tested 12 more artificial-turf fields for lead and found two with levels eight to 10 times what it considered safe. As in Newark, both were nylon fields, and both were AstroTurf. The state's top epidemiologists called for a federal investigation into the safety of artificial turf.

Media across the country picked up the story of New Jersey's toxic turf, with television footage showing workers wearing protective green suits as they tore up the field in Newark. Elsewhere, fields were padlocked, events were canceled, and school board hearings were held. "Our thinking was this could last long enough that it could do a lot of damage," says Pritchett.

GSV spent the next seven days in near-constant deliberations. At the table were Pritchett's management team and legal counsel, AstroTurf's manufacturer, and GSV's PR firm. Initially GSV had let the Synthetic Turf Council, the industry's trade association, respond publicly. But Pritchett knew that the council couldn't be expected to offer a vigorous defense of a single member's brand. For that, the company would have to step out on its own.

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