Paragon Scores With New Baseball Bats

Aluminum baseball bat manufacturer Paragon Sports Products LLC says it has, well, hit a home run.

The year-old company was started in a Santa Ana garage and did $238,000 in business for all of 1997.

In the first two months this year, says President Dan Mowrey, Paragon has shipped $324,000 worth of its softball bats.

The company, whose employees come from the sports, aerospace and commercial manufacturing arenas, moved out of its garage and into a small manufacturing facility in Santa Ana’s enterprise zone last year. This year it is planning another move in the same neighborhood--into a 10,000-square-foot building that’s about three times the size of its current plant.

Mowrey says the company’s secret weapon is a proprietary new aluminum alloy, developed in conjunction with a major international aluminum mill, that is more durable than the aluminum alloys used in most bats.

*

John O’Dell covers major Orange County corporations and manufacturing for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5831 and at john.odell@latimes.com