Slazenger ( ) is a UK sporting goods manufacturer that concentrates on racquet sports including tennis, golf, cricket and hockey. Founded in 1881, this is one of the oldest surviving sports brand names. It has the longest sports sponsor in world history, thanks to its relationship with the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, providing the ball for the tournament since 1902.
Video Slazenger
Histori
Slazenger was founded in 1881 by a pair of Jewish brothers, Ralph and Albert Slazenger. In 1881, Ralph Slazenger left his hometown, Manchester, and opened a shop on London's Cannon Street that sells rubber-related sports goods. Slazenger quickly became a leading sports equipment manufacturer for golf and tennis. Four years after All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club held their first championship, Slazengers produced 'The New Game of Lawn Tennis' complete in the box.
Their factory at Barnsley produces tennis balls and exports them all over the world. The factory closed in 2002, and production is now based in the Philippines.
In 1902, Slazengers was appointed as the official supplier of tennis balls to The Championships, Wimbledon, and remained one of the longest unbroken sports sponsors in history.
In 1910, a public company was established to acquire Slazenger and Sons, "manufacturers of sports equipment, rubber of india, gutta percha and waterproof goods, leather merchants and traders", which hovered on the stock market. In 1931 Slazengers acquired H. Gradidge and Sons.
The war years (1939-1945)
Slazenger, like most unimportant manufactures in Britain, shifts its production to produce a variety of goods for military purposes, utilizing Slazenger's expertise in wood and rubber manufacturing.
On September 15, 1940, during The Blitz in London, incendiary bombs crashed at the Slazenger plant. The Gradidge plant in Woolwich is also suffering. William Sykes Ltd's competing factory at Horbury was not damaged by the bombing. Slazenger and Gradidge can resume production at another facility but start a series of mergers with a competing company. In 1942 it acquired William Sykes Ltd to expand its wartime production facilities. Around 1943 Slazenger acquired F. H. Ayres. After that the company was known as Slazengers Sykes Gradidge and Ayres.
Here's a list of snapshots from some of their larger contracts that are completed for H.M. Government in 1939-1945, as noted by Slazengers, Gradidge, Sykes, and Ayres in 1946:
Slazenger in New South Wales, Australia, produced a naval launch at Newcastle, NSW for their WW II endeavors.
At its peak
In its heyday, the Slazengers emperors Gradidge Sykes and Ayres stretched across the globe with distributors or licensed agents and/or manufacturing operations where the company has a partnership or license agreement with. Distributors are thrown far and away like New Zealand and Africa, in remote places like Iceland, Newfoundland, Madagascar and even Bolivia.
Maps Slazenger
Selling brand
In the days when wooden tennis rackets were not owned by colleagues, brands like Slazenger and Dunlop were the dominant forces in the world, but with the popularity of metal tennis rackets from the early 1980s and then a quick transition to more popular composite materials such as fiberglass, graphite, Kevlar and so on more and more brands become available to consumers. The new brands are becoming popular because of their ability to meet consumer trends and demand for new technologies. Slazenger is slow to react. The company can not reset the existing factories to manufacture products in new materials and there are large investments in factories and raw materials. The company tried to market its products to these new products by using quality as a unique selling point, but the level of import quality quickly increased and Slazenger soon lost popularity and fell from its glory.
- 1959: Ralph Slazenger Jr. selling family business to Dunlop Rubber.
- 1985: Dunlop Rubber is purchased by BTR plc, which forms the Sports Group that combines Slazenger with Dunlop Sport branded goods.
- 1996: BTR sold Dunlop Sport in £ 300 million in purchasing management - the purchase was backed by Cinven investment company. This new company is known as Dunlop Slazenger .
- 2004: CINVen sells Dunlop Slazenger to Sports Direct International to report Ã, Â £ 40 million, which in turn is sold with the rights to the Slazenger Golf brand in Europe to JJB Sports.
Global rights and licenses
Purchase of Dunlop Slazenger by Sports World International (SWI) does not grant global rights to the brand.
The SWI chooses not to diversify its internally acquired brand, thereby filtering its own resources and finances, but to licensing them globally. With Slazenger, this is achieved successfully, under the name Slazenger seen on a variety of products previously unrelated to the brand, such as sunglasses, toiletries, and push bikes.
In Australia and New Zealand, the Slazenger brand is owned and licensed by Pacific Brands, with full and exclusive rights to sell and distribute throughout the territory. From the early 2000s due to poor management sales dropped dramatically. Instead of investing in brands, Slazenger's management began reducing staff numbers, closing branches, cutting long-term sponsors and reducing costs elsewhere in business. In spite of this radical movement, the Slazenger brand ultimately did not offer any real return to Pacific Brands and in 2010/11 they granted licenses to Spartan Sports which has been operating in Australia since 2005 and owned by Spartan Sports in Jallandhar, India (founded in 1954).
Sponsors
During its peak, many famous cricket players like Sir Don Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Viv Richards, Sir Len Hutton, Denis Compton, Rohan Kanhai, Mark Waugh and Geoffrey Boycott used bat and Slazenger products. Pakistan's cricket team wearing Slazenger kit in their 2009 victory campaign ICC World Twenty20.
References
External links
- Slazenger - the official website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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