Slazenger () is a British
sports equipment
Sports equipment, sporting equipment, also called sporting goods, are the tools, materials, apparel, and gear used to compete in a sport and varies depending on the sport. The equipment ranges from balls, nets, and protective gear like helmets. ...
brand owned by the
Frasers Group (formerly
Sports Direct).
[ The company was established as a sporting goods shop in 1881 by Ralph and Albert Slazenger on London's Cannon Street.][J. R. Lowerson, 'Slazenger, Ralph (1845–1910)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200]
accessed 17 Jan 2014
/ref> Slazenger was acquired by Dunlop Rubber
Dunlop Ltd. (formerly Dunlop Rubber) was a British multinational company involved in the manufacture of various natural rubber goods. Its business was founded in 1889 by Harvey du Cros and he involved John Boyd Dunlop who had re-invented an ...
in 1959. Dunlop was acquired by BTR in 1985. Sports Direct acquired the business in 2004.
The Frasers Group offers a range of products under the "Slazenger" label, including equipment for cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...
, field hockey
Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting ...
, golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...
, swimming, and tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cov ...
, including athletic shoes and a clothing line.
Slazenger has the longest-running sporting sponsorship in the world, thanks to its association with the Wimbledon Tennis Championship, providing balls for the tournament since 1902. Slazenger also produced the official match ball for the 1966 FIFA World Cup
The 1966 FIFA World Cup was the eighth FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial football tournament for men's senior national teams. It was played in England from 11 July to 30 July 1966. The England national football team defeated West Germany 4-2 in th ...
.
History
In 1881, Ralph and Albert Slazenger, Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
brothers from Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...
, established a shop on London's Cannon Street, selling rubber sporting goods. Slazenger quickly became a leading manufacturer of sporting equipment for golf and tennis.[ Four years after the ]All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, also known as the All England Club, based at Church Road, Wimbledon, London, England, is a private members' club. It is best known as the venue for the Wimbledon Championships, the only Grand Slam ...
held its first-ever championships in 1877, Slazenger produced 'The New Game of Lawn Tennis' (tennis rackets and balls) complete in a box.
Their plant in Barnsley
Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. As the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. In Barnsley, the population was 96,888 while the wider Borough ha ...
manufactured tennis balls and exported them round the world. The plant closed in 2002, and production is now based in the Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
.
In 1902, Slazenger was appointed as the official tennis ball supplier to The Championships at Wimbledon, and it remains the longest unbroken sporting sponsorship in history.
In 1910, a public company
A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( ...
was incorporated to acquire Slazenger and Sons, "manufacturers of sports equipment, india rubber, gutta percha and waterproof goods, leather merchants and dealers", which floated on the stock market. In 1931, Slazenger acquired H. Gradidge and Sons.
War years (1939–1945)
During the Second World War, Slazenger, like most nonessential manufacturing in the UK, redirected its production to manufacture a wide variety of items for military purposes, utilising Slazenger's expertise in wood and rubber manufacturing.
On 15 September 1940, during the Blitz
The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'.
The Germa ...
on London, incendiary bombs fell on the Slazenger factory. The Gradidge factory in Woolwich
Woolwich () is a district in southeast London, England, within the Royal Borough of Greenwich.
The district's location on the River Thames led to its status as an important naval, military and industrial area; a role that was maintained thr ...
similarly suffered. The competing William Sykes Ltd factory at Horbury
Horbury is a town in the City of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England. Historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is situated north of the River Calder about three miles (5 km) south west of Wakefield and two miles (3 km) to th ...
was undamaged by the bombings. Slazenger and Gradidge were able to continue production at other facilities but began a series of mergers with competing companies. In 1942, it acquired William Sykes Ltd to broaden its wartime production facilities. Around 1943, Slazenger acquired F. H. Ayres. Founded in the year of 1810 by Edward Ayres, the firm manufactured a range of sporting equipment. It was best known as a quality manufacturing of equipment for archery
Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a bow to shoot arrows.Paterson ''Encyclopaedia of Archery'' p. 17 The word comes from the Latin ''arcus'', meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting and combat. In ...
, in particular, the bow (or longbow
A longbow (known as warbow in its time, in contrast to a hunting bow) is a type of tall Bow and arrow, bow that makes a fairly long Bow draw, draw possible. A longbow is not significantly Recurve bow, recurved. Its limbs are relatively narrow an ...
as it is more commonly known). Before man-made fibres became the standard for which bows are made, Ayres manufactured bows principally from yew (Taxus baccata
''Taxus baccata'' is a species of evergreen tree in the family Taxaceae, native to western, central and southern Europe (including Britain and Ireland), northwest Africa, northern Iran, and southwest Asia.Rushforth, K. (1999). ''Trees of Britain ...
), made to the standard measurements of the time – for men and for women. Thereafter the company was known as Slazenger Sykes Gradidge and Ayres.
The following lists a snapshot of some of their larger contracts completed for the UK Government
ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd
, image = HM Government logo.svg
, image_size = 220px
, image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg
, image_size2 = 180px
, caption = Royal Arms
, date_est ...
in the years 1939–1945, as recorded by Slazenger, Gradidge, Sykes and Ayres in 1946:
Slazenger in New South Wales, Australia, produced naval utility launches at Newcastle, NSW for their WW II effort.
At its peak
In its heyday, the empire of Slazenger Gradidge Sykes and Ayres stretched across the world with either licensed distributors or agents and/or manufacturing operations in which the company had partnerships or licensing agreements with. Distributors were flung far and wide as far away as New Zealand and Africa, in remote places such as Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its ...
, Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...
, Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Afric ...
and even Bolivia
, image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg
, flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center
, flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...
.
Selling a brand
In the days when wooden tennis racquets held no peer, brands such as Slazenger and Dunlop were a dominant force in the world, but with the popularity of the metal tennis racquets from the early 1980s and then the fast transition to even more popular composite materials such as fiberglass
Fiberglass ( American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cl ...
, graphite
Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on la ...
, Kevlar
Kevlar (para-aramid) is a strong, heat-resistant synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965, the high-strength material was first used commercially in the early 1970s a ...
and so on more and more brands became available to the consumer. The new brands became popular due to their ability to meet consumer trends and demand for the new technology. Slazenger was slow to react. The company could not re-gear its existing factories to produce products in the new materials and there was a major existing investment in plant and raw materials. The company tried to market its product against these new products using quality as the unique selling point, but the quality level of imports quickly improved and soon Slazenger lost popularity and fell from prominence.
* 1959: Ralph Slazenger Jr. sold the family business to Dunlop Rubber
Dunlop Ltd. (formerly Dunlop Rubber) was a British multinational company involved in the manufacture of various natural rubber goods. Its business was founded in 1889 by Harvey du Cros and he involved John Boyd Dunlop who had re-invented an ...
.
* 1985: Dunlop Rubber was purchased by BTR plc, which formed a Sports Group combining Slazenger with the Dunlop Sport
Dunlop Sport is a British sports equipment manufacturing company established in 1910 that focuses on racquet sports, more specifically tennis, squash, padel and badminton. Products by Dunlop Sport include rackets, strings, balls, shuttlecock ...
branded goods.
* 1996: BTR sold Dunlop Sport in a management buyout for £300 million - the buyout was backed by investment company Cinven. The new company was to be known as "Dunlop Slazenger".
* 2004: CINVen sold Dunlop Slazenger to Sports Direct International for a reported £40 million, who in turn sold on the rights to the ''Slazenger Golf'' brand in Europe to JJB Sports.
Global rights and licensing
The purchase of Dunlop Slazenger by Sports World International
Frasers Group plc (formerly known as Sports Direct International plc) is a British retail, sport and intellectual property group, named after its ownership of the department store chain House of Fraser. The company is best known for trading p ...
(SWI) did not confer global rights to the brand. SWI chose not to diversify the brands it acquired internally, and thus strain its own resources and finances, but to license them globally. With Slazenger, this was achieved successfully, with the Slazenger name being seen on a wide range of products not previously associated with the brand, such as sunglasses, toiletries and push bikes.
In Australia and New Zealand, the Slazenger brand is owned and licensed by Pacific Brands
Pacific Brands was an Australian consumer products company.
On Tuesday, 28 June 2016, the company suspended trading on the ASX in order to be acquired by Hanesbrands. Corporate changes/details were to be announced thereafter.
This acquisiti ...
, with full and exclusive rights to sell and distribute throughout those territories. From the early 2000s due to poor management sales plummeted. Rather than investing in the brand, the Slazenger management began downsizing staff numbers, closing branches, cutting back long-standing sponsorship as well as stripping back costs elsewhere within the business. Despite these radical moves the Slazenger brand still ultimately offered no real return to Pacific Brands and in 2010/11 they sub-licensed it to Spartan Sports who had been operating in Australia since 2005 and is owned by Spartan Sports in Jallandhar, India (established in 1954).
Products
Range of products under the brand Slazenger includes:
Sponsorships
During its peak, many famous cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...
players such as Sir Don Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers
Sir Garfield St Aubrun Sobers, (born 28 July 1936), also known as Sir Gary or Sir Garry Sobers, is a former cricketer who played for the West Indies between 1954 and 1974. A highly skilled bowler, an aggressive batsman and an excellent fielder, ...
, Sir Viv Richards
Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards (born 7 March 1952) is an Antiguan retired cricketer who represented the West Indies cricket team between 1974 and 1991. Batting generally at number three in a dominant West Indies side, Richards is widely ...
, Sir Len Hutton, Denis Compton
Denis Charles Scott Compton (23 May 1918 – 23 April 1997) was an English multi-sportsman. As a cricketer he played in 78 Test matches and spent his whole cricket career with Middlesex. As a footballer, he played as a winger and spent most o ...
, Rohan Kanhai
Rohan Babulal Kanhai (born 26 December 1935) is a Guyanese former cricketer of Tamil Indo-Guyanese origin , who represented the West Indies in 79 Test matches. He is widely considered to be one of the best batsmen of the 1960s. Kanhai fea ...
, Mark Waugh, Jacques Kallis
Jacques Henry Kallis (born 16 October 1975) is a South African cricket coach and former cricketer. Widely regarded as one of the greatest cricketers of all time and as South Africa's greatest batsman ever, he is a right-handed batsman and righ ...
, Jason Roy, James Anderson Geoffrey Boycott
Sir Geoffrey Boycott (born 21 October 1940) is a former Test cricketer, who played cricket for Yorkshire and England. In a prolific and sometimes controversial playing career from 1962 to 1986, Boycott established himself as one of England's m ...
used Slazenger's bats and products. The Pakistan cricket team
The Pakistan national cricket team or Pak cricket team, often referred to as the Shaheens (), Green Shirts, Men in Green and Cornered Tigers is administered by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). The team is a Full Member of the International ...
wore the Slazenger kit in their winning campaign during the 2009 ICC World Twenty20
The 2009 ICC World Twenty20 was an international Twenty20 cricket tournament organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC) that took place in England in June 2009. It was the second ICC World Twenty20 tournament, following the inaugural ...
.
There are also many famous golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...
players who have used Slazenger products, such as Jack Nicklaus
Jack William Nicklaus (born January 21, 1940), nicknamed The Golden Bear, is a retired American professional golfer and golf course designer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest golfers of all time. He won 117 professional tou ...
, Seve Ballesteros
Severiano Ballesteros Sota (; 9 April 1957 – 7 May 2011) was a Spanish professional golfer, a World No. 1 who was one of the sport's leading figures from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. A member of a gifted golfing family, he won 90 inte ...
, Tom Weiskopf, Tom Watson and Johnny Miller. Besides professional golf players, film-star Sean Connery
Sir Sean Connery (born Thomas Connery; 25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020) was a Scottish actor. He was the first actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond on film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. Origina ...
also wore the Slazenger v-neck jumper while playing golf in his free time. Furthermore, in the golf scene at Stoke Park Golf Club in Buckinghamshire in the James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors hav ...
film '' Goldfinger'' (1964), he wears a burgundy v-neck Slazenger jumper and the Slazenger brand of golf balls are shown on screen and mentioned several times in dialogue—Bond: "You play a Slazenger 1, don't you?"—as they play a key plot point.
References
External links
*
{{Sports equipment brands
British brands
English brands
Sportswear brands
Cricket equipment manufacturers
Golf equipment manufacturers
Tennis equipment manufacturers
Clothing companies of England
Sporting goods manufacturers of the United Kingdom
Manufacturing companies established in 1881
1881 establishments in England
Companies based in Derbyshire
Sports Direct