Adidas has granted a global license for table tennis equipment to Green Fitness, a German-based supplier of fitness equipment. The license includes tennis tables, balls, paddles and nets as well as other hardgoods, but not apparel and footwear, which continue to be marketed by Adidas.
Adidas did not license table tennis hardgoods before and did not market them itself. In a first step, effective for spring/summer 2010, the new Adidas branded table tennis gear will be introduced in Europe and shortly after that in the U.S. Adidas table tennis is scheduled to hit the markets in the Far East by 2011.
Green Fitness is a regional licensee of Reebok fitness equipment for the Benelux and German-speaking countries as well as for Central and Eastern Europe. The company is run by a fitness expert with experience in table tennis: Frank Koch, who has been in the sporting goods business for more than two decades, was general manager of Kettler’s sports division, where he was in charge both of fitness and table tennis equipment before he co-founded Green Fitness in 2006. Green Fitness is a joint venture of Koch as minority stakeholder and of Greenmaster as a majority partner. Greenmaster is an important original equipment manufacturer based in Taiwan.
