I got the same info from a contact within Adidas badminton a couple of days ago. Very disappointing that they are doing this AGAIN, especially with the high quality product lineup they’ve established over the past years and the money and effort they put into it. Adidas and badminton just don’t seem to be compatible in the long run. What a shame. So look out for blow out sales in the next months!
My question are what ia that adidas had done to promote their badminton branch & now they thinking its not profitable & close the branch. Idk on other country but here in Indo, basically nothing. Do they really hope just sit down & many player rushing to buy new Adidas racket? Im myself if not from this BC forum, i wouldnt even look at Adidas Racket. It like... What... Adidas? Badminton? Really? Now i own myself P8 & love it. Ooh well... Why not hijack one of Yonex Marketing personel.
@orbn01 posted in the Adidas 2020 thread Adidas is ceasing badminton again! https://badmania.fr/modules/forum/index.php?topic=26051.0 "This is indeed the case unfortunately ... at the end of the season adidas badminton will no longer exist. From the information we have, a new CEO arrived and did a study to determine the most profitable sports but also those that were the least. Badminton is one of them and it was therefore decided to stop the badminton branch."
IMO they startet off really well and with a good marketing concept in the beginning. And believe it or not, they did hire some marketing people from Yonex - not sure how long they stayed onboard though. And this is just what I felt has happened later on - they somehow expected that the name Adidas alone would bring them a significant slice of the whole market and that they very quickly become a big player. And then reality hit them and showed that it was a lot more difficult to set their foot into various markets - especially with the historic baggage of having pulled out a couple of years ago. For example, I know that they had serious issues finding shops here in Germany that would even offer their products. And then came the pandemic and made the whole issue even worse. From a strictly business standpoint, I also don't understand the decision now. I mean, they have already spent the biggest part of the development costs. So it would have been rather cheap to stay in the market for a couple of years longer (some colour changes here and there would have been sufficient) and to see how everything is going to develop once the pandemic will finally be over at some point. Especially with company that earns that much money in their core markets this would have been peanuts. But okay... if the story with the new management is true, it would have been enough to have someone in who isn't a big fan of badminton in the first place, then followed with nonexistent profit margins and you know how the decision was made.
It's a real shame! I really like the Adidas range, very good products and generally good value. The Spieler range are the best value for money I have seen! Unfortunately I think part of the downfall was the top of the range rackets being as expensive or in some cases more expensive than the well established badminton brands. It gave no incentive for people to try Adidas which was a real issue.
It's probably the right decision for the company. I wish Nike would acquire Gosen or something and start their own badminton line. I always found Nike to be much better at marketing than Adidas. Nike would destroy Yonex/Victor/Lining in terms of marketing.
They didn’t want to be seen as a cheap brand. The very first initial strategy was to go big guns blazing - remember they had Viktor Axelsen and Nozomi Okuhara on board. But it burnt a lot of money. The second strategy (with a new team) was to build a long term brand from the bottom up from teenagers upwards. I felt that was a decent strategy but it does take a long time for a new brand to get established - the new CEO unfortunately doesn’t have the same vision. And we didn’t see much visibility in tournaments. I saw one local junior tournament in HK using adidas shuttles and my kid got a racquet as a prize. Mind you, we been hit badly by prolonged closure of badminton courts due to pandemic so it’s not really Adidas’ fault for the lack of chances. Pandemic has held them back a lot.
To be fair, a lot of the work depends on the distributors in each country. These distributors have other business interests and not working 100% for Adidas on building the brand. Maybe we see Adidas being disadvantaged by its global name. There’s a pressure to go global straight away. Other smaller brands are surviving by concentrating on local key markets. I wonder how Li Ning is getting along as well.
On to some brighter news, I got the Uberschall 2.1 for £60 strung and delivered from France within days with code BIENVENUE.
Damn, it's a bummer but hardly surprising. For hardcore gearheads, it's a hard sell when their outsourced racquets cost just as much or more than those from brands with in-house design and production. Not to mention their relatively weak marketing and availability. It's a bit of a tell when general sports shops and badminton shops in their home country don't even carry their racquets (despite having all their clothes and shoes for sale).
Really disappointing. Maybe an opportunity to get some good deals. But if you end up liking their rackets/strings or whatever and can't get replacement in the future, feels pretty bad. Sadly this proves the people right that stay with the big brands.
I'd have to agree with you. It's extremely jarring when some shops charge more for a Wucht P8 than an Astrox 100ZZ. Not to mention the fact that some folks still see "Made in China" as a sign of low quality, making their racquets an even harder sell when top of the line Japanese racquets can be bought for cheaper. Honestly, that's what kept me from buying a Wucht P7. I was VERY interested (I think you even gave me your thoughts on it awhile back) but I couldn't justify getting it when there are so many other racquets from more reputable brands that I could try out for the same or even cheaper price. I had equal interest in the Wucht P7 and Nanoflare 800 (both from the same shop), and I went with the Nanoflare because it was 20€ cheaper! That's a flagship Japan-made Yonex, and it's cheaper than the Chinese outsourced Adidas racquet. On paper it just didn't make much sense for most buyers to give Adidas a chance.
Forgot to mention , in early 2021 in Hong Kong, they signed up quite a number of young players to use the brand. Did that happen in any other countries?
Not sure it proves people right to stay with the big brands as it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, you can't say I'm not going to buy from the small new companies because they will fail as this is exactly why it fails if you don't buy from them, you've created the very reason you're afraid of. Sadly no one else will enter the market no matter how good you're products are as you can't break brand loyalty or build up trust in a new brand
Really funny that BC member like @Dave1011 , @speCulatius,@Cheung could do better marketing than Adidas itself. How many player convienced to try Adidas from their comment in this BC forum & Adidas themself giving up already. They already had high tech stuff to boast if you look at their catalog. But that just to science nerd & not quite attractive. In regular person eye, what the hell is 30T/40T, C-mill what is that, hot melt eeerrr OK.... But YY, Trivoltege improve smash by 10%, hell yeah my smash will be even more deadly. Simple word, stupid naming but it hit the mark. Then again Adidas need target market. To whom they want to sell their racket? AVP strong point are good quality yet cheap racket + able to hold 35 tension. Their target are a lower mid people who love badminton but cant afford the expensive one. P8 for 2.5M IDR are ridicolous when you had no name in badminton world even if its great racket. Even YY high end cost less than that & YY are very well known brand. How would Adidas hope to attract buyer with that kind of pricing. Pretty messy marketing strategy i think.
I bought some for my daughter to use. For myself, I am very slow to change racquet models as I don’t break racquets. I used carbonex 20 for about 15 years
