HEAD Acquires Zoggs
It’s acquisition week folks as a tennis racket company expand into swimming goggles.
Well, that’s how it sounds at first. I have fond memories of playing racket sports not very well in my teenage years. It was obviously the racket that caused me to not play very well and I did have a HEAD racket amongst many others. Funnily enough, whichever brand of tennis racket I chose seemed to have the same problem (me).
Calling HEAD a “tennis racket company” or even a “racket sports company” is a little unfair as they have expanded significantly beyond that in recent years, including winter sports, apparel and riding the SWIMRUN boom with wetsuits, paddles and more as the following images from their website show.
It’s not just open water where HEAD have spread their corporate tentacles, it’s indoors in the pool too, including with pool-based team sports.
This news of HEAD’s acquisition of a “goggles comapny” is a little surprising a first glance as HEAD already has a decent range of swimming goggles as the following image shows (again from Head’s website)
HEAD is a well-known sports brand perhaps less well-known in water sports. Zoggs IS a well-known name in watersports. Zoggs majors on swimming and all of you must know someone with Zoggs goggles, heck even I sometimes use Zoggs Predator Flex goggles out of habit. Yet, whilst HEAD to me seems mostly an adult brand, I would say that Zoggs covers all age ranges and abilities in the swimming space but they are just a little goggle-centric despite offering other swimming accessories.
As well as product complementarities there also seems to be geographic gaps that each party can leverage.
So Head and Zoggs sound like two fairly different companies operating in the same kind of markets.
The press release suggests that the Zoggs name will be ported across to other products, including wetsuits ie all the water sports products will be Zoggs-branded. This seems like a good idea as Zoggs hass a strong and positive brand image and, for example, I certainly wouldn’t dismiss the thought of a new Zoggs wetsuit out-of-hand.
Opinion
Very sensible.
Fun Fact
Zoggs’ UK Head Office is in the same building as Suunto/Mavic/Amer. Some of my Suunto photoshoots are in the car park there…oh the glamour of it all….living the dream. And no I don’t get free goggles.