A Golfing Life: Abacus Sportswear Building an Empire
At this year’s Ryder Cup, Abacus will once again be an official licensee. In an SGB Golf exclusive, Sven-Olof Karlsson, managing director of Abacus Sportswear, speaks to SGB about how the brand has built its empire
Why do you believe partnerships are important for Abacus? There is one important reason and that is to create
visibility of the Abacus brand alongside the top golfers in Europe. It is important to the credibility of our brand that we partner with the likes of The Ryder Cup. Just like it is very important in Asia that we partner with the Asia Cup – we need to get awareness and information out to consumers and playing a part in large international events is a successful way for us to market our products.
How important are events like the Ryder Cup to increasing sales? It’s always difficult to say whether The Solheim Cup
or The Ryder Cup has helped us increase our sales by X, but it is an important element to showcasing our brand.
What made Abacus go to Asia? I’ve always had a fascination with Asia. In 2010,
there was a lot of interest in Abacus products from Asian consumers so I travelled to Beijing and this is how we first started with our distributor. Asia has gone on to play a huge part in the development of our new lines, such as the Resort Collection, which was specifically created for playing golf in hot weather, like that experienced in Asia.
And what about other growing markets…? Distributing in Canada opened up the American
borders for us – and the Solheim Cup players wearing Abacus in Denver, Colorado, for last year’s Solheim Cup was great for our US profile. Our appearances at The PGA Show in Orlando have also created lots of interest in the USA. South Africa is also an interesting market for us too and we have found that, in general, Abacus products and collections have always gone on to do well in countries where the climate is warmer. Japan is a market that interests me in the future but
we will continue to grow steadily, step-by-step and with new ideas.
What is the secret to creating a successful business? It is all about having the right people in place –
good, honest and hard-working people. In a well-run company, you will always find good people to work with, but then your business plans have to be clear and strong for everything to work well.
20 SGBGOLF
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