Industry news

World Cup will protect SA ball retail market

The worldwide surge of interest in the SA football market generated by the 2010 FIFA World Cup should offer some protection to the SA market from the economic downturn experienced by the rest of the world, predicts an international expert who is especially upbeat about the local prospects for his brand.

The SA — and African — football market is predominantly hardground, to which Mikasa’s hardy and durable laminated wound balls are ideally suited, says Ikuo Kobara, Japanese ball manufacturer Mikasa’s manager of international sales in Asia and Africa.

One of biggest in Africa

SA is one of the biggest markets for Mikasa in Africa, along with Egypt and Morocco, and comprises about 2% of their global sales. Of the Mikasa balls sold in these three African countries, about 90% are hardground balls, with about 95% of those sold in SA being laminated.

While the heightened local interest generated by the SA hosting of the football world cup — starting in June this year with the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup — will be a big stimulus for growth in the SA football market, this spotlight inevitably also attracts counterfeiters and a flood of entry level products.

But then, says Kobara, Mikasa is known in Africa for the lasting quality of their FIFA match-level balls, which the cheaper balls cannot match.

Volleyball pioneer

In Africa and Latin America Mikasa is known as manufacturer of football balls — In Europe and Asia the company is, however, known as the volleyball pioneer — a market they still dominate as the official ball supplier to the Federation Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB). They recently signed a new contract with the FIVB to make Mikasa’s indoor and beach volleyballs the official game balls of all the FIVB tournaments until 2012, including the London Olympic Games.

Interestingly, landlocked countries like Germany and Switzerland are the top beach volleyball markets. “They’ll create a court anywhere by bringing in sand,” he explains. “They have even hosted huge international beach volleyball tournaments in the mountains.”

Although an island like Japan has many beaches, beach volleyball is not the most popular sport there — baseball, followed by football, top the popularity stakes in Mikasa’s home country.

In Africa volleyball has not achieved much growth, he says – except in Kenya where 30% of their sales are of volleyball. On the rest of the continent it is football first, second and third, although water polo is also a significant market for Mikasa in SA.

But, when the new Mikasa MVA200 (indoor volleyball) ball was launched at the Beijing Olympics with top rating TV exposure, calls from SA were among the flood asking for supplies of this new ball with the stable flight due to newly applied dimples and fewer panels. “The response was incredible, the calls never stopped. Suddenly, there was this worldwide volleyball euphoria,” says Kobara.

Therefore, the interest that is bound to be generated by the 2010 FIFA World Cup should cushion the SA football market against the global consumer spend slowdown expected this year in reaction to the current worldwide economic crisis, he predicts.

Slump will not impact

He also does not expect the market crunch to have too much of a negative impact on Mikasa’s production.

The Mikasa Corporation was established in 1917 in Hiroshima, Japan and some years later, they started manufacturing inflatable balls for sports like volleyball, basketball, football, water polo, handball, etc.

Since then they have become a worldwide dominant brand for the supply of football played on hard ground, for volleyball and water polo — the W6000W is the official game ball for all men’s water polo competitions played under the auspices of FINA, while the W6009W is the official FINA ball in all their women’s competitions.

As their balls are manufactured in Thailand, the expected rise in labour costs in China should have no effect on Mikasa’s future pricing or delivery, although a global increase in the price of rubber due to the escalating price of petrol towards the end of 2008, could have an impact on prices.

Loyalty tradition

True to the loyalty tradition that became a symbol of Japanese business excellence, Kobara joined the Myojyo Rubber Industries Co. Ltd. (former name of the Mikasa Corporation) nineteen years ago when applying for his first job — and remained with them ever since.

This tradition of loyalty has been extended to their distributors. Nearly two decades ago when he was still a youngster mentored by his predecessor, Mr. Kitamura, Kobara had met Pat Wiltshire, and started dreaming of looking across Cape Town from the top of Table Mountain. A dream the weather finally permitted him to realise during his first visit to their one and only distributor in SA, Pat Wiltshire Sports.