ARENA: A 30 YEAR SUCCESS STORY

ARENA: A 30 YEAR SUCCESS STORY
At the beginning of the 70s Horst Dassler, son of the founder of Adidas and President of Adidas France,
started to sense a growing need to transform his incredible passion for swimming into a business
opportunity. This is how the dream came about to create a new sports brand, destined to deliver the
best technological products for athletes in top level swimming competitions.
The 7 gold medals won by Mark Spitz at the 1972 Munich Olympics represented a fantastic opportunity
to make the dream become reality. Mark Spitz decided to retire after setting this incredible and probably
unbeatable record. Horst Dassler struck while the iron was hot and invited him to become the world
ambassador for the new Arena Research, Development and Marketing Philosophy.
Arena was born in 1973 with a fully committed and dedicated team, initially based at the Adidas France
HQ in Landersheim, near Strasbourg. From the extraordinary mix of investments in new technology,
Research and Development capacity for innovation and creativity, along with the experience, the talent
and the sensitivity of the greatest swimming champion of all time, the first tangible result emerged:
SKINFIT®, a technological pearl weighing only 18 grams, created with a revolutionary and ultralight
fabric, which is able to “stick to the body like a second skin”.
This had such a huge impact on the swimming world that it caused all the major competitors to attempt
to equal its technological characteristics and performance, but always in vain.
SKINFIT® saw its official launch at the 1973 European Cup in Berlin and was immediately adopted by a
substantial group of top athletes for the World Swimming Championships in Belgrade the same year.
Even the world champion David Wilke (UK), after testing it, decided to use it for all events.
In 1974 Arena signed a technical and sponsoring co-operation agreement with the great Australian
champion Shane Gould, who subsequently gave her name to the first line of Arena swimsuits for women.
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It was in that period that Arena started to feature with increasing frequency in the reports of the most
prestigious European sports magazines, especially in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Switzerland
and Belgium. Almost at the same time the image and the relevance of the brand also started to develop in
the USA.
In 1975 it was Scandinavia’s turn, and thanks to the sponsorship of the World Championships in Cali
(Columbia), Arena started growing also in Latin America.
The Montreal Olympics in 1976 provided Arena with an excellent chance to further reinforce its brand
image, as well as its technological supremacy, with the launch of the first line of swimming caps and
goggles specifically created for the needs of high level competition.
Arena thus became, in the minds of all sports people, a byword for the purest form of passion for
swimming. This is testified not only by the sheer commitment given to the design and manufacture of
products with absolutely outstanding performance attributes, but also by the important contribution
provided to the International Federations, in order to spread the values of sport throughout the world,
with particular reference to water sports.
In 1976 the plan to create a group of great international athletes started taking shape. It soon became
known as the ARENA DREAM TEAM. Apart from guaranteeing constant co-operation to provide
input to the R&D Team (validating all the improvements brought to the technical products used in
competition), these 10 Olympic champions also assumed the important responsibility of stimulating an
increase in interest and passion for swimming throughout the world. Within the team, a key role was
played by champions like Mark Spitz (USA), Don Schollander (USA), Novella Calligaris (ITA), Steve
Furniss (USA), David Wilke (UK), Shirley Babashoff (USA), Gary Hall (USA), Klaus Dibiasi (ITA), Ulrike
Knape (SWE) and Miki King (USA).
It is certainly no small feat that the athletes belonging to the ARENA DREAM TEAM could boast 44
Olympic medals and 83 world records.
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Over the following years some other champions joined the team, including Enith Brigitha (HOL), Felipe
Munoz (MEX), Klaus Steinbach (W.GER), Peter Nocke (W.GER), Michel Rousseau (FRA), Tracey
Wickham (AUS), Joe Bottom (USA), and more recently Matt Biondi (USA) and Stephan Carron (FRA).
Another crucial step in Arena’s development was the 1978 World Swimming Championships held in
West Berlin. Most of the national teams, including the United States, Canada, West Germany, France,
Great Britain, the USSR, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, were sponsored by Arena and equipped
with Arena technical products. The athletes wearing the Arena brand on their swimming equipment won
a total of 62 medals (almost 75% of all the medals available) and set 9 new world records.
The 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow constituted a real milestone. Arena’s technological leadership
obtained another world recognition with the launch of the women’s competition swimsuit
“FLYBACK®”. This suit revolutionised all existing technical solutions and defined a new “state of the
art”. “FLYBACK®” was the first swimsuit in the world with a special opening at the shoulders, that
enabled water to flow over the swimmer’s body, while also offering unbeatable lightness.
With the credibility it earned in the world of top competition, Arena soon became associated with
technical innovation also outside the swimming pool. In 1980, with the technical sponsorship of the Duke
Khanamoku Surfing Classic in Hawaii, the celebrated Triple Crown Trophy, Arena took the opportunity
to adapt its know-how into a new water sports field. Following this further success, which went beyond
even the most optimistic expectations, the idea was born for launching the first “Beachwear” collection.
In the years between 1988 and 1991 Arena sponsored one of the most important meetings of the World
Surfing Cup, the Arena Surf Masters in Biarritz. Thanks to the experience gained from the cooperation
with the greatest surfing champions of that time, in 1989 Arena decided to launch a
“Beachwear” line, entirely dedicated to this exciting and “adrenaline-rush giving” water sport.
The major swimming competitions, however, continued to represent the main testing ground for
advanced technological experimentation. At the Seoul Olympics in 1988, Matt Biondi, member of the
ARENA DREAM TEAM, won 7 medals, 5 of which were gold, thus approaching Mark Spitz’s historical
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1972 record, which remains unbeaten to this day. Matt Biondi has always been convinced of Arena’s
technological superiority. This is why at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona he decided to race wearing
the technical products bearing the three-diamonds Arena logo.
Only a few years passed before Arena was again ready with another technological breakthrough: it
launched onto the market a range of swimsuits for top level competition which represented the natural
evolution of SKINFIT®.
This range was fully exploiting a new exclusive fabric: AQUARACER®, able to deliver an excellent glide
through the water, an outstanding fit and maximum freedom of movement. Arena AQUARACER®
represents in all ways the perfect combination of performance and comfort, by using an innovative
system of thread treatment and its elastomer components, perfected in co-operation with one of the
world leaders in the creation of highly technological fabrics.
The Arena R&D Team is never satisfied with the results achieved, in fact it is continuously
searching for tomorrow’s innovation. This is why, although Arena had a significant competitive
advantage, in 1997 it left everyone speechless with the launch of X-FLAT®, a fabric that was even
thinner, smoother and lighter than AQUARACER®, with a 25% lower weight than any other fabric
used for competition level products. The development and the fine-tuning of this exceptional fabric
turned out to be extremely complex, requiring, apart from everything else, the creation of a specific
industrial system for the calendering of the fabric, following an extremely strict quality protocol.
At the same time, the ARENA DREAM TEAM, continued to add new talented swimmers, who went
on to become historical world-class athletes, such as Alexander Popov and Franziska van Almsick,
two of the absolute stars of the swimming world of the 90s.
In 2000 Arena’s unstoppable drive to go beyond any established limit and the painstaking
development of constantly better performance, brought about a new technological record:
POWERSKIN®. It was the result of more than two years of efforts to perfect a revolutionary
technology that had never before been tried on competition swimsuits. POWERSKIN® became the
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flagship of the new generation of top level competition swimsuits, known by the name “full body”, as
they cover almost entirely the athlete’s body. 30% lighter and with 15% less water absorption
compared to other competition suits in polyamide/elastane, as well as having a water friction
coefficient close to zero, POWERSKIN® won the privilege of accompanying champions such as
Agnes Kovàcs, Domenico Fioravanti, Josè Meolans, Emiliano Brembilla, Iles Salim, Davide Rummolo,
Roman Sloudnov, Viola Valli, Eva Ristzov, Julien Sicot, Alena Popchanka, Jani Sievinen, Jere Hard and
Fabien Gilot and many emerging young talents like Lazlo Cshe, Stanislava Komarova, Filippo Magnini,
Arcady Vyatchanin, Laure Manadou, Igor Marchenko, Andrei Kapralov, Dmitri Komornikov, Paolo
Bossini, Tania Cagnotto and Malia Metella onto the podiums of the most prestigious swimming
events in Europe and World-wide.
The tune has not changed even in the last few years. Although this technological challenge has boosted
the general attention on swimming competition, therefore involving the most prestigious sports brands at
world-wide level, Arena has demonstrated to be able to maintain and even reinforce its technological
supremacy, keeping all competitors at a safe distance.
The fantastic victories of Domenico Fioravanti, the only Italian swimmer to have won 2 golds in the 100m
and 200m breaststroke at the same event (Olympic Games, Sydney 2000), Alex Popov, 8 golds between
2000 and 2004, Agnes Kovacs, 4 golds between 2000 and 2003 and Franziska van Almsick, twice world
champion and 18 times European champion, have one common denominator: Arena POWERSKIN®.
Whilst the absolute technological superiority established with POWERSKIN® seemed destined to
remain unbeatable for many years, the “Elite Team” of Arena R&D, never satisfied with the results
obtained and completely dedicated to reaching future breakthroughs (a further demonstration of how
the brand DNA matches that of its Managers), went straight back to work, once again to surprise and
beat the strongest competitors in the most important challenge of 2004: the Athens Olympics.
To create a product capable of beating POWERSKIN® and its unquestionable superior performance
attributes would be a very challenging and even risky venture for anyone, since it would require a very
high level of investment and resources, with absolutely no guarantee of a result. Arena, whilst
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theoretically being the least interested in surpassing a supremacy set by itself only a few years ago, has
again demonstrated consistency and determination in the application of one the fundamental principles of
its Mission:
“We take very seriously to identify consumers’ needs, wishes and dreams and transform this
knowledge into products which deliver outstanding quality and value to both our consumers
and business partners”.
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