2023-06-22 16:06:10
The brand that defines itself as “the French racket sports start-up” continues to grow. Indeed, Tecnifibre has doubled its turnover since its takeover by Lacoste. A dynamic that is not ready to stop, especially since Iga Świątek, world number 1, has just extended her adventure with Tecnifibre for another 4 years. Sportsmarketing.fr met Nicolas Preault, CEO of Tecnifibre.
Nicolas Preault et Iga Swiatek
Bruno Cammalleri: Can you come back to the extension for 4 more years of Iga Świątek with Tecnifibre?
Nicolas Preault : This extension is highly strategic for the Tecnifibre brand. Iga, like Daniil, we consider them not just as top players but as ambassadors. Iga Świątek is a perfect ambassador for Tecnifibre, both in terms of her level of play but also in terms of the values she carries. Like Daniil, he is someone who expresses himself, who takes positions and who always does so with humility. These are essential elements for us. Re-signing 4 years with Iga is a great adventure that continues. This happened in a very natural way: Iga immediately set the scene with her agents to say that she was completely satisfied with Tecnifibre products and that she did not want to change them.
We must also add all the support from the Tecnifibre teams, both on the products but also on the way in which we can activate our partnership: I am thinking, for example, of what we did last year for his victory at Roland Garros. where we had changed our name on social media to “Swiateknifibre”. Iga sees all the energy behind her at Tecnifibre. We brought her to the Tecnifibre headquarters just before Roland Garros and she won over all of our employees. It is important to bring this type of experience to the Tecnifibre teams internally.
Bruno Cammalleri: Iga Świątek has been under contract with Tecnifibre since 2021. How was this contract initiated at the very beginning?
Nicolas Preault : This contract is the result of a fairly standard operation with us. Iga had been playing with our racquets from a very young age. She then went to another brand, she was a little losing momentum and wanted to change equipment. She approached us through her coach. When a new athlete wants to join us, we start working internally and we have to validate the material part. We make our know-how available, in particular via our Tecnilab which is a tool allowing players’ feelings to be transferred into scientific data in order to help the player to make the best possible choices. The player is really at the center of our system and we invest a lot of time in getting to know the player in question. Identify your needs first and then develop the right products. Once the material was validated, we sat down around a table to work on the marketing project. Then it went very quickly with his agent for the negotiation of the contract. Everything went smoothly with Iga!
Bruno Cammalleri: Where is your collaboration with Daniil Medvedev?
Nicolas Preault : It’s really a love story with Daniil who is very close to the brand. Daniil was 329th at ATP when he joined us. The spotlight was not then on him as it is today. Right from the start, when he signed with us, we gave him a $50,000 scholarship following a Tecnifibre challenge that he won. This allowed him to finance his first season. Daniil is a very intelligent person who has a good memory and I think he always has that in mind. We took him to different training camps with other young players where they were able to share their experience. We therefore accompany our players to the highest level. Once they reach it, we rather enter into a form of collaboration where we will build a partnership with true ambassadors. We are working on products, visibility, transmission for young people and sharing with our internal teams.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m very close to Daniil and we communicate a lot together. He made an incredible start to the 2023 season! He is an immense champion who has been able to revive after a more delicate 2022 season. He relaunched himself by making changes, especially in his equipment. A tennis player usually has a very strong relationship with their tennis racket and string. On our side, we were in the process of finalizing a brand new string called the Razor code. We proposed it to Daniil at the end of 2022. Daniil has this ability to take risks and make small changes to achieve even higher performance. He used this string there in 2023 from the Rotterdam tournament. He has chained 6 finals since and he went from 12th place in the ATP ranking to 2nd.
Bruno Cammalleri: What are the other names of the Tecnifibre team to keep in mind?
Nicolas Preault : Beyond the most visible ones, world number one Iga Świątek and world number two Daniil Medvedev, we are ready for tomorrow. In U18 we have two very young talents who are Alexander Blockx, who is a 17 year old Belgian world number 1 in his age category, and Rodrigo Pacheco Mendez, Mexican, world number 3. Blockx won the Australian Open in the junior category earlier this year. These two young talents should explode at the ATP level in the coming months.
For the day after tomorrow, we continue to invest for the future and we still have our Les Petits Crocos program with Lacoste. We certainly have the best U14 team in the world with 10 handpicked players and 8 different nationalities. We will accompany these very young players to the highest level. By the way, for example, Rodrigo Pacheco Mendez comes from Les Petits Crocos. We also benefit from good visibility thanks to local heroes like Tallon Griekspoor who has just won the ATP 250 tournament in Hertogenbosch (Netherlands) at home.
Bruno Cammalleri: And on the French side?
Nicolas Preault : Corentin Moutet, who wanted to boost his level of performance, has just joined us. He has a wrist injury and decided to play with a very innovative Tecnifibre racquet called the TF-X1. It’s a very powerful racket, but it also limits vibrations thanks to X-Damp which is a proprietary innovation at Tecnifibre which reduces harmful vibrations by 36% for less fatigue and more comfort. We also have with us Arthur Rinderknech, Grégoire Barrère and Constant Lestienne. We have many French players who allow us to be very present in our domestic market.
Bruno Cammalleri: Two years ago you told us that Lacoste entrusted Tecnifibre with its specialized worldwide tennis & golf distribution from the spring/summer 2022 collection. Where are you in your synergies with Lacoste?
Nicolas Preault : We have made very strong progress whether in tennis or golf, and these are double-digit increases. We continue to work with the Lacoste teams on product, athlete and event synergies. We are also thanks to Lacoste partner of the ATP Master 1000 in Miami. Sport is part of Lacoste’s DNA. This is why the Lacoste group acquired Tecnifibre at the end of 2017. Today it makes even more sense than yesterday that Tecnifibre is part of the system and works on the sport-performance expertise side with the Lacoste teams.
Bruno Cammalleri: Tecnifibre celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019. What are you preparing for your 45th anniversary in 2024?
Nicolas Preault : We started to work on the subject because we like to celebrate! There may well be a party in the course of the year 2024 to celebrate our 45 years but also all that we have accomplished. For example, we have doubled our turnover over the last five years, which is still considerable. We are really in start-up mode! We often define ourselves as the French racket sports start-up. If our turnover is increasing, we are also progressing internally by continually integrating new employees, almost every month, with people who have very high profiles. In 2024, we will take the time to celebrate it all. We will also project ourselves over the next five years.
Bruno Cammalleri: Regarding your progress in recent years, what are the figures to remember?
Nicolas Preault : When we were taken over by Lacoste we had a turnover of around 22 million euros. In 2022, we ended the year with 45.7 million in turnover. The turnover has therefore been multiplied by two. And we made +60% compared to 2021. The year 2022 was very strong. This year, despite the fact that the market is more complicated with a lot of stocks and less consumption, we are continuing our progress since we are at + 50% over the first five months of 2023 compared to an exceptional year that was 2022. Our objective is to double the turnover over the next three years. We do more than 80% of our turnover outside the French market. We are truly a global brand present in 80 countries and we are growing in double digits all over the world.
Bruno Cammalleri: And on the internal part?
Nicolas Preault : On the internal part, we are a small but very compact team with an organization in operational mode and 8 different nationalities. Our employees share the same values as us, which revolve around the values of competition to always seek the best, to do so with great humility and determination. Each subject is led by a leader. This leader is not necessarily the one who has the highest hierarchical level but it is the one who has the highest level of skills. 20% of our teams globally started as an intern with us. 55% of our teams have already been promoted at least once in our organization. We really trust young people. I gladly cite the example of Matthieu Bauduin who is our global marketing director: he is a very good tennis player, he studied at HEC and worked at McKinsey. He is only 27 years old and he joined us to work on strategic topics, including the redesign of our brand platform.
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