The 1980s: The Sporting Goods Industry

317 Words2 Pages
The sporting goods industry has a long history from the mid- 1800s until the early 1980s. Since then public ownership led to the expansion of footwear and apparel products in an exploding marketplace. This allowed the top 20 firms to have sales of at least $1 billion. (Lipsey, 2006) After 1980s, sports equipment manufacturing is estimated above a $70 billion industry and is continuously growing worldwide (statista.com, 2014). The production of sports equipment is one of the biggest and most profitable industries nowadays and it gathers all the attention of big brands with powerful marketing techniques which compete in global scale. According to Lipsey (2006), after 1980s the top brands started losing market share and the reason was not the