Pentland Group — the parent company to Speedo International Ltd. — has purchased Speedo North America from PVH, which is also the parent company to brands including clothing giant Calvin Klein.
Pentland bought the brand from PVH for $170 million cash, PVH announced. The transaction is expected to close in April and all current Speedo North America employees will continue their roles under Pentland, according to a release.
“This is an exciting and positive time for the brand, as this strategic business decision will reunite Speedo business globally under Pentland. We are confident team is best positioned to capture the full potential of the iconic brand and its influence,” PVH president of Heritage Brands Sportswear & Speedo USA Geoff Barrett said. “A global Speedo brand will be an undisputable leader in this industry in an especially exciting year with the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.”
Speedo International has operations in Australia, China, Japan, Korea, France, Italy, Israel, Poland and the U.S, according to Bloomberg. This sale appears to unite the national brands under one umbrella.
PVH was previously paying a $1 million annual licensing fee, in perpetuity, to Speedo International Limited for the use of the Speedo brand in North American and the Caribbean. UK-based Pentland owns the rights to an additional slew of major brands including Lacoste, Canterbury and Berghaus.
Once dominant in the competitive swimwear space with its innovative Fastskin and LZR Racer suits, Speedo has recently faced competition from TYR and Arena (the latter especially internationally), as well as up-and-coming brands. Speedo has also pushed into the leisurewear space, launching fashion swimwear and activewear lines.
Current Speedo athlete reps include Caeleb Dressel, Ryan Murphy, Nathan Adrian, Kathleen Baker, Hali Flickinger, Becca Meyers, Kevin Cordes Missy Franklin, Mack Horton, Pernille Blume, Jaz Carlin, and others.
Speedo International and Speedo USA are both SwimSwam partners.
Pvh was killing all of the local dealers- good move
Even if some North American management remains, to have these American athlete reps swimming for a company now 100% Australian-backed is dystopian, like a bad Mad Max movie.
Pentland is a UK conglomerate, based out of London.
Do you happen to know if the US athletes were sponsored by the North American PVH or by the Pentland Group?
The big ones as far as I know are sponsored by Speedo North America.
Most were speedo North America but could also model/get deals easily with pvh’s other holdings
Pentland’s British.
We’ll stop owning your swimmers when you stop owning our nukes.
I’m thinking some of these American swimmers might want to pull a Speedexit given that they are now under Brit control.
I’m not a nationalist by any stretch, but if I am hoping that my kid will swim for Team USA some day, it’s hard for me to justify spending hundred of dollars for a racing suit profiting a UK conglomerate, when there are fine (probably faster, from what I am hearing) suits made by a company or companies based in the USA who design and manufacture their products in the USA.
I don’t believe any of the major competition suits are manufactured in the United States
And you would be wrong. TYR.
https://www.tyr.com/tyr-sport-unleashes-new-american-manufactured-tech-suit/
Really ? Would it really be that bad ?
Hopefully now they can come up with a good suit and not just redesigns of the 2010 LZR jammer
You mean the kind of suit people can win Olympic Medals and break world records in?…….
Erik, if you’re crediting those results to a swim suit I’d strongly recommend you to think again.
Don’t offend athletes and coaches like that.
I might be contradicting myself here… but anyways:
1 – it’s just a suit, if you don’t do the work it won’t swim by itself
2 – Speedo suits have been sucking for a long time, ask around at a World Champs pool deck
My team signed a deal with speedo that we can’t wear any other brand but speedo. Rip my mizunos 😭
Gotta get me some Speedo leisurewear, then hit the clubs.
speedo buys speedo to create a speedo monopoly
The unification makes sense. Now why can’t all those Ray’s Pizza shops in NYC unite – Ray’s Pizza, Original Ray’s Pizza, Famous Original Ray’s Pizza, Famous Ray’s Pizza, Ray’s Original Pizza…
Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s? 🙂
Checkers and Rally’s?!
Everybody loves Rays .
The real Original Rays was on 6th Ave and 11st. The rest are all fakes.
According to Wikipedia, the one on 11th st was cited as the first Rays Pizza by Santa Claus in the movie Elf, but then claims that the first Rays Pizza was on 27 Prince Street in Little Italy.