Sports equipment makers on a sticky wicket

Just when sports equipment manufacturers had begun to breathe a little easy following the end of a lengthy nation-wide lockdown due to Covid-19 pandemic, the rising number of infections across the country in the last couple of weeks has left them staring at a bleak future.

Be it indoor sports or outdoor, the situation across disciplines is grim. And cricket equipment producing companies have obviously borne most of the brunt given their market share for sports kits in the country.

Standford (SF), manufacturers of cricket equipment, are finding it difficult to survive. “Ever since Covid-19, there has been little business in India. Overall, our company has witnessed five per cent sales,” says managing director Anil Sareen.

Iconic bat manufacturers, BDM (BD Mahajan & Sons), too, have suffered massively.

"In India, most of the big academies are located in cities, which are the worst hit by Covid-19," says company's director Rakesh Mahajan. "There have been no orders from places like Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Smaller districts are getting back to normalcy. They have shown some demand but it’s too less in the overall scheme of things,” he rues.

The various restrictions enforced to prevent the spread of the virus has affected their production as well.

“Our materials for English willow bats come from England. We get the cane handles for bats from Singapore and Malaysia. For the cricket ball, we buy cork from Portugal. With shipment banned in the last two and a half months, we failed to get these required materials. Now, export restrictions have been lifted. So there is some hope," says Mahajan.

SF has struggled to cope with the reduced workforce. "In our plant in Meerut, we are allowed to use just 40 percent of our workers as per government guidelines. This has hampered our production as well," points out Sareen.

India's official cricket ball producers Sanspareils Greenlands (SG) incurred losses to the tune of Rs 50 crore in the first two months after lockdown. "This has been a tough phase for everybody in the world, so I really can't say I have had it worse," says Paras Anand of the SG. "But if you want numbers, we have lost over Rs 50 crore in two months or so. Usually, the month of March is when we make the biggest profits because of coaching camps during school vacations. That hasn't happened this year."

Hoping on export

SF now hope to survive on some export business. “South Africa, New Zealand and Australia have recovered well from the pandemic. We sell our products to those countries as well. For now, we are preparing equipment to export to those countries,” says Sareen.

While the sales did pick up in badminton and tennis after the relaxation of the lockdown, the numbers make for sombre reading. Both Yonex and Li-Ning had no sales in the months of April and May but have been slowly improving.

"The sales dropped between 75-80 percent. Even that 20-25 percent only started happening after May," said Rahul Saraf, category head of tennis in Yonex-Sunrise. "Tennis customer profiles are affluent so a lot of the sale is online and lots also come via the academy where the customers train."

However, Saraf, who confirmed that no jobs have been cut, is happy with the numbers taking into account that Maharashtra, Delhi and Chennai - India's major tennis hubs - are still closed and the sales are largely from Karnataka.

Meanwhile, for Li-Ning too, it's been a hard slog. Their sales are between 30-40% of what it used to be post lockdown and Shreyas Nagaraj, who owns the Li-Ning superstore in the city, is looking to adapt with the times and focus on online push, a reality all sports have accepted.

One of India’s leading manufacturers of table tennis accessories, Metco Sports Infra Private Ltd, based in Meerut, are finding it hard to sell existing stock made just before the lockdown, let alone produce new ones.

Accepting reality

Aayush Mahajan, managing director of Metco, says his company has made peace with the fact that the situation will remain the same till the end of this year.

“A table tennis table costs Rs 25000. Earlier, those who played the game for a hobby would at least think of investing in it. But now due to the pandemic, middle-class families don’t want to spend so much on luxury. Right now, government projects and government tenders are closed. We are indirectly hit by that,” explains Aayush.

GKI, another popular manufacturer of table tennis equipment in Meerut, has managed just 10 per cent sale of their products since June 1. Due to low demand, the company is manufacturing just eight per cent of their total capacity.

The situation is no better when it comes to football, whose manufacturers too have taken a big hit and with the academies and schools not reopening, they have seen no improvement.

"Sales now is just about 30% of what it used to be. It went up a lot when the lockdown was over but again, it's slowly going down," said Rupinder Singh, business development in Nivia, the official ball partners of the Indian Super League.

The reasons are many. The academies and NGOs who used their product consistently are no longer buying. While the former is closed, for the NGOs the priority is ensuring food and hence sport has taken a backseat.

There have been no takers for hockey sticks too and makers are looking at downsizing their business targets.

"Yes, it has been a very difficult time for us. There has been zero sporting activity, especially hockey, and our sales have completely nosedived," says Sabish Oberoi, CEO of Cameo Sports Agencies Pvt Ltd, makers of Flash hockey sticks. "The bulk of our sales is from elite equipment because we are among the handful of manufacturers in the country who make composite sticks, used by all national and international players. With no events happening and nothing lined up, it's very grim. I would not like to present numbers. We are also aware sales will be poor this year, so we are scaling down on production and cutting costs to make ends meet."

(Contributed by Vivek M V, Sandeep Menon, Roshan Thyagarajan, Sidney Kiran)