Six weeks after their break up, Germany’s Gibbon Slacklines and its U.S. distributor are racing to sign up dealers and athletes.
Canaima Outdoors split with Gibbon Aug. 1 and launched its own competing Slackline Industries (SI) brand at the Outdoor Retailer show a week later. The break left Gibbon – the best known slacklining brand in the world – with no sales, marketing or customer service team in the United States.
SI has since recruited a half dozen elite slackliners to its team and garnered more than 32,000 likes on its Facebook page, where its posting photos of the brightly colored slacklines it will begin shipping this fall. On Sept. 15, Canaima announced it will also begin distributing slacklining kits made by Yogaslackers, which has pioneered the development and teaching of yoga slacking through films and workshops held all over the world. The agreement frees up Yogaslackers instructors to focus on teaching, while allowing Canaima to live up to its pledge to support all facets of the slacklining.
Canaima expects to begin shipping Yogaslackers inch-wide eLine and SI’s first kits using 2-inch webbing this fall.
“Our team has been exclusively responsible for developing (Gibbon’s) brand equity here and every member of that team is still 100 percent present,” said SI President Derick Cole, who ran Gibbon Slacklines North America for all six years of its existence. “We have gone through the learning curve and now we are putting what weve learned into SI going forward.”
Gibbon, meanwhile, is in the process of forming a U.S. subsidiary, according to Robert Kaeding, CEO of Gibbon’s parent company ID Sports GmbH of Stuttgart, Germany.
“We will soon be available again for our dealers and partners to work with us directly, without the constraints we had with our previous partner,” Kaeding told The B.O.S.S. Report via email Tuesday. “We have already confirmed our continued business with REI, to date the biggest trade account retailing Gibbon Slacklines in the USA, and will set up our business and logistics infrastructure by end of the year to service the market. Most of the current retailers have already contacted us and will continue with us once we re-launch.
Gibbon traces slacklining back to the mid-1980s when American rock climbers began balancing on webbing they strapped between trees to pass the time in places like Yosemite Valley. They eventually discovered it was a great way to improve their core strength and balance. Gibbon was founded to commercialize the activity in 2007. It founded the World Slacklining Federation and developed events all over Europe and the world and has since emerged as the dominant global brand. Today, the brand sponsors teams in Brazil, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Germany, Poland and The Netherlands.
In June, the Globetrotter Slackline World Cup 2014 by Gibbon drew athletes to Munich from Brazil, the United States and across Europe. Among them was American Andy Lewis, a world champion trickliner and Gibbon athlete who may have done more to boost awareness of the sport than years of grassroots marketing when he slacklined behind Madonna during her half time show at Super Bowl XLVI in 2012.
Canaima used the same tactics in North America and is now using them to build the SI brand. It has already signed six athletes to its Elite Team, including Felix Carriera, who won the Globetrotter Slackline World Cup this summer. SI has inherited all event sponsorship Canaima had arranged for Gibbon over the last six years, including title sponsorship of the slacklining competition at the GoPro Mountain Games, Cole said.
“We have moved away from constraints of dealing with foreign-owned company,” he said. “It was a business decision we elected to make to drive the industry forward.”
At Outdoor Retailer, Canaima CEO Ricardo Bottome said Canaima will increase its investment in slacklining so that SI can add more community partnerships, work with local governments to develop new parks, support college clubs, schools, gyms and training centers.
“Our goals include a new hub for research and information into new products and the health benefits of Slacklining,” Bottome said in early August. “It is a privilege to be at start of a new era with this dynamic sport.”
Growth will also come from promoting slacklining as a training tool not only for yoga, but for other niches such as cross fit and even skiing. This summer, Canaima brought Olympic Superpipe Gold Medalist Dave Wise to the GoPro Mountain Games to demonstrate how he used Gibbon slacklines to train. Cole said SI is now collaborating with Wise on products and promotions that could hit the market next year.
While Gibbon will continue to sponsor U.S. athletes like Lewis and Alex Mason and launch its own fitness line next year, brand will also continue to position slacklining as part of a lifestyle as well as a sport.
“A reactionary market approach is not our style and led to difficulties in the past,” said Kaeding. “The current feedback from the US Gibbon community is to organize and create more fun gatherings and events for the entire community. We are a global community brand which has set its goal to do what todays society is looking for: meeting friends over the globalized social web and using an activity like slacklining to combine adventure and the opportunity to meet new friends, and socialize.”
