Jako (Unternehmen)

JAKO AG
Legal form	Incorporated
Foundation	1.November 1989
Seat	Hollenbach, Germany Germany
Management	Nadine Sprügel (Chairwoman of the Board)
Number of employees	280 (Group, annual average 2021)[1]
Sales	110 million euros (Group, 2019)[1]
Industry	Sporting Goods
Website	www.jako.de

The JAKO Teamcenter, the company headquarters in Hollenbach built in 2016

Former logo

Jako AG (spelled JAKO), based in Hollenbach, a district of the municipality of Mulfingen in the Hohenlohekreis region of Baden-Württemberg, is a German manufacturer of team sportswear.

The company is named after the location of Jako’s founding town of Stachenhausen, between the rivers Jagst and Kocher.

History

The Jako company was founded on 1 November 1989 in a Stachenhausen garage by Rudi Sprügel. The aim of the company was to equip all football clubs between the rivers Jagst and Kocher, which give the company its name.^[2] The idea came to Sprügel, who himself had worked in a sports shop, because he had noticed the lack of service and the long delivery times of larger brands.^[3]

Jako did much better business at the start of its operations than Sprügel had anticipated. In the first year, his company exceeded its planned turnover by 300%.^[3] Further years of strong growth followed, and by 1994 the company was already turning over double-digit millions.^[3] Just in time for its tenth birthday, the company was able to announce its first major sponsoring success: SC Freiburg started wearing Jako jerseys – the first club to do so in Germany’s top football league.^[3] In 2014, Jako was the partner of more than 100,000 amateur and professional clubs in various sports.^[4] Since 2008, a blue logo with two bars has stood for the brand, its elements symbolizing the rivers Jagst and Kocher.^[5]

In April 2016 a new logistics and administration centre was under construction.^[3] With Bayer Leverkusen, a top team in the Bundesliga and regular participant in international competitions wore Jako clothing for the first time from summer 2016. The newspaper Handelsblatt ran the headline: “JAKO – from the middle class to the Champions League”.^[6] In 2018, JAKO achieved 100 million euros in annual sales for the first time.^[7] Since the 2019/20 season, the company has also been outfitting VfB Stuttgart.^[8]

Philosophy

Jako sees itself as a specialist for team sports equipment, which is why the company chose “We are Team” as its brand claim in 2015.^[9] Today Jako offers more than 300 articles and more than 30,000 possible variants of sportswear.

Social commitment plays a major role at Jako.^[10] The company is a member of amfori^[11] and in the Alliance for Sustainable Textiles.^[12] Within this framework, JAKO works together with other companies, associations and political organisations to improve social and ecological standards in textile production. Through an in-house solar plant, the company produces more green energy than it needs for its own needs.^[13]

Business activity

The company produces team and sports clothing. More recently, Jako has expanded its product range to include the Jako-Premium leisure collection.

Products

The focus in Jako’s product range is on the sport of football. The company sells collections divided into several so-called team lines, consisting of tracksuits, hooded jackets, T-shirts and other functional training clothing. The range also includes hard goods such as glued, hand-sewn and machine-sewn balls, goalkeeper gloves and shin guards. Among other things, Jako produces the official match balls of the English National League.^[14] In the indoor collection, Jako brings together team sports equipment for handball, volleyball and basketball. A running collection completes the equipment for training and competition. The design element Jako-Dots has been characteristic of Jako products since 2014; the dots are intended to ensure recognition in conjunction with the brand logo.^[15] The smaller part of the product range is made up of sports leisurewear. Under the collection name Basic, Jako produces T-shirts, polo shirts and jackets for everyday use away from the sports field.

Sponsoring

SC Freiburg, Bundesliga, 1999

Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Champions Leauge, 2016

The company is an outfitter of some well-known teams of different sports. The table shows a selection of the different sponsoring activities sorted by country, sport, club and sponsoring period. The list is probably not complete.^[16][17]

Country	Sport	Association	Sponsorship time
Germany Germany	Soccer	VfB Stuttgart	as of 2019
Germany Germany	Soccer	Bayer 04 Leverkusen	as of 2016
Germany Germany	Soccer	FC Würzburg Kickers	from 2017
Germany Germany	Soccer	SC Preußen Münster	as of 2019
Germany Germany	Soccer	FC Energie Cottbus	from 2017
Germany Germany	Soccer	1. FFC Turbine Potsdam	as of 2005
Germany Germany	Soccer	Red-White Essen	from 2017
Switzerland Switzerland	Soccer	FC St. Gallen	as of 2011
Russia Russia	Soccer	Ruby Kazan	as of 2018
Netherlands Netherlands	Soccer	SC Heerenveen	as of 2008
Belgium Belgium	Soccer	Royal Antwerp FC	as of 2016
Austria Austria	Soccer	SCR Cashpoint Altach	as of 2007
Belarus Belarus	Soccer	Shakhtyor Soligorsk	as of 2016
Moldova Republic Moldova	Soccer	National team Moldova	as of 2016
North Macedonia North Macedonia	Soccer	National team North Macedonia	as of 2014
Germany Germany	Hockey	Augsburg Panthers	as of 2014
Germany Germany	Soccer	FC Augsburg	2010–2014
Germany Germany	Soccer	Eintracht Brunswick	2002–2007
Germany Germany	Soccer	SV Darmstadt 98	2015–2018
Germany Germany	Soccer	Dynamo Dresden	2008–2011
Germany Germany	Soccer	SC Freiburg	1999–2009
Germany Germany	Soccer	Eintracht Frankfurt	2003–2014
Germany Germany	Soccer	Hanover 96	2015–2019
Germany Germany	Soccer	Karlsruhe SC	2015–2019
Germany Germany	Soccer	Greuther Fürth	2007–2013

Awards

The sporting goods manufacturer was awarded on the basis of various achievements.

In 2014 Jako received the “Hidden Champion Award” in silver, presented by the TV station n-tv. The jury stated: “Jako (…) is pursuing continuous and healthy growth. But not only the brand management is convincing, also the social commitment is part of the corporate philosophy.”^[18]

JAKO is known in the market for its partnership attitude towards specialist dealers. This is evidenced by several awards from the trade press. In 2014, 2016 and 2018, German specialist sports retailers voted the company into first place in the “Leistungsspiegel” (performance mirror) of the specialist trade magazine “markt intern”.^[19] The specialist sports retailers awarded the marks in various categories such as design, support and delivery capability. In the comparable ranking “Die Besten” (“The Best”) by the specialist retail magazine SAZ, JAKO also took first place in 2020, ahead of all other brands from the team sports industry.^[20]

Media presence

In the fall of 2009, Jako attracted media attention. Jako had issued a warning to a blogger who made derogatory comments about a new logo. Subsequently, Jako demanded payment of a penalty after the offending text was reproduced by a news aggregator.^[21][22] Following public criticism mainly in online media and the blogosphere, Jako waived financial claims against the blogger.^[23] During a visit of the blogger in Hollenbach, the company and the blogger closed the case.^[24] The weblog “Netzpolitik.org” wrote in a review at the end of 2009: “Rudi Sprügel regretted that the ‘dispute had built up so unnecessarily’. It was unfortunate not to react immediately to the inquiries of bloggers and journalists: ‘After all, we have nothing to hide'”.^[25]

Pollutants

On 6 November 2009, Stiftung Warentest examined football fan jerseys, including the jerseys of the Bundesliga football team Eintracht Frankfurt, which was equipped by Jako. Stiftung Warentest had found softeners in the foamed sponsor imprint on the red and black home jerseys for the 2009/2010 season, which are permitted for textiles but banned for toys in the EU. Due to this high level of harmful substances, the jerseys were rated “unsatisfactory” and therefore^[26] and were therefore withdrawn from sale by Eintracht Frankfurt at short notice.^[27] As only children’s jerseys were assessed in the test, the testers pointed out that in their opinion the use of phthalates (softeners) should also be prevented on these. The jersey was otherwise completely harmless and received the grade “very good (0.5-1.5)” in all other tests relevant to harmful substances.^[28]

Literature

• Heike Faller: The men’s outfitter. How the small company Jako near Würzburg became one of the largest manufacturers of football jerseys in Germany – without advertising, without an image, without a slogan. In: Die Zeit. No. 31, 2001 (zeit.de).

Web links

• Official website of Jako AG

Individual references

49.37699.81032Coordinates 49° 22′ 36.8″ N, 9° 48′ 37.2″ E