On the Market: Tahe Outdoors' Determination in the World of Sports

On the Market: Tahe Outdoors’ Determination in the World of Sports

okt. 30, 2020 Estonian Life No. 44 2020

At the beginning of 2019, Strategeast reported that Estonian watersports equipment company Tahe Outdoors had acquired Bic Sport for six to nine million Euros. Bic Sport, based in France, had gotten into board, sail, and paddle sports in 1979 as part of a licensing deal between Hoyle Schweitzer of Windsurfing International and the companies Tabur Marine and Dufour Wing. Their windsurf products were popular during some of the biggest races and championships of the 80s, when, as Bic Sport suggests, “the windsurf market was 10 times the size it is now!” The company was also a sponsor in the cycling world.

Though Bic consistently vouched for their passion for sports as a company, this recent move has shifted their attention to the consumer products more commonly-associated with their brand: shaving implements, pens, and lighters.

A year on from the acquisition, it's a major shift for Tahe Outdoors, for which Tahe means “volition”, or as Tahe Outdoors states, “willpower” or “the power of the mind.” Indeed, Tahe Outdoors has the power of mind and will to bring European manufactured and designed sporting goods to the whole world. The purchase of Bic Sport is not the first of its kind for Tahe Outdoors, which was founded in 1989.

Written by Vincent Teetsov, Toronto