The phoenix is a « French Rooster »

Le coq sportif was created within a family business in 1929 by the founder’s son Emile Camuset.

Le coq sportif is a French brand who was the main competitor of Adidas back in the 50’ to 70’ and then acquired by this same competitor for the quality of its textile products and it’s financial situation.

Tour de France 1951

Le coq sportif has known a worldwide expansion and reputation due to some important innovations and sponsoring in sports. In fact the worldwide known tracksuit has been created by this company in 1939 in France. The innovation that gave them an international visibility was the invention of the first cycling jersey shirt for bicycling competitors. In 1951 thanks to this textile innovation the “Tour de France” board decided to make this brand the official shirt supplier of this worldwide known competition.

After this international visibility Le coq sportif desires to develop their brand image to lead it to the “champions brand” (“la marque des champions”). In order to fulfil this ambition a large sponsoring campaign begins. The brand sponsored well known French athletes, like Michel platini but also sports teams and events. With this sponsoring strategy the brand image got well known because of its athletes sponsoring strategy and the winning of world cups, Olympic medals and ATP tournaments.
Finally an innovation which positioned the brand as “The” sports brand was the very first tv sports advertisement ever seen.

After this golden age the brand and company did a strategic mistake which led to its acquisition by Adidas. In fact, the company decided to gather all its production sites on the same location in Romilly, in France but during a period of high competition where competitors were proceeding massive delocalisation which had been disastrous for the Le coq sportif’s margins and led to its bankruptcy. Thanks’ to this acquisition by Adidas the brand has been well promoted and developed by its competitor by following the same strategy but with higher budget.

Maradona, World cup, 1986

Adidas increased the worldwide visibility of Le coq sportif by sponsoring in 1983 the French Roland Garos winner, Yannick Noah and also the Italian and Argentinian football teams world cup winners in 1982 and 1986. The brand had a very popular image since it was sponsoring the biggest teams at the time but also amateur teams. As David Pécard, actual technical director of the brand explains in the Capital  “the brand was dedicating as much attention for the Avignon’s football team jersey than for Maradona’s“. In the early 90’ Le coq sportif and Adidas had a hard time with the European market penetration of Nike since this new competitor had already delocalised all its production facilities in Asia. Adidas was struggling to compete against Nike and left out the French brand. Adidas closes the historical French production site in Romilly and sold the brand rights to different investors in different continents which most of all focused on printing the rooster’s logo on low quality textile. The brand was definitely and entirely sold to the American Brown Shœ in 1995. Since this session the brand has been bought and resold to many investors and tried in 2000 to re-launch itself with a vintage brand image but it failed due to a lack of solid strategy. From this point the brand was buried and nobody thought it could recover from its disastrous background.

Yannick Noah, 1983

Miraculously in 2005 a Swiss investment fund with a famous businessman, Robert Louis Dreyfus decided to acquire the brand. These investors made a simple observation: how come such a famous brand with a strong brand image and reputation could have this weak turnover. They took the bet to relaunch it by focusing on the historical aspects and reputation of Le coq sportif. In fact they called back their old ambassadors as Yannick Noah and other famous sportsmen. They did not only focus on the old ones and asked actual sports personalities to endorse the brands colours as Sebastien Loeb (pilot).

Saint-Étienne Jersey, 2016

This very effective communication campaign permitted the reborn of Le coq sportif.

In 2016, to support this strategy the brand chose to focus on the historical popular brand image by sponsoring the famous French football team, “Saint Etienne” and their mythic green Jersey and also the Italian team “Fiorentina”. The next step that Le coq sportif wants to make is consolidating the brand image by pushing the French made characteristic even if only 7% of its products are manufactured in France. This positioning is complicated due to the labour international costs competition but it is on-going and working since the brand mainly buys its raw materials in France.

Le Coq Sportif réédite deux maillots emblématiques de l’ASSE, Mathis Pivette, 11/17/16

Le Coq sportif : un cador revient dans l'arène, Capital, 07/02/15

http://www.lecoqsportif.com