Sports brand turns away work worth millions
27/04/2009
Media in Australia have reported that a tender exercise to decide the next shirt manufacturer for the country’s rugby unino team is certain to result in a contract win for local sports brand KooGa.
Newspapers alleged that the Australian Rugby Union had already decided to go with Queensland-based KooGa and was already working on design changes to the famous gold shirts.
No official announcement is likely before August when the contract with existing supplier, Canterbury of New Zealand, expires.
KooGa director Tyron Brant said nothing when the local media asked him for a comment on the national team deal, but he said his company was already turning away millions of dollars worth of business because it cannot meet demand.
He said the company was preparing to ask the local authorities to provide funding to help it expand.
“We’d like to move to a 5,000 square-metre site—our current premises is 2,000 square-metres— but a lot of our funds are tied up in working capital,” Mr Brant explained. “We’ve started from basically nothing. A few years ago we were working out of a backyard garage, but our growth has been phenomenal. Not a lot of people know what we do; it's fair to say we’ve flown under the radar for quite some time.”
Established in 2000, KooGa supplied kit to three teams at the 2007 Rugby World Cup: the US, Fiji and Tonga.
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