Hummel tumult in Spain reaches first division
05/07/2013
At the end of May, Hummel responded to questions about confusion over its distribution arrangements in Spain, where two local companies are claiming the rights to distribute Hummel products. Professional basketball and football teams have received threats of legal action from a company in Seville for negotiating new Hummel contracts with a distributor in Barcelona.
“The situation in Spain is very clear,” area manager, Henning Svenning told sportstextiles at the time, “even though our previous partner and former distributor [the company in Seville] is trying to create noise in the marketplace.”
He said Hummel had terminated its agreement with the company in Seville. “They did not live up to our agreement on several issues and we had no other option but to terminate,” he said. “We have a new agreement in place, led by José García Alcaraz. We are very happy with this new partnership and are sad about the turmoil created by our previous partner. We are obviously taking the necessary legal steps to stop their activities.”
However, when, at the end of June, first division football club Real Valladolid announced that its players would wear a new kit from Hummel for the new season, formal complaints arrived from Sergio Parra, the former distributor in Seville, within days.
Real Valladolid, which finished fourteenth in the Spanish first division last season, has said it wants to keep out of the Hummel dispute, but it went ahead with a formal unveiling ceremony of the new shirts, based on the club’s distinctive violet-and-white colours, on July 4.
Mr Parra has told local newspaper El Norte de Castilla: “This is absolutely clear. A contract can’t be broken unless both parties agree or unless a court reaches a decision on it, and that’s not the situation here at the moment. We intend to take Real Valladolid to court for using unauthorised equipment because we know for a fact that we produced the warm-up kit that Hummel has now given the club. This is going to give the club a huge headache next season, and the worst of it is, they knew it would because I warned them.”
The club’s operations director, Jorge Santiago, said Real Valladolid had simply followed the instructions it had received from Hummel’s head office in Denmark.
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