Adidas to discontinue table tennis products

TurboZ · Jul 29, 2015

I plan to buy at least one good setup from each brand and Adidas is my next target. Oh well one less to go.

NextLevel · Jul 29, 2015

AliciaMayson1985 said:
Well that's sad that the company is leaving TT . But actually, given Adidas' financial health http://www.bizdb.co.uk/company/adidas-uk-limited-01075951/ it is still very surprising the company manages to function at all. I have never played with Adidas blades, mostly given the fact they are overpriced. Maybe that's the problem? Too much overpriced equpiment, not really anything to choose from for noobies (myself included) or just mid-range customers... Wonder if the same will happen in other areas Adidas is involved in.

Well, they just said that they were not going to rebid on the contract to make and market NBA jerseys. That's a profitable contract so it just means they knew that they didn't have the money to afford the bidding war that would take place.

htfu · Jul 29, 2015

this sounds a lot like what nike did when they got into snowboarding. they made some decent kit, hired a lot of pro riders and then this year released the catalogue and said "that's it, we're out of this", along with getting rid of all of the staff they hired and the pro riders in their team.

the official reason was that they wanted to focus on their skateboarding line. i've got no insider knowledge, but it seems like they just couldn't run things the way they wanted to with other sports and sports outlets.

similarities between adidas in tt and nike in snowboarding? could be ...

raazzz · Jul 30, 2015

Really sad news even though I wasn't a big fan of their products. I guess it wasn't as easy to compete with the Big TT brands as they thought it would be.

sebas-aguirre · Jul 30, 2015

I think it's good that they left tt as a company.

who would want tt a mainstream huge sport?
to me part of the attractive is having to watch counterfeit videos in youtube of matches, not being able to get the products and having to import them from hong kong.

walk around with a joola tracksuit and nobody will recognize the brand.
if someone does they will immediately recognize you play tt and will hug you immediately.
walk around with an adidas tracksuit and nobody cares.

as for the products themselves, I don't think they offered anything much different from other brands.
their blades were the typical 5ply 7ply, hinoki carbon, etc.
same thing as all brands with different name
their rubbers were just tensors and all tensors are quite similar.

HappySpinner · Jul 30, 2015

Not really giving much care on this but after finding out recently that theyve been in tt business since 1958 specializing on tt shoes made me a bit sad... But theres a new beginning in every ending, I am really wishing that Under Armour will venture to the industry, would not think twice to waste my money on their tt apparels if ever such will exist.

Sent from my MI PAD using Tapatalk

Kaizoku · Jul 30, 2015

sebas-aguirre said:
I think it's good that they left tt as a company.

who would want tt a mainstream huge sport?
to me part of the attractive is having to watch counterfeit videos in youtube of matches, not being able to get the products and having to import them from hong kong.

walk around with a joola tracksuit and nobody will recognize the brand.
if someone does they will immediately recognize you play tt and will hug you immediately.
walk around with an adidas tracksuit and nobody cares.

as for the products themselves, I don't think they offered anything much different from other brands.
their blades were the typical 5ply 7ply, hinoki carbon, etc.
same thing as all brands with different name
their rubbers were just tensors and all tensors are quite similar.

Tenzone Ultra and Tenzone Ultra SF were the only tensor rubber they had.... and they were superior to Bluefire IMHO.

NextLevel · Jul 30, 2015

Kaizoku said:
Tenzone Ultra and Tenzone Ultra SF were the only tensor rubber they had.... and they were superior to Bluefire IMHO.

You mean P3, P5 and P7 and Tenzone and Tenzone SF weren't tensors?

Kaizoku · Jul 30, 2015

NextLevel said:
You mean P3, P5 and P7 and Tenzone and Tenzone SF weren't tensors?

Indeed so.

corbytoffee · Jul 30, 2015

A bit gutted to hear this news. I've been playing with P7 for about 3 years now and really enjoyed using this rubber. For the last 12 months I've used Adidas shoes as well and they have easily been the comfiest table tennis shoe I've worn as well as very long lasting.

UpSideDownCarl · Jul 31, 2015

Are they stopping the shoes also? I think that may be different than the TT Equipment. I really don't know though. I am just guessing.

AndySmith · Jul 31, 2015

Kaizoku said:
Indeed so.

Wrong. P3, P5, P7, Tenzone, Tenzone SF were all tensors, made by ESN.

AndySmith · Jul 31, 2015

UpSideDownCarl said:
Are they stopping the shoes also? I think that may be different than the TT Equipment. I really don't know though. I am just guessing.

This is a good question. Are Adidas pulling the plug on Greenhouse, or on all of their TT stuff (which includes tables, shoes, premade bats etc).

Kaizoku · Jul 31, 2015

AndySmith said:
Wrong. P3, P5, P7, Tenzone, Tenzone SF were all tensors, made by ESN.

P7 felt nothing like Tensor. Ttdb claim them to not be Tensor. It does not smell like all tensors that I've tried smells. Despite being in a straight case it became bent fairly much when I took it out.
In which case it has to be a Tensor that feels nothing like a Tensor? In tenzone Ultra I could smell and feel the similarities to bluefire, which has a yes on being Tensor on ttdb. But P7 was nothing like it. I've read several sources, I see different opinions from source to source, but I can't find what Adidas said about it. What's your source?

AndySmith · Jul 31, 2015

Kaizoku said:
P7 felt nothing like Tensor. Ttdb claim them to not be Tensor. It does not smell like all tensors that I've tried smells. Despite being in a straight case it became bent fairly much when I took it out.
In which case it has to be a Tensor that feels nothing like a Tensor? In tenzone Ultra I could smell and feel the similarities to bluefire, which has a yes on being Tensor on ttdb. But P7 was nothing like it. I've read several sources, I see different opinions from source to source, but I can't find what Adidas said about it. What's your source?

P7's packet and rubber topsheet both say "Made in Germany". The sponge has the give-away ESN coding on the back. It looks just like many other tensors to me. You would have to go some way to convince me otherwise. The easiest way would be to show me which other German manufacturer (other than ESN) made P7.

Smelling is NOT enough to decide if it's a tensor or not - they use a lot of different materials in their rubbers, and they don't all look the same. Just look at how different Acuda Blue is from Impuls Powersponge, or Ventus Soft, or Bluefire M2 (which is the only one on this list which has the TRF booster smell). These all play very differently. Some are flat out of the packet, some have a dome. P7 was a very different type of ESN rubber at the time and was quite unique - I'll give you that.

TTDB is user-maintained and full of errors. It's down to the first person who creates the rubber profile to decide if it's a tensor or not, and many people don't know, and so guess (or get it wrong).

Cornel · Jul 31, 2015

Kaizoku said:
P7 felt nothing like Tensor. Ttdb claim them to not be Tensor. It does not smell like all tensors that I've tried smells. Despite being in a straight case it became bent fairly much when I took it out.
In which case it has to be a Tensor that feels nothing like a Tensor? In tenzone Ultra I could smell and feel the similarities to bluefire, which has a yes on being Tensor on ttdb. But P7 was nothing like it. I've read several sources, I see different opinions from source to source, but I can't find what Adidas said about it. What's your source?

Kaizoku, on TableTennisDB, Xiom Sigma II Europe also stands as a non-tensor. In fact there is clearly shown on the topsheet of the rubber itself that the Sigma II euro IS a tensor. Also take a look that T05 also stands as a non-tensor. And there are lots of other examples.

In fact, i think all the euro/jap rubbers that came on market after the speed glue ban are tensors(please correct me if I am wrong).

AndySmith · Jul 31, 2015

Cornel said:
Kaizoku, on TableTennisDB, Xiom Sigma II Europe also stands as a non-tensor. In fact there is clearly shown on the topsheet of the rubber itself that the Sigma II euro IS a tensor. Also take a look that T05 also stands as a non-tensor. And there are lots of other examples.

In fact, i think all the euro/jap rubbers that came on market after the speed glue ban are tensors(please correct me if I am wrong).

This is wrong, in a pedantic sort of way. Tensor is a trademark held by ESN, so only rubbers made by them can be "Tensors", and so only stuff labelled as Made In Germany can be Tensors (TM) by definition.

People tend to conflate "tension effect" rubbers with the name Tensor though, so this is a common error. Butterfly use the label "High Tension" as their marketing fluff, for example, to hint at the same thing.

(and this is without getting into the argument about if topsheet tension effect is a real thing or just a gimmick, of course)

But who knows - maybe TTDB are making the same mistake? Maybe their "Tensor" field is supposed to mean "tension effect" rubber, and should include stuff like T05? It's not clear - TTDB's popup help dialog on the Tensor field is a little ambiguous, which doesn't help. Regardless, TTDB is user-generated data, and so can't be used as a reference really.

AndySmith · Jul 31, 2015

Also, I should add, there are some ESN rubbers which don't have the Tensor thing built-in. These are still "Made in Germany", but are marketed as modern classics - Xiom Musa, Adidas R-Classic, Joola Zack. So non-tensor ESN. But these are the minority of ESN offerings.

Cornel · Jul 31, 2015

AndySmith, thank a lot for clearing all the things, it really helped to understand better the situation with the "Tensors".

By the way, I think it would be better to substitute on TTDB the "Tensor" field with "Tension Effect", like you said, to prevent such confusions.

Kaizoku · Jul 31, 2015

Hehe, your knowledge in tt seems to be beyond mine (at least on the Tensor matter [emoji14]) and I've tried less rubbers than you so, what you're saying could highly likely be correct. I personally think I've misunderstood the definition of Tensor (could be I thought it was tension effect..) and my main thought was that Tensor had a boosted smell and similar feel. Whereby P7 smelled like 100% normal rubber and feels more like an OP mark v than a slower more spinney bluefire or tenzone ultra.
And indeed, I know ttdb is user generated, which is why I tried to check other sources where I found different opinions on the case. On behalf of this I figured/guessed it would not be tensor.
Well, You learn something new every day!

Adidas to discontinue table tennis products

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