Kangaroos

KangaROOS is a brand of sports shoes of the British Pentland Group, which is also the owner of brands such as Speedo and Ellesse.

Brand History

In the late seventies KangaROOS was founded by Bob Gamm in the U.S.. The active basketball invented the shoes with a small bag, leave in which small items stowed. In addition to the small bag, with all the models are equipped, the kangaroo logo is unchanged as brand since 1982.

In the early 1980s KangaROOS was the fastest growing brand in the U.S., which temporarily 700,000 pairs of shoes were sold per month. At the height of popularity in 1985 Bob Gamm opened the so-called " KangaROOS Laboratory & School " on a 10,000 m2 site where the various types of footwear developed improved and could be tested for various sports. Today the brand in the U.S. leads, however, only a niche, even if it was again strongly represented in the late 1990s a little.

In 1981 Bernd Hummel GmbH in Pirmasens the distribution and licensing agreement for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. For the autumn / winter 1983/84 the first, yet designed in the U.S. collection on the German market has been introduced.

1991 saw the acquisition of KangaROOS by the Pentland Group plc. in London and the Bernd Hummel GmbH concluded a contract with Pentland as Master Licensee, which allowed the company Pirmasenser from that date to independently design their own collections and specially matched to the German and European market. In August 2002, the license agreement with Pentland was extended for another ten years. The Palatine company is now the world's largest licensee of the brand and now also owns the licensing rights to several Eastern European countries.