The company also manufactured athletic shoes through the "Dunlop Footwear" division. Some of its most renowned shoes were the Volley and the KT-26.

History

In 1924, the Dunlop Rubber Company of Australasia started making sandshoes in its factories in Melbourne, to complement their gum boots that the company had been producing since 1915. By 1932, Dunlop was manufacturing 2 million pairs a year. In 1939 the company introduced the Volley shoes, designed by tennis player Adrian Quist, who convinced Dunlop to make tennis shoe with the same sole pattern he had seen while touring on North America. Players who wore the Volley included Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad, Frank Sedgman, Neal Fraser, John Bromwich, Evonne Goolagong-Cawley, Margaret Court, among others.

By 1957 Dunlop footwear employed over 1,000 people. In 1965, Dunlop Rubber Co. established "Dunlop Footwear", a division to specifically design and manufacture shoes.

Dunlop Australia acquired many other shoe businesses, including some in the US. As a result, the company introduced the KT-26 running shoe, which originated as the Osaga KT-26 in the US and was then sold mainly in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

In 2004, Dunlop Sports Australia became a division of Pacific Brands.

In November 2014, Pacific Brands sold its Dunlop Sport (Australia) and Slazenger brands to International Brand Management & Licensing (IBML), a division of Sports Direct International, a PLC of the United Kingdom, which had already operated the Dunlop and Slazenger brands in every other market except Australia and New Zealand since 2004. Pacific Brands moved its Volley and other shoe brands to its subsidiary, Brand Collective Pty Ltd, which was sold to private equity firm Anchorage Capital Partners in November 2014.

In 2016, Sports Direct International sold Dunlop Sport International including Dunlop Sport (Australia) to SRI Sports, part of Sumitomo Rubber Industries.

Dunlop Sport is a British sports equipment manufacturing company established in 1910 that focuses on racquet sports, more specifically tennis, squash, padel and badminton. Products by Dunlop Sport include rackets, strings, balls, shuttlecocks, and bags. Sportswear and clothing line includes t-shirts, shorts, skirts, jackets, pants, socks, caps, sneakers, and wristbands.

Dunlop Sport is operated by SRI Sports, a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo Rubber Industries, which acquired the Dunlop brand in 2017.

In the past, Dunlop also manufactured golf equipment.

History

Dunlop was established as a company manufacturing goods from rubber in 1889. The company entered the sporting goods market in 1910, when it began to manufacture rubber golf balls at its base in Birmingham. The company introduced the Maxfli golf ball in 1922.

Dunlop extended into tennis ball manufacture in 1924. In 1925, F A Davis was acquired, which had tennis racket manufacturing expertise. Dunlop opened acquisition discussions with Slazenger in 1927, but without success.^[In 1928 the sports division became a subsidiary of Dunlop Rubber named Dunlop Sports. Headquarters were relocated from Birmingham to Waltham Abbey in Essex.

The Dunlop Masters golf tournament was established in 1946. It was sponsored by Dunlop until 1982, and is now known as the British Masters.

In 1957 Dunlop acquired the golf club manufacturer John Letters of Scotland. In 1959 the Slazenger Group was acquired. The Dunlop "flying D" logo was introduced in 1960.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dunlop was slow to adapt to the new materials that tennis rackets were increasingly being made from, believing that wood would remain the dominant material.

In 1983 the John Letters golf club business was sold back to members of the Letters family. One year later, the sports businesses were merged to form Dunlop Slazenger.

In 1986, the parent company, Dunlop Holdings, was acquired by the industrial company BTR for £549 million. BTR cut marketing spending to just 8 per cent of sales and reduced investment in grass roots sponsorship and research and development Steffi Graf's sponsorship money was cut so she defected to a Wilson racket.

In 1996 Dunlop Slazenger was acquired by the private equity firm Cinven for £330 million.  To save money, Cinven moved production of Dunlop tennis balls from England to the Philippines. Slazenger Golf and Maxfli were sold off to reduce debt.

Sports Direct International bought Dunlop Slazenger for £40 million in 2004.

In December 2016, Sports Direct announced it had agreed to sell the Dunlop brand to Sumitomo Rubber Industries for £112 million ($137.5 million). Sumitomo already owned the rights to the sports as well as the rubber industries brand in most of the world. The sale is due to be completed by May 2017.

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