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by Scott Unsworth, Orca CEO
Orca was established 18 years ago and most of our products have been made overseas right from the early days.
When you produce high performance sporting gear, you need production facilities with the right kind of specialist expertise.
Our wetsuits quickly gained a following among elite triathletes and soon we were getting enquiries from companies all around the world wanting to sell them.
We ended up with about 30 distributors and looking after a network that size got complex and time consuming.
When a Spanish cycle manufacturer called Orbea approached us about becoming our global distributor, we saw it as a great opportunity.
We’ve recently gone even further, agreeing to a licensing deal with Orbea that gives them exclusive rights to manufacture our triathlon wetsuit and apparel ranges and compression gear.
It’s an interesting business model for a New Zealand company looking to grow globally.
Orbea takes care of logistics, manufacturing, quality control and distribution while Orca looks after the product design and marketing and retains the intellectual property.
Of course there are checks and balances in place to give us confidence that the Orca brand will be properly represented and to give our partner assurances that we will continue to produce innovative and high quality designs.
The arrangement allows both parties to focus on what they do best. Orca can concentrate on what we’re passionate about, which is designing high quality and high performance sporting apparel, and developing smart marketing strategies to sell it.
Orbea can focus on its strengths in production and distribution while expanding its product offering with one of the world’s leading triathlon brands.
We’ve signed a multi-year partnership with Orbea and that provides an incentive for them to invest in growing our brand. Orbea’s committed to Orca and will be working hard to increase our global sales.
At the same time, Orca will be investing in more research and development to further improve our existing line-up and create new triathlon products, knowing it has a distribution chain to get them to market.
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