•You will hear a presentation about an introduction of a racket goods sporting c

Prince is a major racket goods sporting company. We  make  tennis,  squash,  badminton rackets, apparel and footwear. We also sell the accessories to those products which include strings, grips and sport bags, and other accessory products as well. Prince is headquartered in Bordentown,  New Jersey, which is just a little bit south of Trenton, New Jersey,  and just a  little  bit north of Philadelphia. We also have offices in Europe, in Treviso, Italy.  We have an office in Singapore which coordinates the Asian theater for us. And then we have distributors scattered throughout the world.
      In 1989 we were acquired by the Benetton Sports System. Benetton Sports System is comprised of a number  of  different  companies  but  an  easy illustration would be to think of an umbrella and the umbrella would be the Benetton Sports System. Underneath the umbrella would be three columns: one column would be Rollerblade, which is the in-line skating company; another column would be Nordica, which is the winter sport group; and the third column would be Prince Sports Group, which is our company, which deals with the summer sporting goods. And then they are all connected across the  bottom  by Benetton Sports System Active that is responsible for the apparel for all three of those groups.
      Well, tennis equipment has changed considerably in the last twenty years.  If we go back to before 1976,  really most players were playing with wooden rackets. And you notice the wood rackets’ very small head sizes. Howard Head came along and not only innovated the ski industry with the first metal ski, but innovated the tennis industry with the first dimensional change in tennis rackets. And that, essentially, means he invented the oversized head. If you compare it to a wooden racket, you can see quite clearly you’ve got a much larger head on the oversize racket.  That happened in the mid-seventies.  Then the next major innovation occurred with another dimensional change in the rackets which was the wide body. Wide bodies allowed for greater stiffness in rackets therefore producing much more power.
      And today the next biggest innovation is also dimensional—and that is length. Here is our new Mach 1000. The Prince Long Body racket gives you five major benefits. They are: more power, more control, more spin, more reach and more comfort. Welt, l think this is the last dimensional change in a racket that can occur. Again, just to repeat, you had the first dimensional change which was head size—larger head size;  the second dimensional change was cross-section and now we’re looking at the third and final eras that you can change in terms of a racket’s geometry, which is length. So ! think what you’ll see over the next several years is—who can make the best longer rackets.