Sourcing

The Intricate Nature Behind Sourcing a Football

In the production of the FIFA World Cup ball, there are four levels of sourcing. No one level is more important than the other because any wrong decision on any level will result in equally significant consequences.

The first level consists of FIFA choosing an official football partner. When the selection committee chooses, they take into account the supplier’s manufacturing scalability, past reputation, global reach, development capability, and monetary offer regarding revenue sharing. Adidas usually has a strong advantage and for the 2014 World Cup, Adidas was the official supplier.

The second level constitutes Adidas’ choice of sourcing for the actual design and development, manufacturing, testing, and distribution of the ball. There have been previous conflicts and issues with the nature of the World Cup ball so these aspects of the production line are very sensitive and imperative. Long Way Enterprise, a Taiwan-based company, has a strong advantage in the design and development sense. The testing is a deal struck with many professional research teams and the distribution is sourced in a flexible manner because the volumes needed in each city is unpredictable. According to Adidas, their top five countries per region by number of suppliers in 2013 were the United States, Brazil, Canada, Argentina and Mexico for the Americas, China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and Indonesia for Asia, and the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Turkey and Spain for EMEA. Two-thirds of Adidas’ supplier factories are located in Asia, one-fifth are located in the Americas, and the rest are from the EMEA.

The third level is Long Way Enterprise choosing who to delegate the production of the balls to. Approximately 50 million balls need to be made and an order of that enormity is too large for one company to handle. Whoever Long Way chooses must meet the Adidas’ expectations for quality and manufacturing scalability and capability. For the Brazuca, Forward Sports, a Pakistan-based company, was chosen. The Forward Sports factory is only one of two factories in the world that manufactures the Brazuca. The other is based in China.

The fourth and final level consists of the selection of the logistics team that will handle the distribution of the ball.

Click here for a map of all sourcing levels.