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General information

YASAKA – THE SUCCESS STORY

1947 YASAKA Co. Ltd. was founded by Mr Hirose Yaoita and Mr Sakamoto who gave the name of the company (YAoita + SAKAmoto). Mr Yaoita was a table tennis player and his aim was to offer table tennis players products with high tecnical quality and superior performance.

In the 50’s YASAKA developed rapidly, in a close connection with Japanese top players that took over the leading position in World table tennis. With the rubber Original Yasaka supplied several Champions all over the world.

In the end of the 60’s Yasaka made break through in the rubber development and could introduce superior table tennis rubbers to the market. Winning the men´s single in the 1970 European Championships and 1971 World Championships MARK V started a victory-road in table tennis all over the world. Since then MARK V has been continuesly developed and Yasaka MARK V is probably the most well known (top quality) table tennis product on the market.

In the 90’s Yasaka started a new blade factory in Sweden and 1993 the success story Gatien EXTRA blade was introduced. EXTRA is a blade that was created by the wood technicians in a very close cooperation with the 1993 men’s singles World Champion Jean-Philippe Gatien.

In the year 2000 the International Table Tennis Federation changed the regulation regarding the ball, and the 40 mm ball was introduced to improve the sport. Players all over the world had to adopt and develop new playing techniques. This change was of course also a big challenge for table tennis manufacturers, to be able to offer equipment suitable for the new size of ball. Proving the high performance of Yasaka products World Championships gold medals was captured with Yasaka rubber and blade in the first WTTC with the 40 mm ball (Osaka 2001).

2002 Yasaka made a major step in the field of rubber and V-STAGE was launched. Through own laboratory tests it is shown that V-STAGE offers more spin and more speed than any previous rubber. In the same year Yasaka also surprised the TT-World, to be able to produce a 17-layer blade, DYNAMIX.

Since several years Yasaka has successfully been on the largest single table tennismarket, China. A big, and very demanding market, with a hard competition from numerous companies that wants to share. Now Yasaka offers a complete range of high quality table tennis products also in China. Especially the Yasaka blades are very much demanded, and the 5-ply blade "EXTRA" is a big sales succes also among Chinese players.

In 2006 the Chinese player Ma Lin was contracted by Yasaka. During several years he has been amongst the no. 5 top players in the world and has won four times the ITTF World Cup. During the Olympic Championships in Beijing in 2008 he captured the gold medal in men's singles as well as in the team events.