Responsible of the Martial Art Business Unit of Mizuno in Europe, Guillaume GAY was in attendance of the Senior European Judo Championships 2025 for a very significant purpose. It is a ‘welcome home’ of sorts as we can announce that Mizuno will once again be a part of the European Judo Union family after signing a contract to become a sponsor for our organisation.
I manage Mizuno’s Martial Art category for European market, from product lineup to sales, including marketing activities. I’ve been working for Mizuno for 17 years now and working on judo category since 2015, so for quite ten years now! Mizuno is one of the most famous brands in judo and, as a qualitative Japanese brand, we are proud sponsor of the Japanese Judo Federation since many years. Of course, as a global brand, we do already have a partnership with the IJF but in order to develop our business in Europe, it’s very important to be partnered with the European Judo Union. They organise plenty of event in Europe, they are in close contact with all national federation and they have a very powerful online platform followed numerous European judoka. We want to be involved in promoting judo around Europe, so it is important for us to be part of the family.
Before corona, we used to sponsor the French and German team so we were quite active in Europe but the pandemic changed a lot of things. Then, we had more individual athletes like in Spain and Belgium, in countries where athletes do not have judogi obligation from their federation. We also have strong judoka from Georgia and Azerbaijan wearing our products. Now we are ready to restart our strategy in terms of sponsoring. We believe we are offering very good products so we want to see more athletes using it.
It isn’t a welcome ‘back’ of sorts as Mizuno is still very much on the scene, but now the famous brand will be front and centre in the European Judo Union, and not on the sidelines.
As we were partners before, there has always been a discussion about it, now that the EJU team has changed we had new meetings, getting to know the new members and understand each other. This isn’t about just giving money, we need to understand how it can be mutually beneficial and now we’re happy to have come to an agreement and sign it here at the European Championships and move forward together.
Author: Thea Cowen