About ABEO

A world leader in sports and leisure equipment, ABEO is a family-owned, international group whose origins date back to 1981. It brings together and helps to develop nearly 30 companies that are experts in their fields, while respecting their individual identities. The Group designs, manufactures and distributes equipment for schools, sports and leisure facilities. Its companies are divided into three Divisions: Sport, Sportainment & Climbing, Changing Rooms.

 

ABEO has always been driven by a vision: to be a world leader in sports and leisure through expert companies. For over 20 years, our development has been punctuated by a strategy of external growth, which today enables us to count many strong brands in our portfolio. To cultivate excellence from top to bottom, our business model is based on vertical integration and the autonomy of our subsidiaries. Each one has the scope to be more agile and efficient, while benefiting from the Group's support and resources to go further and offer sustainable solutions. Determined to help our companies and teams thrive, we are first and foremost a family adventure driven by the commitment of the people who contribute to our success every day.

Olivier Estèves
Chief Executive Officer

OUR VALUES

Each subsidiary embodies its own values, which ABEO fully respects. The Group, too, embodies values that are dear to us and that unite all our employees, regardless of brand or geographic region.

Through its decentralized organization, ABEO guarantees a high degree of autonomy to its companies, enabling them to be reactive, as close as possible to their markets, and to cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit. Trust is at the heart of this model, the key to effective, caring and lasting collaboration between the Group, its companies and their customers.

Since its creation, ABEO has demonstrated that there can be no evolution or success without perseverance. It is by remaining constant in the face of obstacles that the Group has been building a unique project for over 20 years. Its teams surpass themselves to find solutions, innovate and take up challenges to go ever further.

Every day, ABEO works to further develop cooperation between its employees and between its companies. Encouraging team spirit means enabling a group of over 1400 people with different skills and cultures to work together in pursuit of common goals.

GROUP ORGANIZATION

From the outset, the Group has adopted a decentralized organization for its companies, convinced that proximity to their markets and customers is essential. This autonomy does not prevent ABEO from doing its utmost to support its subsidiaries in their development through its support functions: nearly 50 people at the Rioz and Lyon sites (France) work with each subsidiary according to its needs. ABEO's General Management directs the Group's various activities in accordance with the strategic orientations defined by the Board of Directors, which includes a CSR Committee and an Audit Committee.

WHY ABEO? AND THE SALAMANDER?

In 2002, as head of France Equipement, Olivier Estèves wanted to acquire a company as part of his growth strategy, and to do so he had to create a new entity. Far from imagining that he was naming an international group as it exists today, he simply proposed "ABEO", in reference to the initials of his father and predecessor, Bernard, and his two brothers, Antoine and Etienne. As a further nod to his roots, Olivier Estèves chose to add the salamander next to the four letters: the animal is the source of many legends, but is also the emblem of Vitry-le-François, the town in eastern France where his parents were born.