Speedo Relocates North America Operations to Long Beach

The Los Angeles Olympics are more than two years away, but one of the world’s biggest sportswear companies is already looking to get ahead of the wave — no pun intended.

Pentland Brands, the parent company of Speedo, plans to move its North American headquarters to Long Beach from Orange County, the Los Angeles Times reported. The U.K.-based company will move to a 25,000-square-foot facility at the Aero Long Beach office campus this summer, according to the Times. Pentland Brands’ North American headquarters has been in a 69,000-square-foot office in Cypress since 2015.

Pentland Brands’ new offices in Long Beach will accommodate more than 130 employees and is slated to include a dedicated Speedo showroom and rooms for product design, according to the Times.

The South Bay city will be the epicenter of aquatic sports for the 2028 Games, hosting 11 sporting events such as artistic swimming, open-water swimming, beach volleyball, water polo, sailing and rowing across seven locations. Venues will include temporary structures like the Long Beach Aquatics Center, set to rise in the parking lot of the Long Beach Convention Center, as well as the Long Beach Arena and Marine Stadium, which previously held events in the 1932 and 1984 Olympics.

Beyond aquatic sports, Long Beach is looking to be a hotspot of activity for the Olympics in general. In 2023, the city unveiled plans to spend more than $900 million on infrastructure over the next five years. About $200 million of that was set aside for Olympics-focused projects.

Pentland Brands acquired Speedo International and Speedo Australia in the 1990s. The company bought Speedo North America from apparel company PVH Corporation in 2020 for $170 million in anticipation of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo that year before they were postponed to 2021. Globally, Speedo is a major Olympic sponsor and has partnerships with national swimming governing bodies in the U.S., Canada, China, Australia and more.

— Chris Malone Méndez