June 30th 2008.

Since the management buy-in of which I was a part in late 2006 Rhino has gone from strength to strength and we have in the past few months been appointed Official Suppliers to the British & Irish Lions tour to South Africa in 2009 and to the recent IRB Under-20 Junior World Cup in Wales. We have additionally now, as reported in this newsletter, added London Wasps to our roster of Official Supplier contracts alongside our longstanding arrangements with England, Wales, Bath and the Cardiff Blues.

We therefore feel entitled to continue to believe our scrummaging machines, contract and training equipment to be the best in the world. Other brands may be cheaper, but our equipment lasts longer and therefore in addition to being of superior quality it is better value in the long run.

The main strategic move since the buy-in of the business has been our tie up with leading apparel merchandising company Trimerchandise to create the Rhino Pure Rugby playing kit and apparel brand, and we are delighted to announce here that already newly promoted English Premiership side Northampton Saints, and Magners League and Heineken Cup contestants Edinburgh have been signed to the brand, alongside the Combined Services as already previously announced. Rhino Pure Rugby are about to launch an online design and ordering system for their products accessible via www.rhinorugby.com - please take a look.

We also have recently announced a deal with the Magners League itself to develop a range of branded merchandise and will be additionally be supplying Rhino Pure Rugby kit to referees, touch judges and other touchside personnel in the competition in the coming season.

We at Rhino are always seeking to improve our service to our customers, and we carry here details of a recent project carried by leading consultancy TripleIC to assess our Customer Engagement rating. We were very proud to achieve a Silver Award from TripleIC and are confident of being able to use the survey results from the project to improve our in our performance in this respect even further.

As is widely known I will as of tomorrow be taking on the role of England Team Manager and will accordingly be stepping down as a director of Rhino. I will, however, continue my strong association with the company and the brand and I look forward to its further growth and progress.

Martin Johnson,
Director.

Click on the 'more' link to read the full article.....

Martin Johnson,
Director.