STIGA

Heritage

The Stiga name comes from Stig Hjelmquist, who started the business Firma Fabriksprodukter in Tranås, southern Sweden, in 1934. According to STIGA Sports, STIGA table tennis was founded in Tranås in 1944, and that is the date the company uses for its heritage today.

Hjelmquist understood the value of working with top players. In the 1950s he hired Sweden's leading table tennis player, the multiple Swedish champion Tage Flisberg, whose first job was to design a new bat made by a world class player for world class players. In 1957 the World Table Tennis Championships in Stockholm were played on STIGA Expert VM tables.

Through the 1960s and 1970s STIGA built close links with Swedish table tennis. It employed Kjell Johansson, who went on to become a world champion, saw Stellan Bengtsson win the world singles title in 1971, and sponsored a young Jan-Ove Waldner after discovering him in Sundsvall in the early 1970s. Separate blades, including the long running Allround Classic, were developed in this period.

In Eskilstuna, Bengt Bandstigen, a baker's son and keen table tennis player, secured the Swedish agency for Nittaku balls in 1966 and built his own table tennis brand, Banda. In 1984 he acquired the table tennis division of his biggest competitor, STIGA, and moved the business to Eskilstuna, where STIGA Sports is still based. STIGA Sports describes him as the founder of the company in its present form.

The late 1980s and 1990s were the high point of Swedish table tennis. In 1989 the Swedish team, equipped by STIGA, beat China for the first time since 1973, and STIGA says the team went on to win three consecutive World Championships. STIGA also signed China's Liu Guoliang. In 1999 Bengt Bandstigen stepped down as CEO and his 31 year old son Mats took over. The Swedish team won the world title again in Kuala Lumpur in 2000.

Over the same decades the original Stiga business in Tranås diversified into toys, table hockey and lawnmowers. In 2000 the garden machinery side became part of the Italian group that is now the STIGA garden company, which is a separate business. Today the STIGA Sports brand covers table tennis, padel, tennis, badminton and pickleball, plus leisure products such as Snowracer sledges and scooters.

STIGA Sports says its padel journey began in 2019. Its product manager has said the company has sold padel rackets in Sweden since the sport was in its infancy there. In May 2023 it released the limited Wood Edition (Carbon Fusion) padel racket, drawing on its experience of working with wood in table tennis blades.

The key step came in January 2024, when STIGA launched the Cybershape padel racket, a hexagonal frame adapted from the Cybershape table tennis blade introduced in 2021. STIGA says the shape gives roughly 20 per cent more sweet spot than a round racket. Days later the Swedish player Adam Axelsson became the first player to use a Cybershape racket in an official padel event, at FIP Rise Gothenburg. The ACE 3, ACE 3 LW and 18K LW Cybershape followed in September 2024.

Since then STIGA has built a Nordic padel roster and network. It signed Swedish players Douglas Rutgersson and Amanda Girdo in 2025 and Danish champion Nils Skajaa for 2026 and 2027, appointed exclusive ambassadors and distributors in Spain in 2024, became title sponsor of the Scandinavian youth tournament STIGA Padel Explosion in 2025, and renamed Skurup Padel as the STIGA Sports Padel Arena from September 2025.

STIGA Sports is led by CEO Andreas Zandrén and still makes table tennis blades in its own wood workshop in Eskilstuna. In February 2026 it was appointed Purveyor to the Royal Court of Sweden, one of about 130 companies to hold the title.