Last autumn, international troops stationed in Kabul played football against the Afghan women’s team in a match organised by NATO, the fledgling Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) and the Danish lifestyle brand hummel. Under Taliban rule the game had been banned but, despite the danger involved in large gatherings, it is rapidly growing in popularity. The match – which the Afghan women won 1-0 – was deemed to have been a resounding victory for football, Afghanistan and oppressed women all over the world. It was also a terrific branding exercise for hummel.

Taking corporate social responsibility to a new level has propelled the company to new heights. But while sponsoring the Affand the Afghan men’s and women’s teams may notch up headlines, hummel’s registered notion of Company Karma actually dates back to 1999, when new chairman and owner Christian Stadil enshrined it into the firm. It’s a philosophy now being applied to all the companies within his Thornico operation.

“Many firms have CSR policies these days, but Company Karma is more,” he says. “It is a basic value, a way of being a person and a firm, and not just a department within the firm, but something which gets under the skin of everyone in the entire group. We want to anchor it to everything we do.”

Chief executive Søren Schriver adds: ‘Our intention is to make a difference, to be good people. As we’ve progressed, we’ve progressed our CSR activity and it is today more commercial and on an even larger scale.”

The integral Company Karma belief, now as much a part of hummel’s brand as its logo, is based on the idea that you reap what you sow. The firm states that the spine of the company is radiating positive karma and spreading good energy. Using the old Buddhist saying, “If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path,” hummel believes that doing good and doing well are two sides of the same coin.  

Stadil is particularly proud of the Afghan project. “We can’t sponsor the likes of Ronaldinho – we simply don’t have the funds – so we have to do things differently. We focus on what sport can actually do. It tears down barriers.” As the owner, he says, he doesn’t have to ask for anyone’s permission, adding that the company has always been attracted to situations with an edge, such as sponsoring the exiled Tibetan national team when everyone else was afraid to.

“We accepted a sponsorship for Afghanistan and we knew it would be big, especially in terms of press coverage,” he says. “Women, football, Afghanistan. All three are very big subjects.” In the end the match was watched by more than 50 million TV viewers worldwide, many of whom had never heard of hummel before – and when the women’s team later took part in the South Asian Football Federation’s Women’s Championships in Bangladesh, it resulted in even broader coverage. “We got the attention and they, the women, were given a voice and put on the map. It’s a huge win-win situation.”

Following the Afghan success, hummel began sponsoring Sierra Leone’s national team and in late 2010 initiated a project to build children’s football schools there. Schriver says he would love to get Hollywood stars to play matches in the West African country as a way of bringing added focus to the area and its people.

Another high-profile initiative was a collaboration with American group the Black Eyed Peas and RETH¿NK, a sustainable fashion label based in Seattle that recycles plastic bottle waste into items such as T-shirts and bags. Volunteers on the band’s world tour encouraged fans to recycle their bottles as part of the fight against climate change. “This is a match made in heaven for hummel,” said the company’s corporate marketing manager, Henning Nielsen.

In January, the Men’s Handball World Championship 2011 opened in Sweden with several national teams playing in 100% recyclable outfits. The recycled collection will hit shops gradually in the coming year, and the partnership with the Black Eyed Peas garnered valuable publicity on TV, YouTube and the internet in general, increasing brand exposure.

Hummel was originally established in 1923 by the Messmer family of Hamburg, who produced sporting goods. The name comes from a once popular regional greeting, “Hummel hummel.” In 1945 the company’s home was swept away in bombing raids, and in 1956 new owners moved it to southern Germany and expanded the production of handball and football boots. By 1972, hummel was sold across most European countries and in 1973 it entered the Danish market through VN Sport Aps, which took it over the following year. In 1999 it was acquired by Thornico, a holding company which has interests in food, shipping, technology and real estate, wholly owned by Stadil and his father Thor.

From its base in Aarhus, a port city on the eastern side of the Jutland peninsula, Stadil has spent the past decade rejuvenating the hummel brand and establishing its presence in more than 40 countries through the introduction of a 70s-style fashion line, promoting its products with the help of stars such as Jennifer Lopez, Pink, Robbie Williams, No Doubt and Viggo Mortensen.

According to Stadil, Company Karma permeates the entire Thornico group. In Thorco, the conglomerate’s shipping firm, he says they have created the world’s first socially innovative shipping vessel in conjunction with the Red Cross. In his view, such initiatives help to differentiate the group from its competitors and will, in time, prove financially valuable.

Stadil concedes that measuring ROI on Company Karma initiatives can be difficult but says that it has helped worldwide sales triple in the past six years and that the company grew by 30% in 2010. As he sees it, companies need profits the same way a body needs blood, but he adds: “Where it really gets interesting is when the company first makes profits – what does it choose to do with itself?

“I had the privilege to write the foreword to the Dalai Lama’s leadership book, The Leader’s Way. We [at hummel] believe that Company Karma is a way in which we can differentiate ourselves in the market, a way in which we can hit the consumer more emotionally. And this approach is one of the reasons our business is going better than ever.”

Last summer, Stadil told Denmark’s DK newspaper that the firm expects to reach turnover of DKr100m (€13m) on sneaker sales alone in 2011. Some 60% of turnover is derived from the sale of clothes for team sports. He added that turnover was 25% better than it was in 2009, when hummel hauled in DKr61m (€8m) and made pre-tax profits of DKr14m (€2m). The company was valued at DKr90m (€12m).

Stadil points out that hummel got through the economic downturn without even suffering a dip, noting that it has no bank debt, that its degree of self-finance is over 80%, and that it is growing at a very fast pace. Its key markets are the Nordic countries (in Denmark the brand outsells Nike and Adidas), Germany, the Netherlands, France, Japan and Korea. Significantly, says Stadil, the brand is active in the specific sports genre – the fast-growing sneaker segment – lifestyle clothing and children’s clothing.

Last year the company opened its first 29 retail outlets in Australia, a move that Stadil says could lead to more activities in the surrounding region. Naturally, hummel tied up a deal straight away to sponsor the North Queensland Cowboys, one of the big Aussie Rules football teams.

Stadil is keen to make a splash in America as well but has no illusions about the challenges such a move would pose. “There is no doubt that the US market is very difficult and there are very few foreign brands which crack it,” he says. “Partly this is because the market is crowded but also, companies often take the wrong approach. It is not one large, homogenous market. There is a world of difference between the Midwest and the coastal cities such as LA and New York, which themselves are also different with regards to consumer behaviour and which brands consumers fall for.”

For the moment, hummel’s distributor is concentrating on sponsorships and collaborations with “less cool” football teams and on getting its products into more avant garde, “hip” shops. “Fashion and lifestyle sneakers are the focus. In general, this is a highly important product group for us at the moment, and I think we are one of the fastest-growing sneaker brands in northern Europe.” 

Whatever happens, Company Karma will continue to play a vital role. “We believe there is a need for a sports fashion brand alternative, which stands for other values than just being able to jump higher, run faster and be stronger,” says Stadil. “For us, sports is about breaking down cultural, religious and national character barriers. This is why we believe there is a market for us in the US.”