Sam Lam, originally from Hong Kong, founded the Hayashi company in Bristol, United Kingdom, in 1983. The company quickly expanded to France and Germany. During the early days of Hayashi, the basic concept was to offer a wide variety of uniforms and gear for different styles of martial arts. The Hayashi logo was inspired by a historic image originally produced for the Sony company in Japan.
Hayashi, which means 'small forest' in Japanese, produced most of its gear in Taiwan, which, at the time, offered better quality than other exporting countries. Every product looked highly polished once it left the factory. Lam emphasised this distinctive look and started marketing his products from a more sophisticated perspective. He hired a top-notch photographer and produced glossy brochures that outranked those of competitors. In those days, people would even pay to receive a copy of his catalogue.
Hayashi print magazine advert dated 1993.
In 1989, Lothar Hirneise from Germany was introduced to Lam by a mutual friend from an international Kung Fu and Ving Tsun camp. Hirneise received the licence to distribute Hayashi from the headquarters in Waiblingen, Germany, and soon added sub-distributors in other European countries, mainly in Eastern Europe, where markets had opened up and created a huge surge in demand. One of those countries was Czechoslovakia with Mirek Sobotka, now the owner of Fighters Europe.
From 1990 onwards, Hayashi became a major player in kickboxing, supplying gloves, protective kicks, and clothing to large organisations such as the WKA and WAKO.
When Sam Lam and Lothar Hirneise left the martial arts world, the brand was taken over by Austrian businessman Peter Kruckenhauser, who incorporated Hayashi into his existing Budoland warehouse and mail order distribution company, located on the German-Austrian border. Kruckenhauser relaunched the brand, steering it away from its kickboxing and kung fu background and towards traditional karate. In light of rule changes in karate requiring competitors to wear padding during tournaments, Hayashi used its sister brand's expertise to expand into karate very smoothly and has become a household name for worldclass athletes.