OUR HISTORY

It was the adventure of two friends, two lovers of nature: one a canoeist and mountaineer, the other a hunter. In 1928, pooling their savings, they founded Sport Radio, the first shop in Zaragoza to embrace the modernity that sport and amateur radio broadcasting represented at the time.

With a bold entrepreneurial spirit in the Spain of scarcity, they imported hickory wood from Norway, marine plywood from Guinea, gunpowder from Italy and Japan, and manufactured skis, canoes and cartridges.

They designed, built and tested their equipment. With a canoe prototype and a tent that would seem rudimentary today, Hidalgo set a canoeing record in 1930 by paddling 400 km down the Ebro river from Zaragoza to the Mediterranean in seven days.

Over time, and overcoming great hardships during the 1940s, this entrepreneurial spirit led them to expand their product range. They began manufacturing backpacks, ski trousers and anoraks, tents, motorcycle helmets, boxing gloves and, in general, equipment for all kinds of sports.

What started as a small sports and amateur radio shop evolved through the entrepreneurial drive, curiosity, innovation and vision of its founders. In the early 1950s it became a sports industry: Casa Artiach S.C. was born.

Driven by the new camping craze sweeping Spain, the company grew into a real industry employing 140 people in a new 3,500 m² facility specialising in the manufacture of camping, mountaineering and nautical equipment. Researching materials, developing products, innovating designs and field-testing them (R&D+Innovation+Experience) has been the engine of the process ever since, and forms an inseparable part of the company's DNA.

In the 1970s, Casa Artiach S.A. was the leading Spanish company in the camping, mountain and military outdoor sector, with a 40% market share. The range covered:

• Hiking and high-mountain tents.
• Frame tents for family camping.
• Tents for special military operations.
• Backpacks, sleeping bags and accessories.
• Inflatable nautical line in Neoprene and Hypalon (2 to 6 metres).
• Caravan awning and trailer-tent line.
• Folding swimming pools.

In the 1980s the company continued its dominance in the camping and nautical markets. True to its R&D+Innovation+Experience DNA, it worked on new product lines within the outdoor sector:

• The emerging Spanish caravanning market.
• Self-inflating sleeping mats, for which a special piece of machinery was designed and built using proprietary technologies — a world first.
• Increased technical sophistication of mountaineering products and mountain clothing.

The Trangoworld project — originally Trango — was born, developing new product ranges and technical features for the outdoor activities that were beginning to gain popularity:

• Mountain-inspired clothing for everyday urban use.
• Technical fabrics, functional fit and advanced performance.
• Breathable laminates with taped seams, fleece linings, stretch fabrics, soft-shells…

The company became the first Spanish brand to fully equip people for outdoor sports, operating under two brands: Artiach (hard goods) and Trango (technical textiles).

The 1990s, with rising living standards, saw the decline of camping and opened the era of leisure sports, sportswear and a taste for more demanding mountain activities. Both Trango and Artiach upgraded their technical offering, incorporating top-tier designs, technologies, fabrics and materials — GORE-TEX and POLARTEC — imported for the first time into Spain from the United States.

With the new century, Trango became Trangoworld: the World of Trango. This was the seed of the consolidation of all existing product lines under the two brands, Artiach and Trango, into a single all-encompassing brand by the end of the decade. Trangoworld positioned itself as the undisputed sector leader in Spain.