The Lafuma Group wants to focus its three main outdoor brands - Lafuma, Eider and Millet - on different segments of the broad outdoor market.
Lafuma is going to develop mostly in the urban outdoor and sports lifestyle market, particularly through its physical and online stores.
The more expensive and technical Millet brand will focus on high-mountain hiking, trekking and climbing. The management wants to raise the foreign sales ratio of this well-known French brand from 60 to 80 percent over the next five years.
Eider, which is still primarily a skiwear brand, will broaden its reach into warm-weather clothing for the summer months, retaining its more fashionable and elegant positioning.
The group released new figures a few days ago that show a further sales decline of 11.2 percent to €85.5 million for the first half of this year, amounting to a decrease of 10.2 percent in constant currencies and based on comparable activities. This comes after the Calida Group from Switzerland, which became the majority shareholder in the Lafuma group last year, decided to focus on sales in the most profitable distribution channels.
Sales in the mountain and mountain & outdoor division shrank by 16.5 percent to €42.7 million, a decline of 14.8 percent in comparable terms. But the worst drop came again from the surf division with the Oxbow brand, which saw its sales dwindle to €15.8 million, a decline of 18.6 percent in euros and in comparable terms. The only category that improved was camping furniture, sold under the Lafuma brand name, with sales up by 4.6 percent to €27.0 million.
The Lafuma group's turnover was down by 13.7 percent to €47.6 million in France and by 8.0 percent to €37.9 million in other countries, amounting to a drop of 5.5 percent in comparable terms. The company said that, based on its current order book, sales should decline for the full year as planned. At the same time, owing to cost reduction measures and operational improvements, operating profit should gradually firm up.