Latest News & Analysis – Page 263
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Li-Ning eyes the outdoor business
Li-Ning, the leading Chinese sports brand, has just begun a test to launch its own line of outdoor products, called Li-Ning Adventure. In late October, Li-Ning Adventure opened the first single-brand store dedicated to the new offer at the group's headquarters in Beijing. The selling surface is 150 square meters ...
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Amer reshuffles its Chinese organization
Amer Sports' Chinese subsidiary, Amer Sports Shanghai Trading Company, is set to establish its own sales organization for the Chinese market in 2013, and it will go direct with the new structure next year in order to bundle the sales activities of the Finnish group's outdoor brands under one roof.Beijing ...
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Latest accidents emphasize need for improved safety management in the climbing industry
Bernard Bressoux, technical and quality director at Petzl, suggests that outdoor companies could launch a working group on civil liability, as the industry is drawing some lessons from recent climbing accidents. Speaking at the European Outdoor Forum last month, Bressoux shared the initiatives already taken at Petzl to further improve ...
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Good European outdoor convention in Annecy
A total of 240 delegates from many different countries took part in the third European Outdoor Forum, organized by Outdoor Sports Valley in the nice French town of Annecy earlier this month. Attendance levels were about the same as a year ago, but the general spirit appeared to have risen ...
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Columbia is not amused about Europe
Columbia Sportswear posted a decrease of 4.0 percent in net sales to $545.0 million for its third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with the year-ago results. About 2 percentage points of the decrease were said to be due to currency effects. In the same period, operating profit went up by ...
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VF’s sports, outdoor brands weather the storms, globally
VF Corporation reported this week that its gross margin reached a record of 46.7 percent of sales in the third quarter, largely as a result of the group's continued shift in the product mix toward higher-margin businesses. Total revenues grew by 14 percent to $3,148 million in the quarter, but ...
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Big drop for Wolverine in Europe
Merrell and other brands of Wolverine Worldwide had a tough ride in the European market during the third quarter ended Sept. 8. The group's sales in the Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) region fell by about 20 percent during the period compared with a year ago, due to poor ...
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Strong growth for Amer’s brands in apparel
The Winter and Outdoor division of Amer Sports, which includes brands such as Arc'teryx, Salomon and Suunto, improved its operating profit by 9 percent to €80.8 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with €79.3 million in the same period a year ago, while its net sales increased ...
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Lafuma presents stable revenues
For the financial year ended on Sept. 30, the Lafuma Group reports a slight sales decline of 0.3 percent to €248.7 million. This is partially due to the development in the fourth quarter when turnover dropped by 6.6 percent to €77.6 million compared with the previous year's period. The fourth ...
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Stabilo’s outdoor division grows organically and through acquisition
Schwanhäusser Industrie Holding, well known for its writing products marketed under the Schwan-Stabilo brand, has posted strong growth for its outdoor division, which has been run as a subsidiary of its own since this year. The combined sales of the Deuter and Ortovox brands reached €78 million in Schwanhäusser's last ...
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Disappointing quarter at Deckers Outdoor
Deckers Outdoor Corporation, the U.S.-based marketer of Teva, Ugg, Sanuk and other brands, did not see a successful third quarter. Net sales were slashed from $414.4 million last year to $376.4 million in the latest period, ended Sept. 30, while the gross margin went down from 49.0 percent to 42.3 ...
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Jarden’s outdoor segment slips by 7%
Jarden Corporation's Outdoor Solutions segment had sales of $657.6 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, down by 7.0 percent from the year-earlier period, due to declining sales for its snow sports brands in the wake of last winter's disappointing weather. The revenues for the segment fell by 8.0 ...
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Patagonia invests in coating technology
Patagonia has taken a 15 percent equity stake in AeonClad Coatings, a nanotechnology specialist, with whom it will develop water-repellent down garments. Patagonia first entered into a partnership with the firm, a portfolio company of Emergent Technologies, in 2010, when the two companies established an R&D laboratory in Austin, Texas, ...
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Haglöfs moves quickly into Chinese department stores
The Beijing Yuechengjunda trading company, the distributor of Haglöfs in China, opened five new points of sale in department stores for the brand in October. These shops are also the first ones in Chinese department stores for Haglöfs at all. They are located in five different cities in northeastern and ...
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Multi-sport retailers push for better relations with suppliers
At a panel discussion moderated by The Compass at the European Outdoor Forum earlier this month, three prominent sports retailers called for European outdoor companies to build up their brands more strongly and to form more productive relationships with their retail partners. They said they were searching for ways to ...
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Online retailers can share stocks with suppliers
The message on more flexible and productive relationships between suppliers and retailers was echoed by Philippe Wargnier, a French entrepreneur who worked previously for Go Sport. He was the founder of Spartoo, a pure French online retailer specializing in footwear, and he later set up Evioo, a hybrid “click-and-mortar” eyewear ...
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Sustainability takes center stage at forum
Joint action on sustainability has been moving rapidly forward since the matter was discussed at last year's European Outdoor Forum and in the context of other events in Europe and the U.S., driven by organizations such as the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), which was introduced to the executives in Annecy ...
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The core Russian outdoor market is small, but promising
As the inventories left over from last year's warm winter are weighing on the European outdoor market, many companies are all the more eagerly watching out for openings in emerging markets. At almost opposite ends of the climatic spectrum, Brazil and Russia were both described as complicated markets with significant ...
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Brazil: Another outdoor market with potential
The down jackets and warm underwear one might expect to sell in Russia will probably not do so well in Brazil, another large country with stupendous landscapes and an under-developed outdoor market. It was described at the EOF by Marina Franco, managing director of the Adventure Sports Fair, a fair ...
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Schmid calls on outdoor industry to work together
Rolf Schmid, chief executive of the Mammut Sports Group, urged other executives in the outdoor industry to take part more intensely in joint efforts to build a steady European market. He warned that suppliers could no longer “flood the market and hope that each of us will become a market ...
