Latest News & Analysis – Page 296
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New Sales Structure For Timberland And Smartwool In Europe
Timberland’s wholesale and retail operations will be steered by three managers who will be in charge of different regions of Europe, while taking care of their national markets. They will continue to report to Richard O’Rourke, the company’s European general manager based in the U.K.. The British country manager, ...
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Coleman Moves Head Office From France Across The Rhine
Confirming a rumor, Coleman Europe said that it is preparing to transfer its European head office from France to Germany at the beginning of next year, in a move that should involve the transfer of about twenty leading European executives, chiefly dealing with marketing and finance. It may also involve ...
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Gore Acquires Its Japanese Operations Entirely
W.L. Gore & Associates is transferring its Japanese operations, Japan Gore-Tex Inc. (JGI), into a wholly owned subsidiary. Founded in 1974, JGI had been a joint venture between Gore and Junkosha, a local manufacturer of electronic products. Both parties were holding 50 percent of the stakes. Most recently, JGI had ...
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A Czech-hungarian Outdoor Alliance Might Be On Its Way
Rock Point, the Czech retailer and distributor, has appointed András Sárközy as its new chief executive. This move is particularly interesting because Sárközy is and continues to be the owner of Mountex, a leading Hungarian retailer and distributor. Sárközy confirmed his appointment at the top of the Czech company and ...
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Outdry Wins Reebok Veteran As A New Partner
OutDry, the young Italian brand of laminate technology for footwear and gloves, has a new shareholder. André Bruère, who has sealed a capital/equity deal with Nextec, the company that markets the OutDry membrane He is managing partner of Referencia International, a private equity firm focusing on companies at an early ...
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Furrer Plucks Wild Roses
Gregor Furrer & Partner Holding has bought Wild Roses, the Swiss women’s-focused outdoor apparel brand, from the Italian company CDA, for an undisclosed price. Gregor Furrer & Partner Holding, a Swiss company that serves as an exclusive distributor for a number of key brands in Switzerland, will present its first ...
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Twinner Launches An Outdoor Banner
Twinner, a French buying group for sporting goods retailers, is launching a label called Montagne Authentique for members located in winter sports resorts. Stores carrying this label will distinguish themselves with a technical offering and an eco-friendly attitude: they will recycle all of their skis and snowboards; use eco-friendly products, ...
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Casual Shoe Retailers Discover The Outdoor Market
Ariston-Nord-West-Ring, Europe’s leading buying group for shoe retailers and the parent company of Sport 2000 Germany, is serious about getting into the outdoor footwear market. At GDS in Düsseldorf, the big trade show for mainly casual shoe retailers, the group revealed its plans to organize an in-house show dedicated to ...
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Blacks Will Close More Stores
Blacks Leisure, the leading British outdoor retailer, is preparing to close 89 loss-making stores and to axe another 50 jobs at its head office in Northampton, as part of the clean-up demanded by its banker. Blacks reported last month that it was about to breach one of its ...
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The British Oia Is On Its Way To Being Incorporated
The U.K’s Outdoor Industries Association has set the stage to incorporate its organization as a Limited company under British law, although it plans to continue as a member-driven organization. At the OTS show in Stoneleigh last week, Louise Ramsay, the newly appointed managing director of the OIA, explained that the ...
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Ots Ignores Crisis And Trend Against National Trade Shows
All Britain has been shaken by a heavy economic crisis. All Britain? The newspapers must have forgotten about the good people of Stoneleigh, a small village outside Coventry in the English Midlands where the Outdoor Trades Show took place from Sept. 28 through 30. OTS, which was held for the ...
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Bleak Outlook For Blacks Leisure
Blacks Leisure has been given a two-month deadline to come up with a convincing restructuring plan as it warned earlier this week that it could breach one of its bank covenants at the end of September. The leading British outdoor retailer has already tipped Sandcity, a retail business in its ...
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Icelandic Outerwear Brands Are In A Good Mood Despite The Crisis
Icelandic outerwear brands say that they are in reasonable shape one year after the Nordic country’s economy collapsed as the leading three banks of Iceland went into receivership in late September/early October of 2008. All of them, Kaupþing, Landsbanki and Glitnir were subsequently nationalized by the government of this very ...
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Peak Performance Shines In Ic Companys’ Results
Peak Performance continued to expand its sales for the financial year ended on June 30, up by 5 percent to 941 million Danish kroner (€126.4m-$187.0m), as reported by the Swedish brand’s Danish owner, IC Companys. Underlying growth was even more impressive, reaching about 10 percent in local currencies. This ...
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Columbia Wants To Reap Rewards Of Technology In Products
Columbia Sportswear is turning to more technical features in its garments that can be easily understood by the end user, to help it increase its average sales prices, gain market share and create more value for the consumer. Technology is included in 80-85 percent of the brand’s 2010 product line, ...
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Scarpa Is Friendly To The Planet
As part of its “Planet Friendly” initiative, Scarpa has launched five models of trail-runners and light hikers for next spring that contribute to the program’s goal of reducing the carbon footprint of this Italian company. The new shoes – the trail-runners “Pursuit” and “Pursuit GTX”; the “Epic”, a hiking shoe ...
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Backpacking In The U.S. Grows Double-digit, Report Says
The Outdoor Recreation Participation Report that we wrote about in the last issue (focused on camping) is out, and some new findings have been revealed. In 2008, 48.6 percent of Americans spent some leisure time in the outdoors, for a total of 11.16 billion trips, whether near home, to a ...
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Berghaus Moves Even Deeperinto The Far East
We have frequently reported over the last couple of months that Berghaus is serious about conquering the Far East. After recent distribution deals in China, Hong Kong and South Korea, the Brits now add Taiwan to their list and intensify their presence in the Japanese market. In Japan, ...
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Columbia Intensifies Its Efforts In Scandinavia And The Baltics
The American brand has hired new managers whose job it will be to move Columbia and Sorel fast forward in the Baltic and Nordic countries. Columbia has hired Petri Raatikainen as new manager in charge of overseeing the business in the region. The position itself is new. Raatikainen was ...
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Genfoot Will Help Aku In The U.S.
The first synergies from the deal between the Cook and Bordin families are coming to the fore. Genfoot America, the Montreal-based company behind Kamik, has set up a dedicated operation to distribute trekking and outdoor footwear by Italy’s Aku throughout North America. The Canadian company services some 5,000 doors in ...
