Latest Headlines – Page 283
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Odlo’s owners acquire Didriksons
A Norwegian investment fund, Herkules IV, has signed an agreement to acquire the majority of the shares in Didriksons, the Swedish functional sportswear company. Described as Norway's leading private equity fund, Herkules IV already owns Odlo, and it wants to expand Didriksons' presence internationally. Odlo's current chief executive, Jonas Ottosson, ...
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New Lacoste generation takes over Fusalp
The rumor that we reported before Christmas was well founded. Two prominent members of the Lacoste family, Philippe Lacoste and his sister Sophie, have taken the control of Fusalp, the French sports apparel brand that became the leader in the European skiwear market in the 1970s. They have appointed Alexandre ...
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Bain takes over Canada Goose
Bain Capital has taken over control of Canada Goose on undisclosed conditions. It's an interesting move by Bain, the New York-based private equity firm that bought Jack Wolfskin from Johnson Outdoors in 2002 for €42 million and sold it for €93 million in 2005 to two other financial investors.Canada Goose, ...
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A more focused strategy for Intersport in Sweden
Intersport plans to reduce the range of products sold at its stores in Sweden by a further 25 percent in 2014, focusing on key product categories and working more closely with fewer suppliers. This is one of the strategic orientations that emerged from an interview recently conducted by the Sportfack ...
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Quiksilver explores new paths after big losses
Quiksilver has found a buyer for its Tony Hawk brand of skateboard apparel as part of its process of concentrating on its core business. The new owner is Cherokee, a company that sells a variety of apparel and footwear products and accessories under brands such as Sideout, Sideout Sport, Saint ...
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Police kill rioters in Cambodia
Workers' claims for better treatment in emerging countries reached a new climax on Jan. 3 as five demonstrators were shot dead and others injured by the military police in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, in the midst of ongoing strikes by garment workers. Coupled with the worker safety and ...
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Nike sues France’s Dragon Bleu over Venom and Hypervenom
Nike filed suit on Jan. 8 against a French sportswear company, Dragon Bleu, and its U.S. distributor, DBV Distribution, that have been using the Venum brand name on mixed martial arts clothing. The dispute, which is due to be heard in the Federal Court of Oregon, calls into question the ...
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Adidas cuts off smaller retailers
In the wake of Adidas' new row with Sports Direct over their right to sell Chelsea shirts (see issue vol. 24 n°40+41), widely publicized articles in Britain's Evening Standard and The Daily Telegraph report that both Adidas and Nike have decided to stop working with retailers in the U.K who ...
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Fesi outlines new priorities for action
The European Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (Fesi) has set three priorities for action in the new year under the chairmanship of Bruno Alves. He was unanimously elected as its new president last October on the basis of a new strategic program, steered by a new executive committee, that ...
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Blackstone invests in Crocs
Crocs' depressed share price jumped by more than 20 pecent after the announcement that an investment fund affiliated with Blackstone, one of the world's leading equity groups, has agreed to invest $200 million in the company by acquiring a new series of preferred shares that will represent about 13 percent ...
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Smarter sports bracelets appear on the market
The new entries by LG, Polar and Garmin in the area of wearable technologies are offering new functionalities as compared to the latest version of Nike's Fuelband and other bracelets recently released by the Swoosh and other sports brands including Adidas and Puma. They were among the highlights of last ...
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PrimaLoft announces its hybrid insulation
At least 20 brands have adopted PrimaLoft's new Performance Down Blend Insulation for use in their autumn/winter 2014/15 collections. Announcing this new hybrid insulation product ahead of the Ispo Munich show, where it will also present its new corporate image (see the next article in this issue), PrimaLoft stresses that ...
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PrimaLoft rebrands
Coinciding with its 25th anniversary and the launch of its new hybrid insulation technology (see the previous article), PrimaLoft is coming out with a new, sharpened corporate identity, an optimized branding framework and a stronger marketing staff, which will be showcased at the Ispo Munich fair at the end of ...
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Adidas has a row with SDI over Chelsea shirts
Sports Direct International (SDI) is at loggerheads with the Adidas Group over the German company's decision to quit supplying the leading British sports retailer with replica shirts of the Chelsea football team for the next season. Adidas said another dozen U.K. retailers had been removed from its customer list for ...
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SDI outperforms
The Chelsea jersey row was publicized by Sports Direct International (SDI) just as it was discussing another impressive performance for the half-year until Oct. 27, with soaring sales and underlying profits – even better than the company itself had predicted.The entire group's sales advanced by 23.5 percent to £1,345.1 million ...
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Nike’s European and Chinese rejigs pay off
The Nike group is enjoying a rebound in Western Europe and in China, two regions where it reorganized its business in the last two years. They both contributed to the ample gains achieved by the Nike brand for the three months until the end of November, in sales as well ...
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Intersport returns to profitability in Switzerland
Intersport PSC registered a consolidated turnover of 201.1 million Swiss francs (€164.2m-$224.6m) in the fiscal year to Sept. 30, 2013, down by 5.0 percent as compared to the previous year. The Swiss-based buying group returned to profitability, posting net profit of CHF0.9 million (€0.7m-$1.0m) against a loss of CHF3.3 million in ...
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Head may stop listingin Vienna
About 22 million shares of the company are publicly traded on stock exchanges in Vienna and New York. Head announced on Dec. 13 a conditional offer to repurchase up to 22,429,265 shares of its capital at a price of €1.90 each, in a process that may lead the company to ...
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Billabong maps out future strategies
Neil Fiske, who became the chief executive of Billabong International three months ago, outlined a seven-point turnaround plan covering brand management, product, marketing, multi-channel retailing, supply chain management, organization and financial discipline at the company's annual meeting earlier this month. It is similar in some ways to the plan that ...
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Rossignol gives a boost to its apparel
As indicated in the previous issue of SGI Europe, Rossignol is coming out with a very technical new line of compression garments for cross-country skiing. Called Infini Skiing, it consists of eight pieces of underwear and outerwear. It uses a dynamic gradient compression technology, patented by Rossignol, covering the optimization ...
