Latest Headlines – Page 395
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Profits Drop For Peakperformance's Parent, Prompting Action In Spain And China
First-half results are in for IC Companys, and while it managed to eke out a 1 percent increase in sales to 2,041 million Danish kroner (€273.9m-$373.2m), the operating profit dropped by a third to DKK 202 million (€27.1m-$36.9m). The unfavorable market was blamed for the decline, and comparable store sales ...
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Pgb Gets The Global Calvin Klein Golf Apparel License
Premium Golf Brands (PGB), the new Irish-based golf distributor, has expanded its European licensing deal with Calvin Klein Golf into a multi-year global licensing agreement. PGB was formed in January 2008 after a tie-up between Eurostyle, an existing Irish golf distribution business; Grahame Jenkins, former managing director of Ashworth ...
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New Licensees For Callaway And Ping Golf Clothing
Simon McGuigan is setting up a company in the United Kingdom to take over in a few weeks’ time the European apparel license for Ping in Europe. The golf brand’s European license has been in the hands of Umbro for several years but Ping decided to switch after the U.K. ...
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Reshuffling In Golf Distribution
Several leading golf brands are reshuffling their distribution in the French market, which is badly suffering from heavy discounts, appalling weather and the economic downturn. The number of games played in the last months has declined sharply compared with last year, and some of the tourist-oriented French courses reported drops ...
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Erke Makes Strides In Europe
Erke continues to invest in international expansion after another year of speedy growth. The rise in its global sales slowed down to 28.2 percent in the last quarter but the Chinese company still ended the year with a sales increase of about 41.2 percent to nearly 2.9 billion renminbi (€313.4m-$425.4m). ...
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Olympics Boosted Li Ning's Results
Li Ning Company’s revenues jumped by 53.8 percent to 6,690.1 million renminbi (€722.9m-$981.4m), and other results followed a similar pattern. Gross profit grew by 54.6 percent to RMB 3,220.4 million (€348.0m-$472.4m), while operating profit surged by 57.4 percent to RMB 960.2 million (€103.8m-$140.9m). The Chinese company’s earnings before depreciation and ...
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Quiksilver Hints At Possible Disposals
Quiksilver’s managers added fuel to speculation about the sale of DC Shoes or even the Roxy brand, as they confirmed that they were considering the divestment of assets to improve the group’s liquidity position and its capital structure. However, European banks have agreed to postpone until the end of June ...
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O’Neill Loses Ceo As It Prepares For The Future
O’Neill managers were dismayed to read in a Dutch newspaper last week that the company’s interim chief executive, Tom Heidman, was leaving to join a big food retailing group. Heidman is the chief executive of Logo International, the Dutch apparel company that acquired near-global rights for O’Neill about two years ...
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Adidas Group Predicts Weaker Results
After an outstanding performance in 2008 (see separate article), the Adidas Group warned last week that its sales, gross margin and earnings per share were all bound to drop this year. Both the Adidas and Reebok brands suffered sizeable declines in their order backlogs at the end of last year, ...
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Buoyant Adidas Again Makes Up For A Weak Reebok
The group’s dire projections for 2008 come after another quarter in which Adidas had to make up for dropping sales at Reebok. As a whole, the company’s revenues climbed by 6 percent to €2.574 billion for the last three months ...
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Reebok’S Integration In Europe Moves Into Phase Two
While they are way below those achieved by the Adidas brand, Reebok’s profit margins improved significantly in Europe last year, and the process is bound to continue in the next couple of years through a number of new initiatives that should also have a positive impact on revenues. The ...
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Foot Locker’S Sales Fall, Quarter Ends With Loss
Fourth-quarter sales for Foot Locker dropped by 11 percent to $1,317 million, with a 7.3 percent decline in comparable store sales. The rate of decline was 7 percent on a currency-neutral basis. The gross margin increased, though, rising by 3.3 percentage points to 28.7 percent, reflecting less promotional activity. ...
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K-swiss Closes French Sales Office, European Sales Plummet
K-Swiss has decided to throw in the towel in the French market, where it has not been able to reach the intended economies of scale in spite of big investments on its classics line over the past three and a half years. Renaud Barillon, who was running the subsidiary, is ...
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Lotto Grows More Softly
According to preliminary sales figures, Lotto Sport Italia managed a small increase in direct and wholesale-equivalent sales to €307 million last year, compared with €300 million in 2007, in spite of a decline in the second half that is fully attributable to the global economic crisis. In the first half ...
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Nautilus’ Loss Shrinks As It Cuts Costs
Nautilus’ turnover plunged by 37 percent for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, winding up at $92.3 million. However, the net loss narrowed, at $41.2 million versus a loss of $45.7 million for the previous year’s quarter. Operating loss fell by less than 1 percent to $47.3 million. The figures ...
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Huge Sales Increase For A Chinese Company, Anta
Revenues for the year ended Dec. 31 increased by a staggering 54.8 percent to 4,626.8 million renmimbi (€532.6m-$677.3m) for Anta Sports Products, a Chinese company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets sportswear. Gross profits were also up by 84.9 percent to RMB 1,848.6 million (€212.8m-$270.6m). Footwear and apparel ...
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A Great Winter Brings Cross-country Back Into Business
The cross-country ski market has had a couple of bad years. Just as Nordic sports seemed ready to skyrocket in popularity in some countries because of a tendency toward health-and wellness-related sports, especially in the center of the continent, the snow just would not fall. A potential run on the ...
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Taking A Closer Look At European Boardsports
Surf-related or surf-inspired products were bought by 30.6 percent of the European population at large last year and by 54.8 percent of those who practice summer and winter boardsports. Forty percent of the people who live in coastal areas are consumers of surf products, whereas they make up only two ...
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Sailing For Women, A New Market For A Snow Sports Firm
Morpho, a French brand of snowshoes, won Ispo’s BrandNew Awards for its women’s sailing pants, developed under the company’s accessory brand Sailing for Women. The sailing apparel market is a relatively difficult one, with very few players, because the clothing is highly technical. Morpho’s sailing gear has padding in areas ...
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Chinese Market’S Contraction Leads To Tension Between Retailers And Brands
Heralded as a welcome bonanza in connection with last summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing, the Chinese sporting goods market is heading for an angry clash between international brands and their retail partners, after weak sell-throughs in the second half of last year. Sitting on large inventories and facing a slowdown ...
