Latest Headlines – Page 442
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Accell Raises Net Income By 18.7%
Strong Dutch demand for both bicycles and fitness products lifted sales of the Accell Group by 9 percent for last year on a comparable basis. Adding two acquisitions, the Dutch company’s turnover jumped by 16 percent to €431.7 million. The group ended the year with an 18 percent rise in ...
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American Skate Shoe Company Is Well-heeled For Expansion
Heelys’ sales for the year ended Dec. 31 grew by 328 percent to $188.2 million while net profit climbed by 571 percent to $29,174,000. To capitalize on this enormous growth, the company has upped production capacity to 1.2-1.4 million pairs a month. Last year the company cranked out 6.2 million ...
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Payless Buys Airwalk’S Brand Owner
Payless ShoeSource, the big American shoe retail chain, announced plans to acquire Collective International, a privately held brand development, management and licensing company, for $91 million. The move is in line with the American retailer’s vertical integration strategy. If completed it would give it control of the Airwalk, Vision Street ...
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Pakistan, China Act On Workers’ Rights
The government of Pakistan is launching a program to transform the region of Sialkot, the world’s largest center for the production of footballs, into a modern industrial park offering improved working conditions and eliminating child labor. The government will assist the local industry to invest in new technologies and product ...
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Garant Develops In Sports, While Paving The Way For A Strategic Investor
Friedrich Metzeler, the court-appointed receiver of the insolvent Garant Schuh + Mode, confirmed last week his preference for a strategic investor as the new majority shareholder of the German buying group, but he and executives of Garant said they were in no hurry to make such a deal. The group’s ...
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Sports Direct Gives Some More Stunning Data As It Goes Public
Sports Direct International went public yesterday at 300 pence a share, a price close to the top of the intended range of 250-310 pence that gives Mike Ashley’s former Sports World International a whopping stock market capitalization of £2,160 million (€3,200m-$4,240m), more than three times the value of JJB Sports. ...
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Sports Direct Acquires A Dutch Chain
Sports Direct International has added one more country to the roster of its retail properties outside the UK by acquiring four stores in the Netherlands from Primo, a discount-oriented Belgian sports retailer. So far Sports Direct only had foreign retail interests in Ireland, Belgium and Slovenia. The stores ...
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Kesko Outperforms The Finnish Market
Kesko’s sales of sporting goods through its three main specialty channels – Intersport Finland, Kesport and Budget Sport – grew by 4.5 percent in 2006 and reached €257 million after VAT, with increases of 4.5 percent at Intersport and 1.6 percent at Kesport. That doesn’t include sales of sporting goods ...
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Adidas Splits Performance From Fashion
Adidas has reshuffled its management to split more clearly the functions between its sports performance and fashion divisions. Bernd Wahler, a former Adidas executive, has been appointed to the new position of chief marketing officer for Sport Performance. Hermann Deininger, a steady old hand at Adidas, is taking up the ...
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Big Shakedown For New Balance In Europe, With Migrations To Puma And Mizuno
Alistair Cameron has announced internally his departure as general manager of New Balance for Europe, the Middle East and Africa after many years in the post, where he had managed lately to give a certain impulse to the brand. Reports indicate that he had been under a lot of pressure ...
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Puma’S Profit Dropped Less Than Expected
The guidance set for the 2006 results was met by a hair as Puma ended up with a 33.3 percent jump in consolidated sales to €2,369.2 million, instead of the originally estimated increase of 35 percent. On an organic basis sales grew by 16.8 percent. The gross margin fell by ...
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Exel Seeks A Strategic Partner For Sports After A Bad Year
There are no negotiations in place, but the Finnish group began to discuss possible financial or distribution partnerships for what it now calls the Exel Sports Brands business with a few companies even before eliminating the costly domestic production apparatus of its sports operations, a process that is almost completed. ...
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Arena Stops Production In Europe, Expands Internationally
Arena plans to increase spending on advertising and promotion from 10 to 12 percent of sales after the closure on March 30 of its factory in Libourne, France. The company will reinvest the resulting cost savings of nearly 40 percent on the products made there in other actions intended to ...
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Head Improves Margins, But The Bottom Line Drops
Head’s revenues increased by 2.0 percent to €366.8 million for 2006, and its gross margin climbed to 39.3 percent, as compared to by 38.4 percent in 2005, with improvements in all the segments except in racquet sports. Before restructuring costs and gains on the sale of property, operating income went ...
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Amer Sees Better Margins On Flat Sales
The results of Amer Sports published in our last were on a pro forma basis. Those figures indicated a 4.4 percent for the year including the results of Salomon for the whole 2005 financial year, even though the acquisition took effect in October 2005. In actual terms, with Salomon accounted ...
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Karstadt Teams Up With Springer For E-commerce
Thomas Middelhoff, the former chief executive of the Bertelsmann publishing house who has been steering the turnaround of Karstadt Quelle, likes to make big alliances to help restructure the company of which is he is now chairman and chief executive. Shortly after announcing its decision to get rid of the ...
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Billabong Reports Big Growth In Europe And The Americas
Sales rose by 26 percent to $610.7 million Australian dollars (€366.7m-$483.6m) and net profit increased by14 percent to A$90.5 million (€54.3m-$71.7m) for the six months ended Dec. 31. Excluding the acquisition of Nixon, which boosted especially Billabong International’s turnover in North America, sales rose by about 19 percent overall. ...
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Iconix Buys Danskin
Iconix Brand Group is making the third acquisition if a brand in six months, this time for Danskin, the American fitness, dance and yoga and apparel brand for women. Iconix has agreed to pay $70 million for the brand, plus $15 million in cash or stock, for Danskin’s intellectual property. ...
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2007 Will Mark A Transition For K-swiss
K-Swiss has a well-known new testimonial - Anna Kournikova – and it will use her image in television and in advertisements in fashion and lifestyle magazines. K-Swiss is hoping that the attractive Russian tennis player will attract more consumers aged between 13 and 30, and bring the brand back to ...
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Mike Ashley’S Sports Direct Lays Out Strong Financials As It Readies Feb. 27 Ipo
Sports Direct International, formerly known as Sports Soccer and then as Sports World International, is set to go public on the London Stock Exchange on Feb. 27, offering 40 percent of Mike Ashley’s shares at a price of between 250 and 310 pence a share. This would value his company ...
