Latest Headlines – Page 470
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Riddell Bell Buys Easton
Easton-Bell Sports, the new company coming out of the merger between Riddell Bell and Easton, will have sales of more than $600 million including some $240 million from Easton, the leading U.S. supplier of baseball bats, hockey and archery equipment. Riddell Bell had revenues of $328 million last year on ...
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Grout Replaces Lato As Icon’S Eurochief, Kettler Grows Under New Management
Giovanni Lato is leaving as European general manager of Icon Health & Fitness, based in Italy, after nearly 13 years in this position, citing differences with the U.S. management on strategic issues, but he is quitting on good terms. He will be looking at different options for his future career. ...
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Former Tubbs Executive Produces And Sells Tsl Snowshoes For The U.S. Market
Arnaud Claude, the former international sales manager of Tubbs, has set up a company in Williston, Vermont to manufacture and sell snowshoes. The move follows the relocation last year of Tubbs’ former local manufacturing operations to the big Chinese production facilities of the brand’s new owner, K2, along with the ...
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European Market Is Bullish As Ispo Gears Up To Break Records
Extremely cold winter weather boosted sales of protective clothing, skis and many other sports products in many parts of Europe over the past few weeks, depleting retailers’ inventories. Combined with the prospect of higher sales induced by the Winter Olympics in Turin and by the FIFA World Cup in Germany, ...
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Adidas’ Takeover Of Reebok Clears The Last Hurdles
The €3.1 billion takeover deal should be completed shortly, possibly by next Tuesday. Earlier this week, the European Commission gave an unconditional nod to the merger, which was first announced last Aug. 2, without requesting any divestitures of assets in spite of the strong market position that Adidas and Reebok ...
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Internally, The Change Of Guard At Nike Is Viewed Positively
Last Monday’s surprise announcement of Mark Parker’s nomination as Nike’s new chief executive has electrified the troops in America and in Europe. As reported in the last issue, Bill Perez agreed to resign after 13 months in the hot seat as he wasn’t fulfilling the expectations that Phil Knight, chairman ...
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Columbia Acquires Montrail
Columbia Sportswear has acquired Montrail, the outdoor footwear company based in Seattle, for $15 million. Scott Tucker, formerly Montrail’s president, is now the brand’s general manager. Brad Gebhard, Columbia’s vice president of footwear, will thus manage a third brand, in addition to Columbia and Sorel. According to SGI estimates, Montrail ...
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Deeluxe Forms A Partnership With C3
Deeluxe, the young Austrian brand of snowboard boots, has formed a strategic partnership with C3, a U.S. company set up in 2004 by Bob Gambi, former president of Northwave’s U.S. sales subsidiary. Deeluxe and C3 will basically distribute each other’s products in various markets on both sides of the Atlantic ...
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Exel Moves Assembly To China As Sports Division Struggles
Preliminary results for 2005 suggest that Exel Oy’s sports division was considerably weaker compared with the prior year, posting a reduced net profit of €1.6 million, down from €5.9 million in 2004. The Finnish company blamed major investments being undertaken in new markets such as North America, the Far East ...
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Brunotti Expands With New Brands And Products
The Brunotti group is enlarging the scope of its business with the launch of a new women’s fashion brand, called Shore, as well as an apparel line for its Magic Marine label of water sports equipment. The Dutch company’s expansion is part of a wider overhaul which has already led ...
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Field & Trek Restructures
This British family-owned sporting goods retailer, which had gone into administration last year, has re-emerged as a new streamlined company, called Field and Trek UK Ltd., owned and run by a new generation of managers. It now operates from only 11 locations, after closing four stores. Three of the four ...
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Intersport Italia Works Again With Nike
The cooperation will be resumed with the Fall/Winter 2006/07 collections and, for the moment, it will be focused on special make-ups and on “frame deal” items. Nike, which holds the highest market share in Italy as compared to any other sports brand, stopped working with Intersport, the largest network of ...
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Cisalfa Sport Completes Equity Increase
The shareholders of Cisalfa Sport, Italy’s largest integrated sporting goods retailer, have completed the latest capital increase agreed with their bankers, taking up the total equity to €54.3 million that ensures an equity/debt ratio of nearly 1:1. For the financial year ending Feb. 28, the Italian retail group is ...
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Callaway Shrinks Its Losses
In the 4th quarter ended Dec. 31, the golf company reduced its net losses by 34 percent to $18,664,000, from an increase of 7 percent to $154.5 million in revenues. The gross margin grew by 400 basis points to 31 percent. The quarterly sales increase - its highest since 1997 ...
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Life Fitness Improves Margins Strongly
With a large tax break, the parent company of Life Fitness, Brunswick Corporation, watched its net income jump by 50 percent to $88.3 million in the 4th quarter, ended Dec. 31. Total group sales rose by 12 percent to $1,489.5 million. In the same period, the Life Fitness division ...
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Vendors And Retailers Form A New Industry Association In Norway
Until now, the Norwegian sporting goods industry was represented only by Norspo, an association of 65 suppliers, which has been organizing a national trade show by the same name and producing the eponymous national trade publication. Seven major retail chains including the country’s largest sporting goods retailer, Gresvig, have now ...
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Splinter Group Of Intersport Sverige Seeks A Wider Range Of Brands
Raketsport, a chain of 13 Swedish sporting goods stores in Stockholm that means “Rocket Sport,” has caused a storm in the country’s industry by announcing that it is breaking away from Intersport Sverige after the Spring/Summer season The dissident group has developed an alternative shop concept, called Go, that will ...
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Blacks And Jd Are Doing Better Than Jjb
Pentland Group has raised by half a percentage point to 57.1 percent its controlling interest in The John David Group as the British sporting goods and fashion retailer reports a 4.7 percent sales increase on a same-store basis for the 8 weeks ended Jan. 7, with a 6.0 percent increase ...
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Rossignol Sells Hot And Hammer To Sevysa Sport
The Rossignol Group will continue to handle the manufacture of these two French brands of snowboards, which it had taken over several years ago, but it will concentrate its sales efforts in this category on the Rossignol brands and on those of Quiksilver, including Gnu, Libtech and Roxy. The deal ...
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Mayfair Denies Puma Sale To Nike
A new spate of unconfirmed rumors around a possible bid by Nike for Puma pushed the latter’s share price to a record of €260 last week, raising its market capitalization to an all-time high of €4.21 billion (=$5 billion). Mayfair subsequently denied any intention to sell its stake of 25.3 ...
