Victor Duran, the forward-looking executive who replaced Franz Julen at the helm of Intersport International Corp. (IIC) at the beginning of 2017, has stepped down as chief executive of the international retail organization with immediate effect. IIC's board has appointed a 52-year-old Dutch executive, Steve Evers, to take his place early next year. Martin Künzli, the group's chief financial officer and deputy CEO, will assume the role in the interim.
IIC said that Duran's departure had been mutually agreed, adding that Evers' nomination will strengthen the cooperation between the board and the executive management of the Swiss-based group. Evers entered the sporting goods sector in 2010 when he became a board member of Euretco Holding, the leading retail service organization in the Netherlands.
Evers was appointed chief operating officer of Euretco after its merger in 2012 with its biggest competitor, Intres, the local licensee for Intersport. After Euretco's acquisition by the German EK cooperative in 2015, he was made responsible for the group's retail development in the sports, fashion living, media and DIY sectors.
Under his leadership, the Dutch Intersport and The Athlete's Foot developed into one of the driving forces for the implementation of the Intersport 2.0 strategy launched by Duran in areas like multi-channel retailing, Intersport's new store concept and the implementation of category management, plus the launch of TAF in the Netherlands and Belgium and the reinforcement of the private label business.
Like Duran, Evers accumulated experience in an international environment. Prior to joining Euretco, he worked between 1990 and 2001 in several management roles for the Dutch-based Hagemeyer Group in various Latin American countries.
Jussi Mikkola, chairman of IIC, praised Duran for the numerous initiatives that he has taken in the past two years by developing and launching the new Intersport strategy including the launch of a new digital omni-channel platform, which is now being adopted in a growing number of countries, a new data exchange platform, a new branding concept, the implementation of category management and of a new Intersport store concept.
Many of these initiatives have started to bear fruits like the addition of new key account agreements with leading sports brands and the development of seasonal packages in the areas of running, training, outdoor and winter sports. High conversion rates have been achieved in the 90-plus stores that have adopted the new store concept so far, and Intersport's business in China has doubled. On the other hand, not all of the national Intersport organizations have been moving in the same direction or at the same pace, creating big tensions inside the group.
For Duran, a multi-lingual executive who came from Amer Sports, the issue may have been complicated by the fact that the transformation process has been taking place in the context of a complex voluntary group where many different cultures co-exist. On the other hand, resignations have also taken place at the top of vertically integrated sports retailers that are going through a similar transformation process like Decathlon, where Mathieu Leclercq quit the chairmanship in the summer, and XXL ASA (see the following article in this issue).
