Alain Brouhard, managing director of Adidas Greece, will assume additional responsibilities as managing director of Adidas Italia, starting in August, and his position is understood to be final. Umberto Pieraccioni, who became managing director of the Italian subsidiary in April 2003, will become general manager of Legabasket, the Italian national basketball league.
In Italy, Brouhard will be aided by Winand Krawinkel, currently director of business development for the EMEA region, who will act as marketing director of Adidas Italia for sports performance and style. He joined Adidas in May 2006 after gaining experience at Electrolux, Samsung, Sony and FIFA. Jean-Michel Granier will continue as sales director of Adidas Italia, in charge of key accounts, sales field functions and franchised stores.
For Brouhard, who first joined Adidas in 2002 as vice president of commercial operations for Region Europe, this permanent new Italian assignment could be paired with a more substantial switch at Adidas, as the company is considering the establishment of a new entity supervising the West Balkans as well from Athens. For the time being, only Adidas’ distributors in Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo are supervised from the Greek sales office. Instead Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro are covered by distributors who report to Adidas’ emerging markets unit in Dubai. The strong and profitable company-owned operation in Bulgaria and the one in Romania are supervised by Adidas Turkey.
For the immediate future, Adidas is preparing to shift the supervision of its Cyprus subsidiary from Turkey to Greece. Until early 2008, Adidas Cyprus will continue to be supervised by Adidas Turkey, but the company has come to the conclusion that this arrangement was not judicious, since the Greek Cypriots who make up by far the largest part of the country’s consumption are at loggerheads (if not at war) with Turkey.
Brouhard, a French executive close to Roland Auschel, senior vice president of Adidas EMEA, initiated a major turnaround of Adidas’s Iberian subsidiairy in May 2005. He moved from Spain to Greece at the end of last year to build up a more homogenous business in the fast-moving Southeast European region. He started by tightening the company’s grip on its operations in Greece, which are currently represented by a 50-50 joint venture with the Antoniades brothers, who were Adidas’ former distributors in the country. Last March, Alex Antoniades relinquished his position as chairman of Adidas Hellas, to be succeeded by Brouhard. With their own company, Hellenic Flame, the Antoniades continue to operate 20 mono-brand stores for Adidas in Greece, along with 3 stores under the Sport 2000 banner and other footwear-related activities.
Aside from Adidas, many other sporting goods companies are taking a more regional approach to the distribution of their products in the promising economies of Southeastern Europe, which we have started to analyze as part of a wide-ranging pan-European market research program. Other international or local retailers and suppliers are orchestrating their development in the Balkans or in parts of the region - mostly from Greece or from Slovenia, but in some cases also from Serbia or Romania.
As previously reported, Adidas will also take over control of Reebok’s distribution in Greece from January 2008. Until then it will remain in the hands of Mikis Papakyriakou, a prominent Greek distributor whose sister Sophie holds the rights for Reebok in Cyprus until 2009, along with several other brands.
