Amer Sports is reinforcing the structure of its sales operations in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region by establishing a new network of commercial directors, strategic account managers and field sales managers with specific functions. The Finnish-based group has also appointed a new high-caliber general manager for its so-called North Zone, Tero Tynkkynen, who took office last Monday.
Based at the group's headquarters in Helsinki, Tynkkynen is taking the place of Keith Wishart, who is leaving the group after four years spent in London to coordinate Amer's operations in the North Zone, comprising the U.K., Ireland and the Nordic countries. Amer will complement Tynkkynen's position with a dedicated country manager for the U.K. and Ireland, who has yet to be appointed.
Tynkkynen, 43, boasts a strong track record with Procter & Gamble, the same multi-brand group from which the current president and chief executive of Amer, Heikki Takala, came in April 2010. Tynkkynen was most recently P&G's commercial director for the Nordic countries.
The new sales structure being implemented at Amer for the EMEA region is a further step in the establishment since 2009 of a more integrated company, with Amer seeking more scale and synergy across the five “zones” of the EMEA region (North, Central, South, Russia and the rest of Europe), and stronger use of the full portfolio of their brands. All operations continue to report to Michael White, who has been general manager of Amer Sports Europe since 2008, based at Garching near Munich.
Under the new structure, Amer will move away from general sales managers doing a bit of everything and toward dedicated experts focused on a specific business unit or sales function. The transition is being managed by transferring some people internally to these new roles, and by recruiting new ones externally.
Amer Sports Europe started this process last October with the appointment of some new EMEA commercial directors for the eight specific business units within the group, such as Michael Bauer, Florian Marschner and Sven Radtke. Bauer, who was previously sales & marketing director for all Salomon products in Germany, is now responsible for Salomon footwear across the whole EMEA region. Radtke, former senior product manager with Intersport, has a similar role for Salomon apparel across the region. Marschner, former sales manager of Atomic in France, takes care of sports gear (bags, packs, hats, gloves, etc.) across all Amer brands in Europe.
In another more recent appointment, announced just yesterday, Neil Bradley is going to act as regional commercial director for Arc'Teryx in the EMEA. The Englishman spent the last four years with Haglöfs, first as U.K. country manager and then as global business manager for clothing, based in Stockholm. Effective on March 11, Bradley will basically take over the previous functions of Reto Tischhauser, who has been running Arc'teryx' European sales force for the last five years.
At the same time, three new types of sales managers – commercial managers, strategic account managers and field sales managers – are being appointed at the zonal or country level. As at the regional level, the local commercial managers are responsible for a specific business unit. Strategic account managers work with key retail accounts across the full portfolio of the group's business units, while field sales managers are in charge of running local teams of both in-house and independent sales reps.
Here again, positions are being shifted within the group and new people are being recruited from outside. For example, concurrently with Bradley's appointment, Eric Schierl will take on a newly created role as Zone South commercial manager for Arc'teryx, after two years as European sales manager for the brand's skiwear.
However, some are being let go as part of the process. One of the casualties of the new system is Jorge “Coke” Salvans, a Spanish executive who did a lot for the Salomon brand in his country and who had been responsible lately for Salomon snowboards, Wilson golf products and Suunto all over the Southern European zone. Company officials indicate that the group has been unable to find an appropriate role for this industry veteran, who wanted to stay in Spain.
The new matrix system implemented under White's management in Europe seems to have generated very good results. Across the group, sales grew in the EMEA region by 15 percent in 2010 and by nearly 9 percent in 2011. Although the final figures for 2012 are not out yet, it seems that they were positive as well, judging from the results for the first nine months of the year.
