Bergans Fritid is going even further than that by setting up an office in Hamburg, Germany that will steer the fast-growing distribution operations of the Norwegian sports apparel brand throughout most of Europe. They will be led by Peter Carati, former export manager at Hilleberg, the Swedish tent company, who joined the company’s new Hamburg office in June to act as its new export manager. The German company will have a warehouse that will be used by Bergans for all shipments in the European Union to avoid customs issues in Norway, which is not a member of the EU.
With only 10-15 percent of its sales outside its home market, Bergans previously coordinated its foreign sales efforts through another export manager, Hans J. Stengel, using an office in Sweden to handle customs clearance. Based at the company’s head office in Norway, Stengel, who joined the company in2001, will continue to take care of the Nordic countries and of some other European markets such as Spain or the Benelux countries, but the structure may change again as the company tries to defined the best possible way to expand its footprint in Europe. Bergans still has a license in the USA.
Over the last years Bergans has been distributed mainly in Germany through Scandic Outdoors, which sells Woolpower and Trangia as well, but Bergans is taking over its own sales subsidiary in Germany. The managers of Scandic Outdoors were given a minority stake in this subsidiary, in exchange for transferring some of their employees to the new Bergans GmbH.
The move comes after the more recent launch of Bergans in several new European markets. After its introduction in Austria and Switzerland last year, the Norwegian brand has signed new deals for Italy and France. New markets contributed to a sales increase of 39 percent to 294 million NOK (€37.0m-$50.7m) for the group in 2006, but Bergans also continued to grow at a heady pace in existing markets, from Norway to Sweden, Germany and the Benelux.
Judging from current sales trends, the company’s turnover should get over the threshold of 400 million NOK (€50.3m-$69.0m) this year. To cope with the growth, its main sourcing partner in the Far East has built new production facilities and doubled the number of its employees to 1,000 people.
Another important Norwegian outdoor clothing brand, Norrøna, is also taking over the distribution in Germany. Its long-time distributor in the country, Iceolutions, is pulling out of the business. Such a switch has already occurred in Switzerland, where Norrøna has ended a distribution agreement with Sevysa for that market. The Norwegian company makes other similar moves before it has strengthened its position in existing European markets that it has entered in the last few years, but it will conduct a test in the USA next year by selling through backcountry.com, a specialist webstore.
Meanwhile, Norrøna is moving beyond its technical outdoor products to add a leisure range called Norrøna /29, along with cycling outerwear. The move consecrates the brand’s already implemented shift away from the conservative approach of the past to the use of brighter colors and more daring designs, which helped the company to book a 16 percent increase in the Scandinavian markets last year, in spite of tough market conditions.
Adding even stronger sales increases in other markets, Norrøna’s total sales went up by about 29 percent to 128 million NOK (€16.1m-$22.1m) in 2006. The expansion looks set to continue this year. Sell-in rates jumped by nearly 70 percent in Germany this year enjoyed steady growth in Switzerland, France and Spain (more on both companies and on the Norwegian outdoor market in SGI’s Northern European market research report).
