Zumiez plans to open about 57 new stores in 2015, including six Blue Tomato units in Europe. The first two new Blue Tomatoes opened in Cologne and Trier earlier this year, and they are being followed by two others in Vienna and Bonn. In the longer term, after a couple of years, the U.S.-based action sports retailing group intends to extend the coverage of Blue Tomato's physical stores outside Austria and Germany in order to establish a pan-European omni-channel capability.
The group ended the past year with a total of 604 stores - 550 in the U.S., 35 in Canada and 19 in Europe, equally divided between Austria and Germany. Besides these physical stores, the blue-tomato.com web store, which is accessible in 14 languages, is selling more than 100,000 products from 400 brands in 60 countries.
Blue Tomato's sales grew by more than 32 percent to the equivalent of $64.4 million during the financial year ended last Jan. 31, in spite of a tough winter season, and they would have grown by a further $5.9 million in terms of dollars without the depreciation of the euro. Zumiez' total sales increased by 12.0 percent to $811.6 million, including a rise of 14.0 percent in the fourth quarter. The net income declined by 6.0 percent to $43.2 million partly due to payments related to the acquisition of Blue Tomato three years ago.
