Brooks Running has set up a new Spanish subsidiary in the Barcelona Moda Centre, after working for several years with a sales agency, Sigma Sport. The new Spanish operation, which also covers Portugal, will be run by Dan Rickfelder, who has been with Brooks for almost two decades. He was dispatched to Spain in November 2013 to prepare the transition.
The new investment completes Brooks' gradual takeover of the distribution in the main European markets. Brooks has already been in control of the German-speaking markets since 2002, when it set up its first European hub in the city of Münster under Heiner Ibing. It set up a subsidiary in Italy in 2012 and one in France in 2014, just after it moved its European office into the Olympic Stadium of Amsterdam, where Under Armour has its European hub as well.
Brooks EMEA is run since January 2014 by David Bohan, who has been with Brooks since 2001, first as chief financial officer and then as chief operating officer. Another Brooks veteran, Hamish Stewart, moved to Europe at about the same time to take charge of the U.K., where the brand has been in control of the distribution for about five years.
While it has a market share of less than 10 percent in Europe, Brooks boasts the second, third or fourth position in the performance running category in the major European countries. It works closely with Intersport in Germany and the Nordic countries.
It no longer has an exclusive deal with Stadium in Scandinavia. While covering the running specialty trade, it also has strong non-exclusive relations with key retailers such as Runners Point and Sport Scheck in Germany, Go Sport in France, Cisalfa and Sportland in Italy, and El Corte Inglés in Spain.
As previously reported, Brooks' European sales grew marginally last year. According to Bohan, the main reason was the roll-out of a more selective distribution strategy in order to build up the brand's image. The European turnover is expected to go up again by a high single digit this year, getting closer to the $100 million threshold, including sales of its high-performance sports bras. It was last reported at $64.5 million in 2013.
While investing in social media, where it addresses women in particular, Brooks acted last month as main sponsor of the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam, where it supplied shoes and apparel to more than 2,300 volunteers and journalists.
In the U.S., meanwhile, Brooks has boosted its global footwear business with the recruitment of a senior design director of global footwear, Gerald Kuhtz, and the promotion of Patrick Pons de Vier to senior vice president of global footwear.
Kuhtz spent 18 years as a designer at Adidas. Pons de Vier, a former brand manager for Salomon, where he also spent 18 years, joined Brooks in the spring of 2015 as head of global footwear.
Kuhtz started his career as an advanced designer in the Adidas Futures Team in 1998. He became a footwear designer there two years later. He concentrated on the golf sector in 2002, designing shoes, accessories and packaging for TaylorMade-Adidas Golf, where he became global design director in 2005 and global creative director three years later. Since January 2012, he has been vice president of football design at Adidas.
