The Belgian-based Cortina Group, one of the biggest European trading companies in the footwear business, has acquired full ownership of Patrick Holding from a Danish investor who had already sold it 50 percent of the shares last June. It has also taken over full ownership of Leomil Europe, a Dutch licensor of children’s characters, after setting up a joint venture with its previous owner, Albert Milhado. The terms of these two deals were not disclosed.
Mattias Vanderschueren has been appointed as general manager of Patrick Holding and as joint chief executive of its French subsidiary, Patrick Europe, where he will share responsibilities with Charles Beneateau. Mattias is the son of Dirk Vanderschueren, chairman of Cortina, and he has already gained experience within the group by heading up its buying department and its development division.
Based in Denmark, Patrick Holding holds the rights for most of Europe and Africa to the trademark and trade name of this venerable brand of sports shoes, whose history goes back to 1892. The UK and Ireland, where the British sporting goods chain JJB Sports owns the Patrick name and uses it widely as an exclusive label, are excluded. South Africa, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco are the exceptions in Africa. The rights to the Middle East were sold to a Danish pension fund in 2000 and are not included into the deal.
There will be no immediate changes in the distribution or the positioning of the Patrick brand, which has been going down-market in the last few years. The brand, whose turnover could not be determined, will continue to offer shoes for football along with other more lifestyle-inspired products. Cortina will contribute its strong expertise in Asian sourcing and logistics to the development of the Patrick brand. Product development will be carried out inside Cortina, with help from free-lancers.
These investments are part of a diversification into the branded footwear business that Cortina has undertaken since the lifting of European quotas on imports of shoes from China a couple of years ago. Besides setting up FLA Europe, a provider of turnkey customs clearance, warehousing, shipment and billing solutions for foreign companies on the European market, Cortina launched a line of safety footwear, called Safety Jogger, and signed cooperation agreements with SGA Vanneste for the Sprox brand of women’s shoes. Cortina’s website says the company has an annual turnover of Thanks in part to acquisitions, Cortina's turnover reached nearly €200 million in 2007, and the company now handles over 25 million pairs of shoes of all kinds annually (more in Shoe Intelligence)
