Active Sportswear Int. is beginning to take the export business seriously now that its leadership on the Danish market for badminton and children’s activewear is consolidated, respectively under the Forza and Color Kids brands. The new objective is to push exports of these two lines up to 50 percent of their turnover within the next three years.
Color Kids stands for a big and relatively functional medium-priced line of sports apparel that is offered rather prominently in most of the 300-400 sporting goods stores operating in Denmark, targeting children between the ages of 1 and 10. Priced just below Yonex, Forza is a specific line of badminton clothing, shoes, racquets and shuttlecocks whose market share is said to be approaching 50 percent in Denmark, where badminton is as popular as handball.
Active Sportswear, a company whose sales grew to the equivalent of €22 million in 2005, also markets a classical line of rainwear and fleecewear, Kilmanock, and a brand of basic shell suits, T-shirts and shorts, Faccio. It is the Danish distributor of Head, New Balance and Grendene, helping to keep its turnover relatively high in a relatively small market like Denmark, but the group’s management realizes that its biggest growth potential lies under its own labels abroad.
The company showed for the second time last month at the ISPO fair in Munich, where it struck some interesting contacts with potential foreign distributors and agents for its various brands. Active Sportswear’s various lines have gained a permanent presence in the Brussels Trademart, operated by a recently hired sales agent of Active Sportswear. Since last March 1, they are offered in Norway and Sweden by a total of three salesmen directly employed by the company.
Active Sportswear already had some clients in other countries as well, such as Iceland, Slovenia and the Baltic states, but last year it went into a higher gear. Last August it hired an export manager for Color Kids and its various other clothing lines, Brian Sörensen. The next month it appointed an export manager for Forza, Martin Lundgaard. Both have been busy setting up international networks of agents and distributors.
Sörensen, who previously worked as a manager in a chain of stores affiliated with Intersport, got some orders at a recent sales meeting of Intersport Great Britain. Lundgaard, a 2-time All-England Champion in men’s badminton doubles, has already hired distributors for Forza in UK, France, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Austria, and he has started negotiations with a potential distributor in Germany. Lundgaard, who was previously sponsored by Yonex, continues to play badminton on the highest level on the side and just recently won titles in both the All England and China Masters series.
Forza and Color Kids continue to grow strongly. Sales of Forza equipment and clothing jumped by 50 percent over the past couple of years to an annual level of about €5 million, but about 70 percent of the turnover is still in Denmark. The revenues of Color Kids reached last year the equivalent of €5.1 million with the delivery of 565,200 pieces – a fantastic achievement in a country where there are only 745,000 children up to the age of 10. Exports represented only 10 percent of sales, but sales in Norway went up by 70 percent. With total annual sales of about €4 million, Kilmanock is another major contributor to the group’s revenues, and it is said to be the best-selling brand of rainwear in Denmark.
Active Sportswear has two joint ventures in Hong Kong and China with local interests for the sourcing of its apparel ranges, including a clothing license with New Balance. The Color Kids line has been using Tomen’s breathable membranes for a while, and the Fall/Winter 2006/07 collection features for the first time some models with Outlast coatings. It also includes a “Lite Save” jacket with a blinking light tucked away into the sleeve to signal the child’s presence at night. Sales of the Spring/Summer 2006 collection are 39 percent up on a year ago, thanks in part to the introduction of a small line of shoes and boots, which will be expanded in the future.
The Color Kids brand is heavily promoted in Denmark, explaining in part its high market penetration. Active Sportswear sends its Color Kids catalog out to about 700,000 households twice a year. A Color Kids jump castle tours the country, giving away popcorn. The company is inaugurating this month a new Color Kids shop-in-shop system, with the goal of 50 units in place within one year and a half.
Active Sportswear took on the New Balance brand for Denmark and Iceland back in 1996, and its sales team was recently elected by the American brand as the best one in Europe. In 2000 it became the distributor of Grendene’s Rider brand of sandals for all of Scandinavia and for Finland. Three years later it signed up as the Danish distributor of Head’s ski equipment and racquet sports products. Together with Forza, Head is in effect part of Active Sportswear’s racquet sports division. With sales of more than 6,000 Head racquets a year, the company claims the leadership in Denmark’s relatively weak tennis market. With annual sales of about 100,000 pairs of New Balance shoes, it is #2 after ASICS in running.
The company claims a high degree of service. Its 4,500-square-meter warehouse can handle up to 150,000 packages a year. It has 15 fully employed salesmen as part of its staff of 55 persons. Kim Nielsen is the finance director. A product development manager is about to be appointed.
Active Sportswear was founded in 1989 by a couple of young athletes including John Mark Jensen, a former member of the Danish national handball team who is the company’s administrative director. He was joined a year later by Mark Christiansen, a professional badminton player who still acts as the sales director. They both own stakes in the company, but their shareholdings have been somewhat diluted over the years following the entry of new stakeholders including Harald Nielsen, a famous football striker and Italian first division top scorer who played for the Roma and Bologna football teams in the 1960s, and two investment funds, Dansk Kapitalanlaeg and Erhvervsinvest Nord.
