The European Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (Fesi) has announced the resignation of its president, Luca Businaro, and its secretary general, Alberto Bichi, ahead of the general assembly of the organization, which is due to be held in Brussels on Nov. 23-24. Their resignation follows a meeting of Fesi's executive board, which has been working on a new strategy for the organization that will be submitted to the assembly for approval.
The assembly is also expected to approve the election of Frank Dassler as president of Fesi and of Jérôme Pero, Fesi's long-time director of policy, as the new secretary general of the organization, supported by Youri Mercier as deputy secretary general. Pero, 36, has been working at Fesi for ten years, effectively acting as Bichi's right-hand man. Mercier joined Fesi a year ago as public policy manager.
Dassler, who has agreed to step in as acting president on an interim basis, said in a public statement that Fesi will continue the modernization work initiated by Businaro while moving from being a “reactive” lobbying force to a “proactive, agenda-setting actor.” Businaro, who had been unanimously re-elected as president at Fesi's general assembly in Rome last November, has agreed to remain on Fesi's board while continuing to run his company, Novation, and as president of the Italian sporting goods industry association, Assosport.
Dassler, who is also Adidas' general counsel, served as president of Fesi between 2010 and 2013 and as president of the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI) between 2014 and the beginning of this year. He was replaced in both positions by executives of Nike. Businaro took over as president of Fesi in September 2014 after Fesi's previous president, Bruno Alves, left Nike.
Asked to comment on Fesi's future strategies, Dassler told us that the executive committee wants it to move faster and to be more effective, without losing the momentum that it has achieved under Businaro's leadership in its relations with European institutions, which have started to recognize the sporting goods sector as an industry that “deserves special treatment,” for various reasons. It should not be treated like supermarkets, he quipped in a telephone interview.
While denying speculation that Fesi might become a section of the WFSGI, Dassler stressed that it doesn't intend to give up its identity in Brussels as the exclusive representative body of the sporting goods industry in Europe. He said, however, that Fesi's executive board has decided that Fesi should work more closely with the WFSGI than in the past, setting up a joint working group for this purpose.
One of the ideas is to align the work of Fesi's committees on trade, sustainability and physical activity with those of WFSGI, for example. Members of WFSGI should also be brought into the discussion on topics such as e-commerce and intellectual property protection. Dassler is also suggesting that some companies that operate internationally should be allowed to have some kind of joint membership in both bodies.
According to Pero, Fesi and WFSGI should learn more about each other's work, acting as complementary organizations, avoiding overlaps and duplications. He also said that he wanted to improve internal and external communication.
Dassler stressed that Bichi's resignation was not related to any wrongdoing. Bichi, a 49-year-old manager who has been Fesi's secretary general for 17 years, will continue to run the House of Sport, which he helped set up in Brussels two years ago. He will also continue as executive director of Epsi, the European Platform for Sport Innovation, a non-profit association located in Brussels that is separate from Fesi.
Supported by the European Union's structural fund, Epsi is busy developing the EU4Sports Clusters Alliance, federating the efforts of regional clusters in eight European countries for the joint development of “smart specialization strategies” and investment projects based on public-private partnerships along the sport value chain.
