In its 2023 financial statements, Danish sports brand Hummel set a new sales record for the third year in a row. Revenue increased from 2.201 billion Danish kroner (€295.06m) in 2022 to DKK 2.225 billion (€298.27m) in 2023. Still, the cost of realizing inventory, rising interest rates and bankruptcies of major European customers impacted the bottom line and resulted in a loss of DKK 97 million (€13.0m).
Hummel’s new CEO, Lars Stentebjerg, called this an “unsatisfactory result” but emphasized that it was necessary to return to profitability. “In addition to a tough and pressured sports market, our primary challenge has been dealing with high stock levels due to a backlog accumulated over the past few years,” he said. ”We had to address this with a special focus on inventory realization. This has cost us in the short term, but we have done so knowingly, as it is a result of the growth strategy, we have developed in close cooperation with our owners to take the next step.”
Back in black with the new CEO
In recent years, Hummel has experienced massive growth under the leadership of Allan Vad Nielsen. After seven years at the helm, he stepped down as CEO in April 2024 and passed the baton to Stentjeberg, who was Hummel’s Chief Operating Officer at the time.
Despite the negative result in 2023, the new CEO remains transparent about the brand’s ambitions to become one of the world’s top ten sports brands, win over individual consumers, and be Europe’s leading supplier of team sports.
“Team sports form a substantial part of our core business, making it essential to scale our growth within this category in the coming years,” explained Stentebjerg. ”But we are much more than a team sports brand. We are a sports lifestyle brand, and this should be reflected holistically in the way we do business. Consequently, this has entailed recalibrating our strategy, as we simultaneously need to sharpen our focus and return to our roots. We have a unique brand with a fantastic heritage in sports, lifestyle, and karma, and we must leverage this to win individual consumers and thereby strengthen the brand globally.”
Stentebjerg also emphasized that the new strategy does not involve closing any categories, markets or sales channels. Instead, the company will focus more on its core business, team sports, wholesale customers and DTC e-commerce.
“It is a long and challenging journey, but we maintain our ambition to achieve a turnover of DKK 4 billion [€536.2m] with a profit before tax of at least DKK 300 million [€40.2m] in 2028. After a couple of challenging years, it has now truly started to brighten, and we expect a positive 2024, in which we will again be back in the black. Upon this, we clearly expect it to accelerate both on the top and bottom lines,” the new CEO concluded.
